Notes on Some Manuscripts of Plato

Abstract

‘Critical work on the text of Plato, which in the second half of the nineteenth century had taken an all too easy but mistaken path, had to make a fresh start in the last years before the war (of 1914–18) and is still in its beginnings.’ Thus Pasquali in 1934; and as regards the text of the first seven tetralogies the subsequent twenty years have not produced any marked progress—certainly nothing comparable in precision and thoroughness to the work of Sir David Ross and other contemporary scholars on the text of Aristotle. This has been due in part, I suspect, to the prevalent impression that Burnet's text is, if not final, at any rate firmly based on trustworthy and sufficient foundations. And this impression has in turn been encouraged by the paucity of fresh collations: I think I am right in saying that to this day only two manuscripts of this part of Plato's work, B and T, have been accurately collated in their entirety. In this situation it seems worth while to publish the following notes, which are based on fresh collations made in preparation for an edition of the Gorgias. I am well aware of the danger of founding any general judgement of a manuscript upon a study of one part of it; but I hope that scholars interested in the text of other dialogues may be induced to check and revise my provisional conclusions.