Oxyrhynchus Papyri 68 (4639-4704)

The latest volume of papyri from Oxyrhynchus includes new texts of Greek drama (a tragic rhesis probably by Euripides, plot-summaries of two tragedies which may have some connection with the lost Hippolytos Kalyptomenos, an addition to Act II of Menander’s Epitrepontes, a rhetorical exercise Enkomion of the Horse, a treatise on star-signs in Greek poets, etc.) and versions of known literary texts (all the remaining EES papyri with extracts of Hesiod’s Theogony, Works and Days and Shield, whose interest lies in their omission or inclusion of verses suspected by ancient scholars and modern editors; also included are a fragment with Homeric Hymns and the first known papyrus of Batrachomyomachia). The third section of the volume contains three writing exercises and three pieces of erotic magic; and the fourth section documentary texts mainly of the fifth century AD chosen for their chronological and prosopographical interest, many providing the earliest or latest known dates for the use in Egypt of certain consulates for dating purposes. These texts illustrate the continuing flow of essential business: loans, supplies of wine, leases of land and houses and rooms, maintenance of irrigation machines and the transport of grain.