BRUNNER, THEODORE F., Two Papyri of Appian from Dura-Europus , Greek, Roman and 
Byzantine Studies, 25:2 (1984) p.171 

Two Papyri of Appian from Dura-Europus 

Theodore F. Brunner 

I T IS THE PURPOSE of this article to correct a misidentification of 
P.Dura 2 fr.A and to establish the identity of the hitherto un­
placed 2 fr.B. 

P.Dura 2 fr.A 
Discovery of this piece (and of others found during the 1932-33 

excavation season) was reported in 1936; 1 no identification was of­
fered then. Three years later C. Bradford Welles argued that' the 
fragment matched Appian Mith. 101, reading the piece as follows:2 

[- - - - - - - - - - EAavvwv 8"711..]­
~[EV E7Ti TOV "At/Japov 7ToTaJ-Wv. "II37Jpa~] 
~, [' , ''A' .., , .,~, '] 
uE T OV~ E V CT~ 0" J.LE v 7TPOYO vov~ Ot u a-
7Toi[KOV~ TJyovvTat Tevv Evpw7TaLwv] 
'II3.ry[pwv - - - - - - - - - -] 

Welles used IBH (with diaeresis over the iota) as the starting point 
for a search through Greek authors mentioning the Iberus, Iberia, 
etc. After consultation of Strabo, Polybius, and other writers who 
"out of hundreds of instances yielded no context which remotely 
fitted," he found that the Mith. passage seemed to fall into place: 
"the lines are respectively 28, 30, and 27 characters in length, and 
the traces fit exactly." 

Welles surely consulted word-indexes in his effort to identify the 
fragment. It seems to have been the index to the Loeb edition of 
Appian3 that guided him to Mith. 101, as this is the first reference 
there given under "Iberians of Asia." The apparent match no doubt 
seemed to Welles to be confirmed by his reasonable assumption that 
"the history of the eastern Mediterranean area should have bulked 
large" in the minds "of the officers of the Roman garrison" at Dura.4 

1 The Excavations at Dura-Europus, Preliminary Report of the Sixth Season (New Haven 
1936) 417. 

2 "Fragments of Herodotus and Appian from Dura," TAPA 70 (1939) 203-12. 
3 This index is far from complete, giving four references to the "Iberians of Asia" and 

five to the "Iberus, river of Spain." In fact Appian's writings contain 208 references to 
Iberia or things Iberian, including 76 in the Iberica and 72 in the Bel/urn Civile. 

4 Cf P.Dura p.70: "One can imagine that the 'Mithridatic War' was of special interest 
to a Roman officer stationed in the East." 

171 



BRUNNER, THEODORE F., Two Papyri of Appian from Dura-Europus , Greek, Roman and 
Byzantine Studies, 25:2 (1984) p.171 

172 TWO PAPYRI OF APPIAN 

There is, however, a more convincing identification of P.Dura 2 
fr.A, not Appian's Bellum Mithridaticum but his Bellum Civile. On the 
papyrus, the letter read by Welles as a dotted theta is sufficiently 
intact to be identified as omicron, for there is no evidence of a hori­
zontal bar; Welles' dotted tau in the next line (given the angle of the 
vertical stroke which survives) should be read as a dotted alpha. The 
text, as reconstructed below, is Appian Bell.Civ. 2.8, which gives the 
proper match. The lines contain respectively 25, 25, and 26 letters, 
and the traces fit exactly: 

[- - - - - - - - - - - - - - W~] 
[ '~\ 'l', / / \ ] g VoE V Ot~ E7TE VOE/, XP'YIO"t/-UX, O"TpaTUX v 

BE q ['YEipa~ E7TE"rifJETo TO'i~ En AOtl-
7T(uk 'If3fJpwv &va JLEPO~, JLEXPt T7)V] 
'If3'Y1[piav - - - - - - - - - -] 

Had Welles considered this passage? The chances are slight; the Loeb 
index does not include our 'Iberia' at Bell.Civ. 2.8.5 

P.Dura 2 fr.B 
At left below is Welles' initial transcription of inv.91 (supra n.2: 

