Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/179

PALAEOGRAPHY 163 will be referred to more fully below, the letters towards the end of a line were, in the earliest MSS., reduced in size and cramped together, and very frequently in Latin MSS. two or more letters were linked or combined in a monograrnmatic form, as LR UT (ur, unt). By these devices space was saved and words were less divided between two lines. Combinations survived partially in minuscule MSS. The opening lines of the main divisions of the text, as for example the different books of the Bible, were frequently written in red, for distinction. At first there was no enlargement whatever of letters in any part of the text, but still at an early period the first letter of each page was made larger than the rest. Rubrics and titles and colophons were at first written in the same character as the text; afterwards, when the admixture of different kinds of writing was allowed, capitals and uncials were used at discretion. In papyri it appears to have been the practice to write the name of the work at the end only. Running titles or head-lines are found in some of the earliest Latin MSS. in the same characters as the text, but of a small size. Quotations were usually indicated by ticks or arrow-heads in the margin, serving the purpose of the modern inverted commas. Sometimes the quoted words were arranged as a sub-paragraph or indented passage. In commentaries of later date, the quotations from the work commented upon were often written in a different style from the text of the commentary itself. In MSS., both Greek and Latin, of the earlier centuries the writing runs on continuously without breaking up into distinct words. To this system there are, however, a few partial exceptions, in some of the very earliest examples. For instance, the Ei/8o|ot> Tfxvfl, written on papyrus in the 2d century B.C. , has a certain amount of separation of words, and in the fragments of the poem on the battle of Actium which were recoverefl at Herculaneum the words are marked off with points, monosyllabic or short pre positions and conjunctions, however, being joined to the words which immediately follow them a system which we find in practice at a later time. In the early vellum MSS. there is no such separa tion ; and unless there is a pause in the sense, at which a small space may be left, the line of letters has no break whatever. In Greek MSS., indeed, a system of distinct separation of words was never thoroughly worked out, even as late as the 15th century. The continuous writing of the uncial MSS. was carried on in the minuscules ; and, although, in the latter, a certain degree of separa tion is noticeable as early as the 10th century, yet a large propor tion of words remain linked together or wrongly divided. In the case of Latin uncial MSS., when the latter part of the 7th century is reached, there is more evidence of separation, although no regular system is followed. Concurrently the same process is observed in minuscule MSS., in which a partial separation goes on in an uncertain and hesitating manner down to the time of the Caroline reform. In early Irish and English MSS., however, it may be observed that separation is more consistently followed. In MSS. of the 9th and 10th centuries the long words are separated, but short prepositions and conjunctions are joined to the next following word. It was not until the llth century that these smaller words were finally detached and stood apart. Punctuation. From the use of continuous writing naturally arose in the first place the necessity for the breaking up of the text into paragraphs and sentences, and afterwards the introduction of marks of punctuation. In the Greek works on papyrus before the Christian era certain marks of division are found. In the Harris Homer (Cut. Anc. MSS., i., pi. 1) a wedge-shaped sign > is in serted between the beginnings of the lines to mark a new passage. In the prose works of Hyperides a pause in the sense (unless it I occurs at the end of a line) is indicated by a short blank space being left in the line and by a horizontal stroke being drawn under j the first letter of the line in which the pause occurs. In a few instances, in the space left to mark the pause a full point or slight oblique stroke is added high in the line. As large letters were un- [ known, this system of dividing the paragraphs was calculated to sacrifice the least amount of space, as the rest of the line, after the { pause, was utilized for the beginning of the next paragraph. In the early vellum MSS. the same plan is followed, with the more : general use of the full point, which is placed on a level with either the top or the middle of the letters ; and the marginal dividing ! signs are of different patterns. When large letters were introduced to mark the paragraphs, had they been invariably placed at the beginning of their respective paragraphs, the latter must of necessity have each begun a new line, unless the lines had been wide enough apart to leave room for the insertion of the large letters. This latter arrangement would, however, have entailed considerable loss of space ; and the device was accordingly invented, in cases where the paragraph began in the middle of a line, to place the large letter as the first letter of the next line, even though it might there occur in the middle of a word, and, as it was placed in the margin, it did not affect the normal space between the lines. It need hardly be said that, if the paragraph commenced at the beginning of a line, i the large letter took its natural place as the initial. The