COLLECTIONS AND CLASSES OF PAPYRI As a result of the large production during the past generation papyri are now widely distributed, and very many museums and libraries possess at least a few specimens. The chief repositories are the British Museum, Oxford (the Bodleian library and Queen's college), Paris, Berlin, Vienna and Cairo. In Europe more or less extensive and valuable collections are to be found in the Rylands library at Manchester, in Cambridge, Aberdeen, Trinity college at Dublin, Strasbourg, Leyden, Heidelberg, Leipzig, Ham burg, Bremen, Giessen, Frankfurt, Halle, Wurzburg, Munich, Graz, Geneva, Basle, Florence, Turin and Oslo. In the United States the Universities of California and Michigan are especially prominent, and collections exist also at Princeton, Cornell, Colum bia, Wisconsin and elsewhere. In Egypt besides the large accumu lation at Cairo there are some papyri in the museum at Alexandria.
In a classification of papyri the main line of demarcation is between literary and non-literary. Sometimes indeed a doubt arises as to which class a text belongs, e.g., a medical recipe may be an extract from a book or a private formula. Sometimes, again, a group, though including elements falling in both the above cate gories is homogeneous enough to be most suitably treated as a whole. Such a group is formed by the magical papyri.
1907). Among later poets, important additions have been made to the remains of Callimachus and to the few extant speci mens of the Greek mime through the discovery of the Mimes of Herondas. The Mimiambi of Cercidas (Oxyrh. Pap. 1082) and the Persae of Timotheus also deserve notice ; the latter has the distinction of being probably the most ancient Greek literary manuscript yet known. In history, Aristotle's Athenian Constitu tion (ed. 1 by F. G. Kenyon, 1891) is an authority of the first rank, and perhaps the chief prize brought by the papyri so far. A second acquisition of much value though of smaller compass is the so-called Hellenica Oxyrhynchia (Oxyrh. Pap. 842), the author of which is not determined with certainty but not im probably was Ephorus. In any case the fragment is of impor tance not only for the new information which it contains but also for its bearing on the work of Diodorus Siculus. A life of Euripides by Satyrus (Oxyrh. Pap. 1176), written in the form of a dialogue, is an interesting specimen of popular biography. An epitome of some of the lost books of Livy (Oxyrh. Pap. 668) constitutes the chief literary find in Latin. In the department of oratory, the six surviving speeches, or remains of speeches, of Hyperides, have all been found in Egypt.
Long Survival and Wide Dissemination of Greek Litera ture.—The multifarious literary remnants preserved in the papyri are a striking testimony to the popularity and diffusion of the Greek classics in Egypt. Not till a comparatively late period does their decline become marked—a decline traceable partly to material decay and waning culture, partly, too, to the spread of Christianity, which tended to divert attention to theological writ ings. Down to about the end of the third century the loss of great works does not seem to have gone very far. This considera tion should lead to increased respect for tradition. If the materials available continued to be so large, statements of fact are not to be lightly dismissed even when they come from comparatively late writers. To invent where information lay ready to hand would be ridiculous. Some signal examples of the futility of a certain kind of scepticism may be seen in the papyri. For instance, the late Latin treatise on the Fall of Troy attributed to Dictys Cretensis begins with a statement that the book was a translation from Greek. A recent editor, rejecting that plain affirmation, decided that the Greek original was mythical. A good-sized piece of this original has since been found.