The Apographa of Plato's "Sophistes"

Abstract

SINCE BURNET'S EDITION of Plato it has been recognized that B, T, and W are primary sources for the first half of the Platonic corpus, and for most of those dialogues, including the Sophistes, the only primary sources. (In the Bud6 Sophistes, edited by Dies, Y is cited in the apparatus as a primary source; though this has been shown to be the case for other parts of Y it is not the case for the Sophistes, as will appear below.) All other manuscripts are conceded to be apographa of these, and their mutual relations have been in part explored.' They have not been examined systematically, on the basis of collations, to discover precisely how they depend on one another and whether any of the manuscripts other than the principal three can be primary sources for our tradition in whole or in part. The conclusions we shall reach in our enquiry, based on collations for the Sophistes, are anticipated in the stemmata on pp. 290 and 291, which will serve as a guide. These stemmata reflect descent, and usually first generation descent or direct copy. Their purpose is to eliminate, or enable us to disregard in establishing a text, those manuscripts deriving directly from our primary sources-B, T, W-and adding to our tradition only scribal conjecture or error. I shall offer proof of descent as exhibited in the stemmata by means of tables showing characteristic variants transmitted from parent to offspring. As manuscripts of the second or third generation