YALE UNIVERSITY
BEINECKE RARE BOOK AND MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY
GENERAL COLLECTION OF RARE BOOKS AND
MANUSCRIPTS
MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE MANUSCRIPTS
Beinecke MS 580
Tyrtaeus. Elegies, with figure-poems of Dosiadas, Simmias, Besantinus, and
Theocritus (attrubuted author), and hymns of Mesomedes and Arion. Greek
manuscript. Greece, said to be third century, but actually the 19th century.
Vellum. 2 scrolls (480 x 55 mm. each) Greek capital script written in
boustrophedon. Brown ink. Preserved in a small wooden cylinder.
The two small scrolls are written in boustrophedon, that is from right to left
and from left to right alternatively, a method of writing that was no longer
practiced in the third century when these scrolls were purported to have been
written. They were sold to Sir Thomas Phillipps in 1854 by Constantine
Simonides who is thought to have written them.
Constantine Simonides. Sir Thomas Phillipps (MS 13881). Gift of H.P. Kraus,
1976.
Bibliography: A.N.L. Munby, Portrait of an Obsession (N.Y. 1967), p. 208-209;
C.E. Lutz, "A Forged Manuscript in Boustrophedon," Yale University Libary
Gazette 53 (1978) 28-44.