Communication:
Imperial papyri and Byzantine manuscripts: the (dis)continuity of Greek mythography, by Nereida Villagra (CEC-FLUL)

Already in the 19th century, Johannes Panzer had hypothesised that part of the mythographic accounts preserved on Homer in the minor scholia derived from a mythographic commentary, the so-called “Mythographus Homericus”. In the 20th century, the discovery and publication of several papyri from the Imperial period with texts parallel to those preserved in the scolios had proven this hypothesis correct. The case of the Mythographus Homericus sets a beautiful example for studying the evolution in the material support for this text from the Imperial period through to the Byzantine period. In this seminar, we will study how the mythographic historiae of two papyri are integrated into the scholia, marginal or independent, of some manuscripts on Homer. The papyri we study here are P. Hamb. 199, from the 2nd century, which contains three historiae that comment on verses from the Iliad; and PSI 1173, from the 3rd century, which contains 16 historiae on verses from the Odyssey. These cases will allow us to reflect on some of the formal changes in the arrangement of the historiae, such as the form of the lemmata, as well as on the reusage of this narrative material. In a broader perspective, we therefore discuss the very status of mythography in the imperial and Byzantine eras.

This paper is presented in Portuguese.


Biographical note:
Nereida Villagra has been a post-doctoral researcher at the Centre for Classical Studies of the University of Lisbon since 2013 on an FCT scholarship. Her individual project aims to study the mythographic narratives preserved in the scholia to Homer, Pindarus and Apollonius of Rhodes. She obtained her PhD degree from the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 2012 with a thesis that consisted of the edition, translation and commentary of the fragments of Asclepiades of Tragilus. She has published several chapters and articles, such as “Plato on the Thessalian trick. New interpretation of Gorgias 513b” Greek Roman Byzantine Studies 57/2 and “Time and Space in the myth of Byblis”, in A, Bierl et al. (eds.) Time and Space in Ancient Myth, Religion and Culture, Berlin: De Gruyter. She has also participated in several International Congresses and in the year 2014 she organised the workshop “The Greek myth: from the archaic epic to the Homeric scholia and their reception” at the University of Lisbon, in collaboration with the Autonomous University of Barcelona. In 2017, she organised the International Workshop “Mythographus Homericus 125 years after Panzer: From scholia to papyri and to the digital era”, also at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Lisbon. At the moment, she is working on a book resulting from this workshop while also preparing a commentary on Mythographus Homericus.

This event is part of the second series of the “Manuscritos em Diálogo” (Manuscripts in Dialogue) seminars.