L’ecdotique dans la Collection des Universités de France : une nouvelle édition de la Loi d’Hippocrate

Abstract

The paper deals with the edition of Hippocrates Law in a volume of the Collection des Universités de France entitled The Oath, The Christian Oaths, The Law (September 2018). The author first presents the content of the treatise and its vivid style, and then he approaches the philological point of view. He shows the new contributions of this edition compared with the two previous reference editions (Jones, Loeb, 1923 and Heiberg, CMG 1927). Going back up in the history, looking for the original text, a new Greek manuscript contributes with a new branch to the stemma ; and in particular it saves a new sentence, which is confirmed by the Arabic translation, used here for the first time. The author focuses on this new sentence, highly important for the history of ideas (it shows links between Hippocrates, the school of Gorgias, and Democritus) and for the date of the treatise (before Plato). Going back down in the history of the reading and the interpretation of the text, the recent Latin translation, although it is made on the text of a well-known Greek manuscript, reveals – by the large number of Latin manuscripts preserved – the unexpected celebrity of Hippocrates Law in the Middle Ages, larger than The Oath.