DODDS - 1957 - Notes on Some Manuscripts of Plato

8/12/2019 DODDS - 1957 - Notes on Some Manuscripts of Plato

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Notes on Some Manuscripts of PlatoAuthor(s): E. R. DoddsSource: The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 77, Part 1 (1957), pp. 24-30Published by: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies

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NOTES ON SOME MANUSCRIPTS OF PLATO'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 PasqualiI in I934; and as regards the text of thefirst seven tetralogiesz the subsequent twenty years have not produced any marked progress-certainly nothing comparable in precision and thoroughness to the work of Sir David Ross andother contemporary scholars on the text of Aristotle. This has been due in part, I suspect, to theprevalent impression that Burnet's text is, if not final, at any rate firmly based on trustworthy andsufficient foundations.3 And this impression has in turn been encouraged by the paucity of freshcollations: I think I am right in saying that to this day only two manuscripts of this part of Plato'swork, B and T, have been accurately collated in their entirety. In this situation it seems worthwhile to publish the following notes, which are based on fresh collations made in preparation foran edition of the Gorgias. I am well aware of the danger of founding any general judgement ofa manuscript upon a study of one part of it; but I hope that scholars interested in the text of otherdialogues may be induced to check and revise my provisional conclusions.I

VINDOBONENSIS FThis manuscript, Vind. supp. phil. gr. 39, was known as far back as I830, when Schneidercollated it for his edition of the Republic and christened it F. Schneider noticed how frequentlyits readings agreed with quotations in Stobaeus and Eusebius; but it was Burnet4 who first establishedits importance (a) by listing instances of its agreement, both in true and in false readings, with theindirect tradition, and (b) by listing errors peculiar to F which are of unmistakably uncial origin.His conclusion, that F was independently derived from an uncial exemplar which represented anancient tradition of the text distinct from that preserved in our older mediaeval manuscripts, waslater elaborated and confirmed by Deneke,5 and can be accepted as certain. (If further con-firmation is wanted, it is supplied by the papyrus fragments of the Gorgias, most of which were

unknown to Burnet and Deneke. Thus at 486d6, where B T W have ev Eteocr0aF o'Tt and F hasj'8q Ev 'EaEacaL o'-t -, P.S.I. I200 has 1'7 ev ei'LeaUOatortl. Again, at 522d8, where B T W have paow-SotFs iv yes, both F and P.S.I. 119 have 'Cootsa'v tepaEStws, and so, apparently, had the Fouad Ipapyrus, to judge from what is left of it. The F tradition thus goes back at least as far as the secondcentury A.D., to which all these papyri belong.) F accordingly holds a unique position amongthe manuscripts of Plato, and it is correspondingly desirable to learn all we can about it.i. The Krdl-Burnet collationof F.Burnet did not collate F himself; his information about its readings was supplied to him byJosef Kral, except for the Republic,where he had Schneider's collation. His report has generallybeen accepted without question by subsequent editors. But the results of a fresh collation, whichI have made from good photographs, are decidedly disconcerting. They show that in the Gorgiasat least his report is not only very incomplete-as was inevitable, owing to the restricted amountof apparatuscriticus allowable in an Oxford Classical Text-but in many places quite false. Inparticular, he attributes to F a large number of 'good' readings which are not in fact to be foundthere. According to Burnet's apparatus F has at 45oe4 ov-roi: at 459c8 ITpoS Ao'yov: at 47ICI rovp8KKov: at 472e5 avrc at 477d2 at 4797 E OKE at 48oa4 dtKcrcEt: at 486aioLarpeT,res: at 509c3 rov/: at 514a3 4,uev: at 515cI wroATracwithout article: at 5I6d9 Mapa06>vtwithout preposition: at 522c7 ev. All these readings are plausible, and some necessary; all ofthem were already known, either as modern conjectures or from inferior manuscript sources, beforeF was examined; all of them had been adopted in Schanz's edition of I88o; but unless my photo-graphs lie, not one of them can be found in F-its reading in all these places is identical with thatof B T W, save at 509c3 where it has ro /7x. How did these alarming errors arise? They cannotbe the result of mere carelessness, though Kral was in fact a careless collator; on the other hand

Storia della Tradizione e Critica del Testo 247. 3 Though a long list of Burnet's errors in reporting W2 On the MSS. of the Laws and Spuria much light has in the Phaedo was published by Klos and Minio-Paluellobeen thrown by L. A. Post, The Vatican Plato and its Rela- in CQ43 (I949), 126.tions (I 934); and in his Bude edition of the Laws (Parts i 4 CR i6 (1902), 98 if.; 17 (1903), 12 ff.and ii, I951) des Places has set a new standard of precision 5 De Platonis . . . F memoria (diss. Gottingen, I922).in presenting the manuscript evidence.


