Characteristic of its period is the contrast of size between the long letters (e.g., ) and narrow letters . And characteristic forms are to be seen in the letters (with its long crossbar, often with initial stroke); (upsilon) with long shallow bowl; or in three or four strokes; in three strokes; (alpha) raised off the line and its last vertical not finished; small round (with internal dot or tiny stroke); and broad epigraphic and . In documentary cursive hands of this period, letters seem to hang from an upper line: (alpha) often turns into a mere wedge, and (nu) lifts its second vertical above the line.
Thucydides manuscript, 3rd century bc (Hamburg, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, P. Hamburg 163).Courtesy of Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Hamburg
In the 2nd century bce the contrast between long letters and narrow letters disappears, the writing grows rounder, and letters are often linked by ligatures at the top of their last vertical (e.g., ). In a loan contract of 99 bce (The John Rylands University Library of Manchester), in which capitals and cursive are mixed, this irregular roundness is clearly seen. Note the ε with detached crossbar and the exaggerated serifs which have been elevated by some paleographers into a criterion of a special style, though in fact they are always apt to occur.
papyrus loan contractLegal text of a loan contract, 99 bce; Greek Papyrus 586 in the John Rylands University Library, University of Manchester, England.Courtesy of The John Rylands University Library of Manchester
Roman period
Half a century or so passed after 30 bce before a definitely Roman manner was established. In documentary hands the tendency to roundness continued. Documentary cursive may be influenced in various ways (e.g., by Latin forms such as those of e and d, or by the exaggeration of verticals practiced by chancery scribes); the script may lean over in either direction, or it may be reduced to tiny proportions. In the 2nd century the cursive hand tended to be round and sprawling, in the 3rd century to become more angular, and in the 4th century to become characterless and to combine letters into ligatures that distorted the forms of the letters concerned. The book hand of a manuscript of Plato’s Phaedo (c. 100 ce; Egypt Exploration Society, London) shares the informality of cursive but regularizes the letter forms. Written on a larger scale and with more formality, this round hand can be very beautiful. In an example found at Hawara (2nd century ce), almost every letter (even ρ, τ, ι) would go into an identical square; only ϕ and ψ cross it above and below, μ, ω, and π horizontally.
Phaedo, by Plato, copied in ad 100 (London, Egypt Exploration Society, P. Oxy. 1809).Courtesy of the Egypt Exploration Society, London
If this writing is made to lean to the right and to revive the 3rd-century-bce distinction between narrow and broad letters, it takes on the aspect of the “severe” style of the Bacchylides roll in the British Museum (2nd century ce). If, however, the scribe makes the verticals or obliques thicker and his horizontals thinner, the hand is called biblical uncial, so named because this type is used in the three great early vellum codices of the Bible: Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus of the 4th century and Codex Alexandrinus of the 5th century. It is now certain that this style goes back to the 2nd century ce. Heavy decoration is also a feature of the Coptic style, of which there are examples as early as the 2nd century ce. This hand may be thought of as constituting a special case of biblical uncial.
The “severe” style. Bacchylides roll, 2nd century ad (British Museum, P. 733).Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum
Byzantine period
For the paleographer the significant division is not the founding of Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) in 330 but the 5th century, from which a few firmly dated texts survive. At its close a large, exuberant, florid cursive was fully established for documents; in the 7th and 8th centuries it sloped to the right, became congested, and adopted some forms that anticipated the minuscule hand. A favourite informal type of the 6th century is shown in an acrostic poem by Dioscorus of Aphrodito; it bears a clear relationship to the Menander Dyskolos hand, which was probably written in the later 3rd century ce. Similar pairs could be found to illustrate the continuity in transformation of the biblical uncial and Coptic styles. The latest Greek papyrus from Egypt is not later than the 8th century. There was a considerable lapse of time before the history of Greek writing resumed at Byzantium.
Informal Byzantine book hand, acrostic poem by Dioscorus of Aphrodito, 6th century ad; in the British Museum, London (P. 1552).Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum
Eric Gardner Turner
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
The 8th to 16th century
To judge when and where a Greek manuscript was written is as difficult for this as for the earlier period, but for different reasons. The material for study is admittedly more extensive; manuscripts produced in the Middle Ages and Renaissance have been preserved in very large numbers (more than 50,000 whole volumes survive, of which probably 4,000 or 5,000 are explicitly dated), and they include work from most parts of the Byzantine Empire as well as from Italy. The difficulty of the paleographer lies in the essential homogeneity of the material, which is largely the result of the conditions in which the manuscripts were produced.
The fully developed Byzantine Empire of the 8th to the mid-15th centuries was extraordinarily uniform in its culture. Its contraction in space after the Arab conquests of the 7th century, which cut off the more distant and ethnically differentiated provinces of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, made it a relatively compact geographical entity. The continuity and comparative stability of a single empire not divided into distinct national states such as evolved in the West resulted in a strength and unity of tradition of which the Byzantines were always conscious and that shows in their habits of writing no less than in their literature and art. Distinct local styles and sharp breaks in ways of writing in different periods cannot, therefore, be looked for; characteristics that may be especially typical of one period emerge gradually and disappear equally slowly. A more potent factor than date or place in producing divergences in the style of writing is the purpose for which a manuscript was designed and what type of scribe wrote it. Late uncial, 9th to 12th century
There is a gap in the evidence covering the 7th and 8th centuries, because of the Arab conquest of Egypt, the perpetual wars on all fronts in the 7th century, and the iconoclastic struggle among Eastern Christians during the 8th and early 9th centuries, so that no literary texts (and very few others) have survived that can actually be dated to this period.
During this time the evolution of writing in capitals (a style called uncial) probably continued toward a greater formality and artificiality. But this natural tendency was hastened by the introduction and spread of minuscule as the normal way of writing, after which the purpose of uncial changed completely. From an everyday hand in which all books were naturally written, it became a ceremonial hand used only for special copies and therefore grew increasingly stylized and artificial. In the 9th century a still elegant style was used for both patristic and classical works in splendid volumes destined for the imperial library or for presentation copies, such as the copy of Gregory of Nazianzus (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris) made for the emperor Basil I between 879 and 883. By the 11th and 12th centuries, capitals were used only for liturgical books, mainly lectionaries, which had to be read in dimly lit churches; but the increasing tortuousness of the style must in the end have reduced its usefulness, and by about 1200 uncial was dead.