nd industry of Mr F. G. Kenyon, the
editor of the _editio princeps_ (1897), the MS. was reconstructed from
these lacerated members. As now arranged, the MS. consists of three
sections, (1) The first section contains 22 columns of writing. It breaks
off after the 8 opening verses of Ode xii. (2) The second section contains
columns 23-29. Of these, column 23 is represented only by the last letters
of two words. This section comprises what remains of Odes xiii. and xiv. It
breaks off before the end of xiv., which is the last of the epinikia. (3)
The third section comprises columns 30-39. It begins with the mutilated
opening verses of Ode xv. ([Greek: Antenoridai], the first of the
dithyrambs), and breaks off after verse 11 of the last dithyramb,[Greek:
Idas]. The number of lines in a column varies from 32 to 36, the usual
number being 35, or (though less often) 34.

It is impossible to say how much has been lost between the end of column 29
and the beginning of column 30. Probably, however, Ode xiv., if not the
last, was nearly the last of the epinikia. It concerns a festival of a
merely local character, the Thessalian [Greek: Petraia], and was therefore
placed after the thirteen other epinikia, which are connected with the four
great festivals. The same lacuna leaves it doubtful whether any collective
title was prefixed to the [Greek: dithuramboi]. After the last column (39)
of the MS., a good deal has probably been lost. Bacchylides seems to have
written at least three other poems of this class (on Cassandra, Laocoon and
Philoctetes); and these would have come, in alphabetical order, after the
last of the extant six (Idas).

The writing of the MS. is a fine uncial. It presents some traits of a
distinctly Ptolemaic type, though it lacks some features found in the
earlier Ptolemaic MSS. (those of the 3rd or 2nd century B.C.). Among the
characteristic forms of letters is the [form of Upsilon], with a shallow
curve on the top of the upright; a form found in MSS. ascribed to the 1st
century B.C., and different from the more fully formed upsilon of the Roman
period. Another very significant letter is the [Xi], written as [form of
Xi], a form which begins to go out after _c._ 50 B.C., giving place to one
in which the middle stroke is connected with the other two. From these and
other indications it is probable that the MS. is not later than the middle
of the 1st century B.C.

The scribe, though he sometimes corrected his own m