212), at right the revised transcription published as P.Dura 2 fr.B: 

] .. [ 
]KHNO[ 
]OYl:E. [ 
]OYl:A[ 
]I.AP[ 
]M[. ]EP 
. 1.. [ 

1. . [ 
]KHNfU 
]OYl:E. [ 
]OYl:A[ 
]I.AP [ 
1. A[. ]EP[ 

1. y[ 
The bottom portion of the fragment is fraught with problems; none 
of the identifiable letter combinations would have lent themselves to 
attack with the aid of a word index; and Welles had no choice but to 
search through published texts in his efforts at identification. Similari­
ties of hand between fr.2B and fr.2A were evident. Naturally, Welles 
continued his search in the Bellum Mithridaticum-but equally natu­
rally, his search "yielded nothing." 

What might be taken as the upper and lower right tips of a kappa 
are actually the upper and lower ends of the vertical right hasta of nu. 
The iota read (without dotting) by the editor in line 5 is severely 
damaged at the spot where it would have connected to the crossbar 

5 The index provided by Mendelssohn in his 1881 Teubner edition of Appian does, 
however, as does the 1905 revision by Viereck. 



BRUNNER, THEODORE F., Two Papyri of Appian from Dura-Europus , Greek, Roman and 
Byzantine Studies, 25:2 (1984) p.171 

THEODORE F. BRUNNER 173 

of eta. Welles' doubtful mu in line 6 was later correctly revised to 
alpha, but of the rho only the left hasta is preserved, which could 
equally well belong to eight other letters, including nu. 

The proper match for the fragment is Appian Iber. 16: 

i'Bo[<Tav 7TOt]-
~:r;v w[v i~] 
[T]OV~ EIl[rro]-
[p]ov~ aV[nvv] 
1j~pkyJKE]-
[O']a[v] EV kwd-
[BE T]~~ [AtJ3v]-

The correctness of this identification is confirmed by the broken 
traces of letters in lines 1 and 7 which can now be read with some 
confidence. Respectively, the lines are 7, 8, 9, 8, and 8 letters in 
length. Since this presents us with a column width much narrower 
than that of the Bell. Civ. fragment, it is clear that fr.B derives from a 
different roll from that which yielded fr.A. Among the Dura papyri 
we therefore have evidence of two separate rolls of Appian, doubling 
the number reported in Pack's catalogue.6 

Procedures 
The two Dura papyri discussed here were matched with the ap­

propriate Appian passages through use of the Thesaurus Linguae 
Graecae's computer facilities. In essence, a search program was em­
ployed to match letter combinations found on the papyri with letter 
combinations in the TLG's machine-readable texts. If a given search 
generated more than one potentially pertinent passage, a process 
of elimination (including close scrutiny of letter traces visible on 
various reproductions of the papyri) was used to arrive at the final 
conclusions offered. Choice of Welles' 1939 article for this study 
was the result of pure chance.7 I originally intended merely to as­
certain whether certain findings obtained by research methodolo­
gies available in 1939 could be equally well obtained by the com­
puter-assisted methodologies available now. The surprising ease with 
which an affirmative answer emerged led to an expansion of the 

6 R. A. Pack, The Greek and Latin Literary Texts from Greco-Roman Egypt2 (Ann 
Arbor 1965): under no. 113 are listed both frr.A and B of P.Dura 2 together as 
App. Mith. 101, by error cited as deriving from a III-cent. papyrus codex rather than a 
roll. 

7 I happened upon an offprint of the article among others that form part of the Hei­
chelheim Collection, acquired, after Professor Heichelheim's death, by the University 
of California, Irvine. 



BRUNNER, THEODORE F., Two Papyri of Appian from Dura-Europus , Greek, Roman and 
Byzantine Studies, 25:2 (1984) p.171 

174 TWO PAPYRI OF APPIAN 

experiment's focus, i.e. computer assisted analysis of the two Dura 
fragments.8 

First, P.Dura 2 fr.A was treated as adespoton, and a LEX9 search 
for the combination IBH preceded by a blank was conducted through 
the TLG data bank.10 This search located the combination in 37 
authors (or collections, such as the Anth. Gr. ), two of whom could 
be disregarded on chronological grounds (the Dura fragments were 
found beneath an embankment erected in A.D. 256). 

