Friday, May 17, 2024
Supplements as Private Poetry
Denys L. Page, Select Papyri III (Poetry) (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1941 = Loeb Classical Library, 360), p. xvi:
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A word about supplements. I began eager to fill every gap with flawless fragments of my own composition; I ended with the desire—too late—to remove all that is not either legible in the papyrus or replaceable beyond reasonable doubt. At the eleventh hour, indeed, I expelled handfuls of private poetry: yet far too much remains, hard though I tried to print nothing which is inconsistent with spaces and traces in the papyrus, and to be guided, for the sense of my supplements, by certain or probable indications provided by the legible text.Hat tip: Eric Thomson.
