Coronis (textual symbol)

The final lines of Hypereides' In Philippidem with a coronis (in concert with forked paragraphos) marking the end of the speech (P.Lit.Lond. 134 col. ix, 2nd century BCE).

A coronis (Ancient Greek: κορωνίς, korōnís, pl. κορωνίδες, korōnídes) is a textual symbol found in ancient Greek papyri that was used to mark the ends of entire works or major sections in poetic and prose texts.^[1] Coronides were placed most often in the left-hand margin of the text and were generally accompanied by a paragraphos or forked paragraphos.

Etymology

Liddell and Scott's Greek–English Lexicon gives the basic meaning of korōnis as "crook-beaked" from which a general meaning of "curved" is supposed to have derived.^[2] Pierre Chantraine concurs and derives the word from κορώνη (korōnē), "crow", assigning the meaning of the epithet's use in reference to the textual symbol to the same semantic range of "curve".^[3] But, given the fact that the earliest coronides actually take the form of birds, there has been debate about whether the name of the textual symbol initially referred to use of a decorative bird to mark a major division in a text or if these pictures were a secondary development that played upon the etymological relation between korōnē, "crow", and korōnis, as in "curved".^[4]

Examples

• 

  Detail of P.Berol. inv. 9875 col. v (late fourth or early third century BCE), showing the coronis at the beginning of the "sphragis" in the Persae of Timotheus of Miletus.

• 

  Detail of P.Oxy. XV 1790 fr. 2 + 3 col. ii (late second–early first century BCE): the end of a poem (and probably the end of a book of poetry) by Ibycus.

• 

  Detail of P.Oxy. IV 659 col. i (late first century BCE or early first century CE): Pindar, Partheneia with a coronis marking the end of a strophe.

• 

  Detail of P.Lit.Lond. 96 col. xiii (late first–early second century CE): coronis (with forked paragraphos) marking the end of Herodas, Mimiamb 2 followed by the title and beginning of Mimiamb 3.

• 

  P.Oxy. X 1231 fr. 56 (second century CE), showing a coronis, end-title and verse count at the close of Sappho book one.

• 

  Detail of P.Oxy. X 1234 fr. 2 col. i (second century CE), with the coronis used to mark the end of a poem by Alcaeus.

See also

• Obelism

Notes

Sources

• Chantraine, P. Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque (Paris: Éditions Klincksieck, 1968).
• Liddell, H. G. et al. A Greek–English Lexicon, 9th ed. (Oxford: OUP, 1996).
• Schironi, F. Τὸ Μέγα Βιβλίον: Book-Ends, End-Titles, and Coronides in Papyri with Hexametric Poetry (Durham, NC: The American Society of Papyrologists, 2010).
• Turner, E. G. Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World, 2nd rev. ed. P.J. Parsons (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1987).