Reading the Text
The next several pages will give a close-up look at lines 24-33
of the Seneca fragment. Do not expect to be able to read every letter
of each line; the text is over sixteen hundred years old and has
suffered a fair amount of weathering and damage. For your benefit,
we have included some tools to assist you in reading the text:
The Alphabet Pop-up Window
If you need to refer to the alphabet of the manuscript, click on
the link to open a new window with the various letter forms. Don't
be surprised to see some minor variation between different instances
of the same letter, but you can expect that the general shape will
be the same for the same hand.
The Highlighted Text Option
Each line of text is presented as a digital image of the original
manuscript. If you are having difficulty identifying the letters
or separating words, click on the "Show Highlighted Text"
button, which will illuminate the text in various colors. This can
be helpful in identifying the shape of abraded letters and for separating
different words (This manuscript is written in scriptio continua,
which means that there are no spaces between words. Some punctuation
does exist, but it is used infrequently).
Each line is accompanied by a transliteration which can be shown
by clicking on the "Show Transliteration" button. This
transliteration is the version of the text that is published by
papyrologists. It contains the letters and punctuation of the original
text as well as various symbols used by papyrologists to explain
various aspects of the text. Below is a brief explanation of a few
of these symbols:
a break in the text (lacuna); the text is supplied by
a mistaken omission by the scribe
letter or letters deleted by the scribe
|. . .
(underdot) indicates an uncertain reading
Each line is accompanied by notes which point out any special peculiarities
of that line. Also, the full text of each verse from Seneca is provided,
showing the relative position of the fragment within that line.
Since the text is fragmentary, often the transliteration will only
provide unintelligible letters, not whole words. The full text of
each verse helps put the transliteration in a grammatical syntax.
Next: Line 24