use of j these large or initial letters led to the abolition of the paragraph I marks. As early as the 5th century there is evidence in the case of the Codex Alexandrinus that the marks were losing their meaning in the eyes of the scribes ; for in that MS. they are frequently placed in anomalous positions, particularly over the initial letters of the different books, having been evidently considered as mere ornaments. The position of the initial as the leading letter of the second line of a paragraph beginning in the middle of a line was maintained in the Greek minuscule MSS. into the 15th century. The practice of con tinuous writing also led to the arrangement of the text of the Bible and some other works in short sentences, according to the sense, which were called cnixot, as will be noticed presently ; but other minor methods were followed to prevent the ambiguity which would occasionally arise. In even the earliest Greek uncial MSS.. an apostrophe was often inserted above the line between two words, as a dividing mark, as, for instance, in the Codex Alexandrinus, OTN OTK; and it was specially used after words ending in x, x, !> p, and after proper names which have not a Greek termination. It was even placed, apparently from false analogy, between two consonants in the middle of a word, as HNEF KEN. Some of these uses of the apostrophe survived in minuscule MSS. A mark also, resembling an accent or short horizontal stroke, was employed to indicate words consisting of a single letter, as H, which as a word has so many different meanings. In the earliest surviving Latin volumes there was no punctuation by the first hand, but in the later uncial MSS. the full point, in various positions, was introduced being placed on a level with either the bottom, middle, or top of the letters, the two latter positions being the most common. In minuscule MSS. the full point, on the line or high, was first used ; then the comma and semicolon, and the inverted semicolon (S), whose power was rather stronger than that of the comma. In Irish and early English MSS. the common mark of punctuation was the full point. As a final stop one or more points with a comma . ., were frequently used. Stichometry. While dealing with the subject of punctuation, the system of Stichometry, or division of the texts into OT/XOJ, versus, or lines of a certain length may be referred to. 1 It was the custom of the Greeks and Romans to estimate the length of their literary works by lines. In poetical works the number of verses was com puted ; in prose works a standard line had to be taken, for no two scribes would naturally write lines of the same length. This standard was a medium Homeric line, and it appears to have con sisted, on an average, of 34 to 38 letters, or 15 to 16 syllables. The lines of any work, so measured, were called a-ri-^oi or firrj. The practice of thus computing the length of a work can be traced ba; k to the 4th century B.C. in the boast of Theopompus that he .had written more CTTTJ than any other writer. The number of such ffrixoi or tin] contained in a papyrus roll was recorded at the end with the title of the work ; and at the end of a large work extend ing to several rolls the grand total was given. The use of such a stichometrical arrangement was in the first place for literary refer ence. The numeration of the CTT/XOI was no doubt at an early period regularly noted in the margin, just as lines of poetical works or verses in the Bible are numbered in our printed books. In a Greek Biblical MS. at Milan they are numbered at the end of every hundred, and the verses in the Bankes Homer are counted in the same way. But the system was also of practical use in calculating the pay of the scribes and in arranging the market value of a MS. When once a standard copy of a work had been written in the normal lines, the scribes of all subsequent copies had only to reeoid the number of a-rixoi without keeping to the prototype. When v, e find therefore at the end of the different books of a Bible that they severally contain so many o-r/xot or versus, it is this stichometrkal arrangement which is referred to. Callimachus, when he drew up his catalogue of the Alexandrian libraries in the 3d century B.C., registered the total of the ffrixoi in each work. Although he is generally lauded for thus carefully recording the numbers and setting an example to all who should follow him, it has been suggested that this very act was the cause of their general disappearance from MSS. For, when his irivaitf s were published, scribes evidently thought it was needless to repeat what could be found there ; and thus it is that so few MSS. have descended to us which are marked in this way. There was also in use in Biblical MSS. another arrangement. This was the division of the text into short sentences or lines, according to the sense, chiefly with a view to a better understand ing of the meaning and a better delivery in public reading. The Psalms, Proverbs, and other poetical books were anciently thus written, and hence received tha title of /8/^Aoj ffrix^p^is, or ffnx-npai ; and it was on the same plan that St Jerome wrote, first the books of the prophets, and subsequently all the Bible of his version, per cola et commata "quod in Demosthene et Tullio solet fieri." In the Greek Testament also Euthalius, in the 5th century, introduced the method of writing (T-TLX^OV, as he termed it, into the Pauline and Catholic Epistles, and the Acts. The surviving MSS. which contain the text written in short sentences show by 1 See the article by C. Graux in Rerue de Philologie, 1878. vol. ii. p. 97.