of relaxation. Roundness of style, then, is characteristic of Greek cursive writing in the papyri of the first three centuries of the Christian era, however much individual hands, or groups of hands, might vary among themselves.
A specimen (fig. 4) of cursive writing of the general Roman type is selected from a papyrus (Brit. Mus. No. cxxxi.) which is of more than usual interest, as it is on the verso side of the rolls of which it is composed that the text of Aristotle's Constitution of Athens has been transcribed. It contains the farming accounts of the bailiff of Epimachus, son of Polydeuces, the owner of an estate in the nome of Hermopolis in the 9th and 10th years of the reign of Vespasian, that is A.D. 78-79:—
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Fig. 4.—Farm Accounts, A.D. 78-79. | ||||||||
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In the second half of the 1st century two styles of handwriting predominate in the cursive papyri. There is the clear and flowing hand, which may be termed the ordinary working hand; and there is also a small and very cursive style which appears in private correspondence and in legal contracts. The 2nd century follows on the same lines as the 1st century; but with the 3rd century decadence sets in; the writing begins to slope, and grows larger and rougher and tends to exaggeration.
This exaggeration of the writing of the later Roman period leads the way to the pedantic exaggeration and formalism characteristic of the Byzantine period. In this period the general style of writing is on a larger scale than in the Roman; exaggeration in the size of certain letters marks the progress of the 4th century. Material is wanting for full illustration of the changes effected in the 5th century; but the papyri of the 6th century show a further advance in formalism, the common style being upright and compressed and full of flourishes. In the 7th century the hand assumes a sloping style, which always seems to accompany decadence, and grows very irregular and straggling. A specimen of the fully developed Byzantine hand of a legal type is here shown in a few lines from a lease of a farm (fig. 5) in the 6th century (Brit. Mus. pap. cxiii 3):—
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Fig. 5.—Lease of a Farm, 6th century. | ||||||||||
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In the long range covered by the Greek papyri the formation
of individual letters necessarily varied under different influences;
but in not a few instances the original shapes were remarkably
maintained. From those which thus remained conservative
it is rash to attempt to draw conclusions as to the precise age of
the several documents in which they occur. On the other
hand, there are some which at certain periods adopted shapes
which were in vogue for a limited time and then disappeared,
never to be resumed. Such forms can very properly be regarded
as sure guides to the palaeographer in assigning dates. We may
therefore take a brief survey of the Greek cursive alphabet of the
papyri and note some of the peculiarities of individual letters.
The incipient form of the alpha which gradually developed into
the minuscule letter of the middle ages may be traced back to
the Ptolemaic documents of the 2nd century B.C., but the more
cursive letter, which was a simple acute angle, representing only
two of the three strokes of which the primitive letter was
composed, was characteristic of the 3rd century B.C., and seems to
have gone out of use within the Ptolemaic period. The development
of the cursive beta is interesting. At the very beginning
we find two forms in use: the primitive capital letter and a
cursive shape somewhat resembling a small n, being in fact an
imperfectly written B in which the bows are slurred. This
form lasted through the Ptolemaic period. Then arose the
natural tendency to reverse the strokes and to form the letter
on the principle of u; but still the capital letter also continued
in use, so that through the Roman and Byzantine periods the
u-shape and the B-shape run on side by side. Analogously
the letter kappa, formed on somewhat the same lines as the
beta, runs a similar course in developing a cursive u-shaped
form by the side of the primitive capital. Delta remained
fairly true to its primitive form until the Byzantine period,
when the elongation of the head into a flourish led on to the
minuscule letter which is familiar to us in the medieval and
modern alphabet. Epsilon, the most frequently recurring
letter in Greek texts, departs less from its original rounded
uncial form that might have been expected. Frequent and
varied as its cursive formations are, yet the original shape is
seldom quite disguised, the variations almost in all instances
arising from the devices of the scribe to dispose swiftly and
conveniently of the cross-bar by incorporating it with the rest
of the letter. The tendency to curtail the second vertical limb
of eta, leading eventually to the h-shape, is in evidence from the
first. But in the development of this letter we have one of the
instances of temporary forms which lasted only within a fixed
period. In the 1st century, side by side with the more usual
form, there appears a modification of it, somewhat resembling
the contemporary upsilon, consisting of a shallow horizontal
curve with a vertical limb slightly turned in at the foot, .
Its development from the original Η is evident: the first vertical
limb is slurred, and survives only in the beginning of the
horizontal curve, while the cross-bar and the second vertical are
combined in the rest of the letter. This form was in general
use from the middle of the 1st to the middle of the 2nd century,
becoming less common after about A.D. 160, and practically disappearing
about A.D. 200. The letters formed wholly or in part by
circles or loops, theta, omikron, rho, phi, in the earlier centuries
have such circles or loops of a small size. Just as there is an
analogy between beta and kappa in their developments, as
already noticed, so also do mu and pi advance on somewhat
similar lines. From the earliest time there is a resemblance
between the broad shallow forms of the two letters in the 3rd
century B.C., and particularly when they adopt the form of a
convex stroke the likeness is very close; and again, in both
Roman and Byzantine periods an n-shaped development appears
among the forms of both letters. There is also one phase in
the development of sigma which affords a useful criterion for