![]() ![]() To make matters more difficult, the young lady is nowhere named. Nero and Poppaea on horseback, marble relief by Isaia da Pisa, 1458–60 (Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA).Īlthough this story may sound almost familiar to those who are acquainted with Greece and Rome, it is not possible to pin down, either in mythology or in history, any narrative that corresponds precisely to the remains found on our papyrus. Judging from the preserved remains of the text, he did not possess the skills of his Hellenistic forebears, and his style is quite ordinary no allusions to the work of other known poets could be identified. The author remains unknown: he may have been a minor poet living in Roman Egypt. But it was composed roughly one millennium after Homer, either shortly after AD 65, or perhaps in the late third century, which is roughly when this surviving copy of the text was made. In 2011, this papyrus eventually revealed the remains of a Greek poem written in hexameters, in a language imitating that of Homer. Although the editing of such papyri is normally ascribed to a single researcher, in fact the nominal editor benefits from the critical reading of colleagues who spot mistakes or provide additional material that will help to interpret a damaged text. By the time it had reached the hands of scholars working in Oxford, this brittle piece of papyrus had been badly damaged. A scribe had copied a poem in Greek, on both sides of a book’s page. ![]() ![]() This piece of evidence comes from a huge find of papyrus scraps discovered in the outskirts of ancient Oxyrhynchus, a small town in Egypt, towards the end of the 19 th century. ![]() Nero and Poppaea: billion silver tetradrachm, struck in Alexandria, Egypt, AD 63/4. ![]()
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