A general methodology for identifying the writer of codices. Application to the celebrated “twins”

Abstract

In the present work, a method of general applicability is introduced for classifying a given set of ancient documents to their writer. A principal motive and, at the same time, a main result of this work was to test if two sets of documents preserving the Homeric Iliad have been written by the same hand or not. To achieve this, the authors have developed and/or improved two dedicated methods, which may be described very briefly as follows: the first method compares all realizations of the same alphabet symbol appearing in two documents and it offers related quantitative criteria. The second method aims at determining the ideal form(s) of each alphabet symbol the writer had in his/her mind when writing a document. In both methods, decision is made by means of novel statistical criteria. Application of this methodology furnished the following results in a fully quantitative manner: 1) all twenty-six (26) Byzantine codices kept at Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial or at the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice that have been studied, have been written by four (4) distinct writers only. 2) The codices written by each one of the four hands have been spotted with maximum likelihood and 3) the celebrated “twins” have indeed been written by the same hand. We once more emphasize that the approach introduced here may be immediately applied to classifying any set of documents to the distinct hands that have written them.