The remaining 35 authors (ca 9,800,000 words) were searched for 
the combinations LlE, nOI, and IBHll occurring in sequence and 
within a reasonable distance from each other (a context of about five 
to six lines of printed text). This search generated 39 passages from 
nine authors; brief examination eliminated all but two passages. 12 

One was Welles' match for P.Dura 2 fr.A, Appian Mith. 101. The 
other seemed equally pertinent, warranting further attention. Scrutiny 
of the published photographs13 led to the conclusion that various 
traces visible on the papyrus justified reassignment to Bell.Civ. 2.8. 

Appian's writings now seemed to me, as they did to Welles, the 
logical starting point for an attack upon P.Dura 2 fr.B. A LEX search 
through Appian's quarter million words for HN, OYLE, and LA (read 
with certainty) in sequence and proximity produced overwhelming 
results, hundreds of possible passages. Further examination of the 
photograph published in 1939 led to a redefinition of the search: an 

8 Much of Welles' article is devoted to P.Dura 83, identified by him, with help from 
L. A. Post, as Herodotus 5.113.2-114.2. Welles' comments show that the match was 
not easily arrived at, and extant correspondence between him and Post (Iocated in tl)e 
Duke University archives and made available to me) indicate that considerable time 
and effort were invested. Using the computer, I matched P.Dura 83 with the Herodo­
tus passage in less than ten minutes. Given the comparatively extensive fragments, I 
used procedures somewhat different than for the Appian papyri; they will be described 
in another article. 

9 The LEX program was developed by David Packard; William Johnson, the TLG 
programmer, added enhancements designed to address phenomena unique to papyro­
logical texts. 

10 The data bank contains at present co 52 million words reflecting some 2000 au­
thors extant from Homer to A.D. 600. About half of this material has been verified and 
corrected, and the search addressed only that half. This fact does not diminish the 
validity of the results, for most of the materials still awaiting verification date from the 
period after A.D. 300. 

11 The program locates combinations even if broken by word division, e.g. [tihro 
"I[,\wvl (It. 2.216). 

12 For example, because of obviously inapproporiate spacing between the combina­
tions; and the traces visible above delta clearly excluded many letters from considera­
tion, thus further reducing the number of relevant passages. 

13 In Welles (supra n.2) pI. II; H. Roberts, Greek Literary Hands (Oxford 1955) pI. 
16b; P.Dura pI. 2.2. 



BRUNNER, THEODORE F., Two Papyri of Appian from Dura-Europus , Greek, Roman and 
Byzantine Studies, 25:2 (1984) p.171 

THEODORE F. BRUNNER 175 

alpha followed by rho (though dotted by Welles) was clear, as was an 
omega after HN. Furthermore, upsilon before LA (also dotted) was 
legible. A search for HNfl, OYLE, OYLA, and AP generated only two 
passages, Pun. 81 and Iber. 16. Comparison of both with the fragment 
left no doubt that only Iber. 16 could be the proper match. In fact, the 
evidence in favor of this match was so convincing as to render a 
further LEX search (through other authors) unwarranted. 

The basic information essential to the development of this article 
was obtained in approximately two minutes at a computer terminal. 
Subsequent analysis of this information yielded findings which until 
quite recently were beyond the scholar's reach.14 In the process, it 
became clear that TLG data bank texts are about to exert a major 
impact upon research methodologies (and research results) in disci­
plines such as papyrology. Speedy collation by computer of hitherto 
unidentified literary papyri with TLG texts promises to yield a rich 
harvest of attributions-even occasional correction of erroneous but 
hitherto unquestioned attributions which may be lurking in our schol­
arly literature. l5 

THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE 

July, 1984 

14 The LEX program scans and analyzes some 10,000 Greek words per second. For 
example, to search Thucydides (ca 150,000 words) for words beginning in IBH con­
sumes a total of fifteen seconds. 

15 Professor William H. Willis provided suggestions and materials helpful in the 
development of this article. His advice is gratefully acknowledged.