P. Gr. Vindob. 29788C: hexameter encomium on an un-named emperor

It is now fifty years since Hans Gerstinger published the editio princeps of a Vienna papyrus containing hexameter poems by, as he believed, Pamprepius of Panopolis. Out of seven fragments Gerstinger, working with H. Ibscher, was able to restore one binion of a codex (P. Gr. 29788A-B). A separate leaf (P. Gr. 29788C) was presumed by the restorers to come from the same codex as the binion. The binion contains (1) a hexameter idyll evoking the successive moods of Nature on a day in spring or autumn, (2) a hexameter encomium on the patrician Theagenes of Athens, (3) letters nos. 80 and 90 by St. Gregory Nazianzen. Lines from another hexameter poem are partly legible on two fragments which together constitute the top of the first page of the binion. The only trace of an author's name in the binion is the genitive-ending ο]ụ in the title of the encomium on Theagenes. The separate leaf (P. Gr. 29788C) preserves some fifty lines from a second hexameter encomium, but has been torn in such a way that the line-beginnings are missing from the Verso and the line-endings from the Recto; the names of the author and the addressee have not survived. Gerstinger's opinion that the hand is the same throughout and the writing of a style current in the fifth and sixth centuries has not been challenged. It has seemed to me unnecessary to reproduce in fuller detail the description of the papyrus given in the editio princeps. Should this not be available to the reader, ample information may be found in the reviews by Maas, Körte and Keydell. Gerstinger's attribution of the poems to Pamprepius was greeted by these and other critics with reactions varying from reserve to trenchant scepticism. There is reason to connect the encomium on Theagenes with Pamprepius, since the two were in Athens at the same time, Theagenes as archon, Pamprepius as a grammaticus. But even if we accept that Pamprepius wrote the encomium, the idyll is of higher quality, as Keydell and Maas noted, and might well be the work of a different poet. Doubt concerning the attribution has persisted, and Gerstinger's title-page remains virtually the only place where the poems are ascribed without qualification to Pamprepius.