literary rolls, such papyri are useful in tracing the development of the book-hand. The documents of the mid-3rd century BC show a great variety of cursive hands. There are none from chancelleries of the Hellenistic monarchs, but some letters, notably those of Apollonius, the finance minister of Ptolemy II, to this agent, Zeno, and those of the Palestinian sheikh, Toubias, are in a type of script which cannot be very unlike the Chancery hand of the time, and show the Ptolemaic cursive at its best. These hands have a noble spaciousness and strength, and though the individual letters are by no means uniform in size there is a real unity of style, the general impression being one of breadth and uprightness. H, with the cross-stroke high, Π, Μ, with the middle stroke reduced to a very shallow curve, sometimes approaching a horizontal line, Υ, and Τ, with its cross-bar extending much further to the left than to the right of the up-stroke, Γ and Ν, whose last stroke is prolonged upwards above the line, often curving backwards, are all broad; ε, c, θ and β, which sometimes takes the form of two almost perpendicular strokes joined only at the top, are usually small; ω is rather flat, its second loop reduced to a practically straight line. Partly by the broad flat tops of the larger letters, partly by the insertion of a stroke connecting those (like H, Υ) which are not naturally adapted to linking, the scribes produced the effect of a horizontal line along the top of the writing, from which the letters seem to hang. This feature is indeed a general characteristic of the more formal Ptolemaic script, but it is specially marked in the 3rd century BC. Besides these hand of Chancery type, there are numerous less elaborate examples of cursive, varying according to the writer's skill and degree of education, and many of them strikingly easy and handsome. In some cursiveness is carried very far, the linking of letters reaching the point of illegibility, and the characters sloping to the right. A is reduced to a mere acute angle (∠), T has the cross-stroke only on the left, ω becomes an almost straight line, H acquires a shape somewhat like h, and the last stroke of N is extended far upwards and at times flattened out until it is little more than a diagonal stroke to