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NOTES ON SOME MANUSCRIPTS OF PLATOthere can be no question of impugning either his good faith or Burnet's. It looks rather as if Burnethad misinterpreted Kral's silence in these places as meaning that F agreed with Schanz, whereasit really meant that F agreed with B T W. But whatever their origin, these mis-statements seriouslyimpair the foundation of Burnet's text (and those of Croiset and Theiler) in this dialogue. Norare they the only ones. Kral has sometimes confused the hand of the scribe (F) with that of thecorrector (f, see below), e.g. at 482d5, where Burnet would surely have adopted KaoreyeAahad heknown it to be the reading of F as in fact it is (Ka-rayehav f with B T W). Further, Kral (or lessprobably Burnet) has omitted to record a number of readings in F which have a primafacie claimto consideration, such as Edvye apa for Eavyap apa (a collocation which Wilamowitz doubted) at?469d3; the addition of E'irafter -roplEoeOaLt 493e7 (which appears also in Iamblichus' citation);and crvtLpovhEVcrtV for av(l4ovAeveEv at 520e4 (confirming a conjecture of Cobet). I do not knowwhether Burnet's report of F is equally faulty in other dialogues; but it is clear that it ought tobe carefully checked everywhere.2. The correctorf F.The original text of F had numerous lacunae, which the scribe recognised as such, since heleft blank spaces (their origin is discussed in note I. 4 below). These lacunae have been filled byanother hand, which with Burnet I shall call f (in the Bude editions it is called F2). This hand hasalso supplied the scribe's other omissions, corrected many of his casual blunders, and writtennumerous variants between the lines or in the margin. It has sometimes been supposed that itsreadings, or some of them, may have been drawn from F's exemplar and should therefore be takenseriously-so most recently Professor Theiler, in the valuable appendix critica to his text of theGorgias.6 But f has been even more incompletely and incorrectly reported than has F; and amore accurate collation removes all ground for this supposition.(a) f is able to supply words which in F's uncial source had been obliterated by mechanicalinjury (see below, note I. 4).(b) f corrects F to agree with the main tradition even in places where the original readingof F is manifestly right, and may therefore be presumed to have stood in F's exemplar: e.g. Gorg.492b2 o'rots F recte,0EolS B T P f (Burnet's apparatuss wrong, and has misled Theiler); 492d7 afoOev[sic] F, atouev Bekker recte, aAo0ev B T W f (Burnet's apparatus s again wrong); 493bi avorijrwvF Iamb. Stob. recte,dc4tvcov B T W f; 5oob4 f interpolates Kara (not TrepL)O acrcoawith T W.(c) Where the readings introduced by f diverge from the main tradition, they nearly alwaysagree-as Theiler has himself pointed out-with Florentinus 85. 6 (Stallbaum's Laur. b); in thefew cases where they do not, they have the appearance of worthless conjectures. Evidence ofthe close connection between f and Flor. 85. 6 will be quoted below, in note II, where it will beshown that Flor. 85. 6 has nothing to do with F but represents a recension of the T text.(d) The one good reading in the Gorgiasfor which f seems to be our sole authority is irlvosfor ris, written by f in the margin at 462dI I; and this exception is more apparent than real, forFlor. 85. 6 has the meaningless conflationris Ttvos, evidently representing srtswith rivos suprascript.I conclude that f has no independent importance, at least in the Gorgias.3. The relationshipof Florentinusx to F.Is F the sole independent witness to the tradition which it represents? Burnet thought so.7But the claims of Florentinus x (Laur. 85. 7), a manuscript identical in contents with F but con-siderably later (it was written in i420), have several times been put forward-tentatively by JamesAdam, who realised the shakiness of the evidence, more confidently by Immisch and Theiler.8And on the basis of the information hitherto available about F and x the claim was an entirelyreasonable one. Unfortunately, full collation of F in the Gorgias,combined with a fresh inspectionof crucial passages in x, shows that the appearance of independence is in fact illusory: it arosemerely from the mistakes of Kral (or the omissions of Burnet) in collating F and the still morenumerous mistakes of Stallbaum in collating x. Readings hitherto thought peculiar to F, like3eLv at 449c7, TEXvS- trrcmrfTxwvt 449c9, Kat AE'yEwt 449e6, ST?raEt 452c5, are in fact foundalso in x. Conversely, readings like vviv &epwrcav at 447c6, av KptvEtS at 452c4, ov yap at 505b7,which appeared to distinguish x from F, now prove to be in F also. In the instance quoted byTheiler to show the independence of x, 45ia7, the interlinear variants added by f were misreportedby Krai: they are in fact identical with the variants written by the first hand in the margin of x.In a few cases readings foreign to F have been introduced into x by a second hand, e.g. St for -rovvvat 454b5; but that seems to be all. On the other hand, there is strong positive evidence that xis derived from F. Thus at 448d8 F has a half-erased caewhich could easily be read as ye: above

6 Published in the series EditionesHelveticae (Francke, 8 Adam, CR i6 (1902), 215; Immisch, PhilologischeBern, n.d.). Studien u PlatonII, 84, n. I; Theiler, op.cit. I38.7 See the articlesreferredto in note 4.

