A REMARKABLE LITERARY DISCOVERY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12272, 16 May 1903, Page 5 (Supplement)

A REMARKABLE LITERARY DISCOVERY.

A most interesting arcliEeological discovery was recently made at Abusir, Egypt, by a German scholar named Ludwig Borchardt. In an ancient mummy dating back to the age of Alexander or earlier Heir Borchardt has found a papyrus roll containing an ode by Timotheus ; the Greek poet and musician. The Independent chronicles the details of the discovery as follows: —

" By the head of the buried man lay the remains of a small leathei purse, a sponge, a rusted piece of iron, a bit of wood, and a thin roll of papyrus. With infinite pains this roll was opened and, where broken, pieced together. It proved to be 43 inches long, and contained five columns of Greek writing. The first column was in a ruinous state, the second was not complete, but the three last were intact and gave the concluding verses of a poem, in which by good luck the poet speaks of himself by name. It was at once clear from the theme that we had here a- portion of 'The Persians,' a famous nome of Timotheus, of which two or three brief fragments were already in our anthologies."

The Independent is much impressed by the importance of this literary rind. It observes : —

" Only the Greek scholai can taste to the full the sweetness of such a discovery, but it must possess no slight interest even for 1 the man of one tongue.' First of all it is the oldest manuscript Greek book yet known to exist, dating as it does from the fouith century before Christ. ... It is the only fragment of any considerable length of the Greek nome, a- form of ode or hymn which was originally employed in the worship, of Apollo, but which had become gradually secularised until Timotheus completely altered its nature by making it a choral" song. And it is furthermore the only fragment of any magnitude from the works of a great and much-debated poet and musician."

The poem itself is a description of the Battle of Salamis, which iEschylus had already made the theme of his tragedy, " The Persians." We are told:

" The style is highly condensed and metaphorical, not unlike the chorus of the Athenian tragedy. Here for the first time, so far as known, the sea, which to Homer was ' dark' or ' purple' or ' wine-coloured,' is called 'emerald.' The poem is brilliantly executed, but- can scarcely be ranked among the greatest treasures of Greek poetry —indeed it is not likely that Tirnotheus would hold the same rank in our estimation as was given him in his own day. Historically, however, the poem is of immense interest, and its discovery gives greater warrant to our hopes that some day a comedy of Menander or the works of Sappho "or another much-desired treasure may be found lying in a mummy-case, where it was placed thousands of years ago to give entertainment to the departed soul on its long and perilous journey."

Of Timotheus but little is known. He was born at Miletus in 442 B.C. and lived to be ninety years old. Furthermore : "He was during his long life famous for his skill in music and verse, and wandered much from city to city, as was the custom of public writers in those days, reaping the rewards of glory. His name in after-times became almost a, synonym for musician, and it is thus, by a pardonable anachronism, that Dryden in his ode 'In Honour of Cecilia's Day' introduces him into the Court of Alexander."

The Greek text of the newly-found poem has just been published in Berlin by the German scholar, Professor Wilamowitz-Mol-lendorff. It is reprinted hi The Independent (April 9), with an English translation br Paul Elmer More.