tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">Description of Plates

Part I.

THE PALAEOGRAPHY OF THE MORGAN FRAGMENT

BY

E. A. LOWE

THE PALAEOGRAPHY OF THE MORGAN FRAGMENT.

DESCRIPTION OF THE FRAGMENT.

Contents
 size
 vellum
 binding T HE Morgan fragment of Pliny the Younger contains the end of Book II and the beginning of Book III of the Letters (II, xx. 13-III, v. 4). The fragment consists of six vellum leaves, or twelve pages, which apparently formed part of a gathering or quire of the original volume.

The leaves measure 11-3/8 by 7 inches (286 x 180 millimeters); the written space measures 7-1/4 by 4-3/8 inches (175 x 114 millimeters); outer margin, 1-7/8 inches (50 millimeters); inner, 3/4 inch (18 millimeters); upper margin, 1-3/4 inches (45 millimeters); lower, 2-1/4 inches (60 millimeters).

The vellum is well prepared and of medium thickness. The leaves are bound in a modern pliable vellum binding with three blank vellum fly-leaves in front and seven in back, all modern. On the inside of the front cover is the book-plate of John Pierpont Morgan, showing the Morgan arms with the device: Onward and Upward. Under the book-plate is the press-mark M.462.

Ruling There are twenty-seven horizontal lines to a page and two vertical bounding lines. The lines were ruled with a hard point on the flesh side, each opened sheet being ruled separately: 48^v and 53^r, 49^r and 52^v, 50^v and 51^r. The horizontal lines were guided by knife-slits made in the outside margins quite close to the text space; the two vertical lines were guided by two slits in the upper margin and two in the lower. The horizontal lines were drawn across the open sheets and extended occasionally beyond the slits, more often just beyond the perpendicular bounding lines. The written space was kept inside the vertical bounding lines except for the initial letter of each epistle; the first letter of the address and the first letter of the epistle proper projected into the left margin. Here and there the scribe transgressed beyond the bounding line. On the whole, however, he observed the limits and seemed to prefer to leave a blank before the bounding line rather than to crowd the syllable into the space or go beyond the vertical line.

Relation of the six leaves to the rest of the manuscript One might suppose that the six leaves once formed a complete gathering of the original book, especially as the first and last pages, folios 48^r and 53^v have a darker appearance, as though they had been the outside leaves of a gathering that had been affected by exposure. But this darker appearance is sufficiently accounted for by the fact that both pages are on the hair side of the parchment, and the hair side is always darker than the flesh side. Quires of six leaves or trinions are not unknown. Examples of them may be found in our oldest manuscripts. But they are the exception.¹ The customary quire is a gathering of eight leaves, forming a quaternion proper. It would be natural, therefore, to suppose that our fragment did not constitute a complete gathering in itself but formed part of a quaternion. The supposition is confirmed by the following considerations:

In the first place, if our six leaves were once a part of a quaternion, the two leaves needed to complete them must have formed the outside sheet, since our fragment furnishes a continuous text without any lacuna whatever. Now, in the formation of quires, sheets were so arranged that hair side faced hair side, and flesh side flesh side. This arrangement is dictated by a sense of uniformity. As the hair side is usually much darker than the flesh side the juxtaposition of hair and flesh sides would offend the eye. So, in the case of our six leaves, folios 48^v and 53^r, presenting the flesh side, face folios 49^r and 52^v likewise on the flesh side; and folios 49^v and 52^r presenting the hair side, face folios 50^r and 51^v likewise on the hair side. The inside pages 50^v and 51^r which face each other, are both flesh side, and the outside pages 48^r and 53^v are both hair side, as may be seen from the accompanying diagram.

From this arrangement it is evident that if our fragment once formed part of a quaternion the missing sheet was so folded that its hair side faced the present outside sheet and its flesh side was on the outside of the whole gathering. Now, it was by far the more usual practice in our oldest uncial manuscripts to have the flesh side on the outside of the quire.² And as our fragment belongs to the oldest class of uncial manuscripts, the manner of arranging the sheets of quires seems to favor the supposition that two outside leaves are missing. The hypothesis is, moreover, strengthened by another consideration. According to the foliation supplied by the fifteenth-century Arabic numerals, the leaf which must have followed our fragment bore the number 54, the leaf preceding it having the number 47. If we assume that our fragment was a complete gathering, we are obliged to explain why the next gathering began on a leaf bearing an even number (54), which is abnormal. We do not have to contend with this difficulty if we assume that folios 47 and 54 formed the outside sheet of our fragment, for six quires of eight leaves and one of six would give precisely 54 leaves. It seems, therefore, reasonable to assume that our fragment is not a complete unit, but formed part of a quaternion, the outside sheet of which is missing.

Original size of the manuscript In the fifteenth century, as the previous demonstration has made clear, our fragment was preceded by 47 leaves that are missing to-day. With this clue in our possession it can be demonstrated that the manuscript began with the first book of the Letters. We start with the fact that not all the 47 folios (or 94 pages) which preceded our six leaves were devoted to the text of the Letters. For, from the contents of our six leaves we know that each book must have been preceded by an index of addresses and first lines. The indices for Books I and II, if arranged in general like that of Book III, must have occupied four pages.³ We also learn from our fragment that space must be allowed for a colophon at the end of each book. One page for the colophons of Books I and II is a reasonable allowance. Accordingly it follows that out of the 94