1950/07/01 by G. S. Kirk
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Classical Antiquity Studies #Historical and Literary Studies #Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies
paper · doi:10.1017/s0009838800028688
openalex publication_date 1950/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25
During the excavations of 1924–5 at Karanis a papyrus (Michigan 2745) of the second or early third century A.D. was discovered, and subsequently published by J. G. Winter (‘A New Fragment on the Life of Homer’, Trans. Am. Philol. Ass. , lvi, 1925, 120 ff. and pl. A), which under its single column has a subscribed title which should almost certainly be restored as ‘Alcidamas, On Homer’. The first fourteen lines of the papyrus give most of the story of Homer's death and the riddle that caused it, which is common to all the extant Lives of Homer; the remainder is a general eulogy of Homer and a profession of transmitting his works to posterity. The interest of the discovery lies in the knowledge that it gives of a hitherto unrecorded work by Alcidamas, the rhetorician and contemporary of Isocrates, and the new fuel that it provides for an old controversy about the origins of the work known as the Certamen . The first part of this article aims at both re-examining the value of the papyrus and reopening some of the old questions on the Certamen .