the TRANSMISSION OF PLATO’S TEXT: VICISSITUDES OF A HISTORY

Abstract

The main object of this paper is to examine how Plato’s works have reached down to us. There are some 150 survivor manuscripts copied between the ninth and the fourteenth century. These manuscripts should depend upon a (dissapeared) archetype with variants in two volumes of the sixth-century AD. The task of the editor is examined, as he has to trace back the steps of past editions from the hyparchetypes, the archetype, i. e. the last exemplar wherefrom these were copied, the earlier archetypes and, finally, the autoghaph. The leading affaire is to reproduce the vanished autograph in the more exact way. It is also analysed in this context the importance of the division in tetralogies of Plato’s works and the existence of three main families of codices and their respective principal manuscripts. It is partially possible to track down this succsession of manuscripts, which goes back to the purest ancient tradition and to verify that the results about the integrity of Plato’s text, although much of it remains to be investigated, are formally satisfactory.