Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 221

II 221) contains Homeric scholia by an unknown author, written in Greek.

It uses points, breathing, and accents sparingly; iota and upsilon sometimes have diaeresis.

Thus, Grenfell and Hunt state that "we have here for the first time an almost contemporary specimen of a first century commentary on the Iliad."

The point, then, is that the quotations from Homer in the text must accurately reflect the state of available manuscripts of the Iliad in the first century, unlike previously known collections of scholia, whose manuscripts were copied many centuries after the texts were written, which makes it impossible to know whether the Homeric quotations were corrupt.

[2] Furthermore, the papyrus contains a number of previously unknown quotations from ancient Greek authors, including Hesiod, Pindar, Alcaeus, Sophocles, and Aristotle.