Coronis (textual symbol)

A coronis (Ancient Greek: κορωνίς, korōnís, pl. κορωνίδες, korōnídes) is a textual symbol found in ancient Greek papyri that was used to mark the end of an entire work or of a major section in poetic and prose texts.[1] The coronis was generally placed in the left-hand margin of the text and was often accompanied by a paragraphos or a forked paragraphos (diple obelismene).

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

The coronis is encoded by Unicode as part of the Supplemental Punctuation block, at U+2E0E EDITORIAL CORONIS.

Etymology

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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

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See also

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Notes

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  1. ^ Schironi 2010: 10.
  2. ^ Liddell-Scott 1996: 983 s.v. κορωνίς ii. 2.
  3. ^ P. Chantraine 1968: 570 s.v. κορώνη.
  4. ^ Schironi 2010: 16–17.

Sources

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  • Chantraine, P., Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque (Paris: Éditions Klincksieck, 1968).
  • Liddell, H. G.; Scott, R., 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. by P.J. Parsons (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1987).
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