Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

BOOKS AND PUBLICATION
Greek papyri we should expect that there also existed many privately made copies
in cursive or documentary handwriting. 1 There "were considerable variations in
format as well as in legibility. The width of the columns of writing bore no
relationship to the sheets out of which the roll was formed (chartae, schedaef
scidae; also, confusingly, paginae, plagulae), since the joints between these were
carefully smoothed down and offered no obstacle to the pen. Their -width therefore
varied greatly, though there is some evidence that the average length of a
hexameter verse, about 35 letters, might on occasion serve as a norm. There
were also wide variations in the number of lines in the column, size of margins,
and all other aspects of get-up. In these matters, as in everything else connected
with book-production, standards depended on circumstances: whether the copy
in question was a regular one produced for trade sale, a de luxe exemplar
intended for presentation, or an amateur effort for personal use.
The few surviving examples of early papyri, taken together with the evidence
of contemporary inscriptions, offer some evidence, by no means conclusive,
that down to the second century A.D. the words in Latin books were divided
in writing by the use of a conventional sign and that punctuation was in use;
though such evidence as does exist is not enough to show that there was any
generally accepted system. 2 Seneca notes a difference between Greek and Roman
usage in this respect. 3 In the second century, in a curious fit of what seems to
have been cultural snobbery, the Romans adopted continuous writing without
word-division (scriptura continua) on the Greek model; and if punctuation had
previously been in common use, it too -was rejected. Behind this decision may
perhaps be sensed a feeling that to make literature more accessible by providing
aids to the reader somehow devalues it; the preservation of certain anomalies in
English spelling offers an analogy, though admittedly a very incomplete one.
It should however be remembered that the best Latin writers impose the required
punctuation on the reader's mind and ear by their phrasing, and it must
always have been tacitly accepted that the onus was on the author to do this,
whatever aids might or might not be provided in the -written text. A writer
"who neglected this duty "would be liable to puzzle his readers: Jerome
complains that he cannot tell -where Jovinian's sentences begin and end (Adv.
Jovin. 1. a).
1
Roberts (1956) xi—xii.
1
Cavenaile (1958) nos. 20 (Cicero, Verr. 2.2.3—4; 20 B.C.)*; 41 (anon, on Servius Tullius; 2nd c.
A.D.); 43 (hist, fragment; A.D. 100)*; 45 (philos. fragment; before A.D. 115). Not in Cavenaile:
Carmen de Bella ^4ctiaco^ before A.D. 79*. (* = with punctuation.) Cf. Wingo (1972) 50—^3. A few
later papyri, e.g. Cavenaile 47 (4th—5th c. A.D.), 65 (2nd—3rd c. A.D.) have word-division with interpuncts.
3
Epist. mor. 40.11; but the word interpungere may refer either to -word-division or to sensepunctuation
or possibly (the distinction between them not being hard-and-fast) to both: Wingo
(1972) 15 n. 10. For a different interpretation, denying the existence of punctuation in Latin books,
Townend (1969) 330—2.
17
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