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it f has written aot (the reading of B T W): x has ye oroL. Again, at 449b7 F has caroOeaOat,bovewhich f has written va (i.e. cvaOGErOat,he reading of Flor. 85. 6): x has dvarroOeaOat.In the sameline F has 0,eva'r, above which f has written pEJL/7R: has the nonsense word /vEan, corrected bythe second hand to dEUtt/r. We must regretfully conclude, with Schanz and Burnet, that x is acopy of F, made after the latter had been corrected by f.4. The exemplarof F.Full collation of F tends strongly to confirm Deneke's view that it is a direct or almost directtranscript from an uncial manuscript. Not only does it abound, as Burnet pointed out, in uncialerrors foreign to the main tradition, but it is also characterised, to an extent which could not beguessed from Burnet's apparatus,by faulty word-division, false accents, wildly erratic punctuation,and false distribution between speakers. These features suggest an exemplar in which wordswere not divided, accents few or non-existent, punctuation scanty, change of speakers perhapsmarked only by a marginal paragraphos-in other words, an uncial exemplar.The date of F is significant in this connection. Burnet and others have assigned it to thefourteenth century; but Dr. Paul Maas, who kindly inspected a photograph for me, thinks thethirteenth more likely, and there is some evidence suggesting that characteristic readings of Fwere known to Thomas Magister,9 who was Secretary to Andronicus II at some date between I282and 1328. Now it is known that the late thirteenth century was a time when Byzantine scholarswere discovering and transcribing old uncial manuscripts which had escaped attention duringthe earlier revival of learning in the ninth and tenth centuries.Io To this renewed transcriptionwe owe inter alia the Ambrosian tradition of Theocritus and of Pindar's Olympians. And it seemslikely that we owe to it also the F tradition of Plato. For (a) the profusion of uncial errors in Fsuggests transliteration from a script which had become unfamiliar, as uncials had in the thirteenthcentury ; (b) had the F tradition been made available at an earlier date we might expect to findsome trace of its influence in our older mediaeval manuscripts.What was the uncial exemplar like? A little detective work on F may perhaps help us tomake a speculative guess. As mentioned above, F has numerous lacunae, where words wereomitted and a space left blank for them by the scribe. Many if not all of these lacunae aredemonstrably due to mechanical injuries to the exemplar, probably wor.mholes. For theirdistribution is not a random one: they recur, either singly or in groups of two or three, at regularintervals of about 22 (?+ 2) lines (approximately 1,200 letters), sometimes forming short runs orseries; and lacunae which belong to the same series usually correspond roughly in size. Thus,for example, at Gorg. 496e7 a lacuna of I6 letters and one of 5 letters are followed after 23 linesby a lacuna of I2 letters and one of 5 (497d6); then after 24 lines by another lacuna of I2 letters(498c7); then after 2I lines by a lacuna of I4 letters (499b2); then after 20 lines by a lacuna of10 letters (499e8). Or, again, starting at 5o8b6 we find a run of lacunae, consisting respectivelyof 20, I9, 10 and I I letters, which are separated by intervals of 22, 22 and 20 lines. I have notexamined other dialogues in F; but I learn from Mr. R. S. Bluck, who has collated F for the Meno,that similar runs of lacunae occur there: e.g. beginning at 93b4 lacunae of 9 to 2I letters recurat intervals of 24, 49, 23, 23, 22, 43 and 23 lines (on two pages the injury evidently occurredbetween two lines, so that no part of the text was lost). It seems certain that these lacunae corre-spond to damaged patches in the exemplar, and that the intervals between them represent pagesIzof the exemplar.We thus know the approximate number of letters per page of the exemplar. We can likewisemake a plausible guess at the number of letters per line. For at Gorg. 506cI F omits, withoutmarking a lacuna and without the excuse of homoeoteleuton, a run of 38 letters beginning inthe middle of a word and ending in the middle of another word (-v-, OVK 'XOEcrOaoiat uotl otrEpav 4~Eot, AAd 'ey-). It seems highly probable that this represents a line of the exemplar. Thisparticular omission was not reported by Burnet; but my inference from it agrees pretty well withA. C. Clark's inference from a study of all the unexplained omissions in F which Burnet doesreport-he thought they pointed to a line of about 35 (? 3) letters in one of the manuscripts throughwhich F descends.13 If we assume 38 as the average number of letters per line of the exemplar,and divide 1,200 by 38, the quotient, 31 5, may be taken to represent something near the averagenumber of lines per page.

9 In his Ecloga VocumAtticarum Thomas condemns the difficulties experienced by these late transcribers in trans-forms oO0rottl0tK6WO at Gorg.465d6 and alatvvTr1A6&t 487b I, literating uncials.both of which are found in F; he also omits 'b with F at I Pages, not columns. Had the exemplar been written5iIa6. But it is no doubt possible that he found the in two columns, as F itself is, the standard series of in-text so quoted in the indirect tradition on which he drew. tervals between lacunae would have been 22-66-22 andIo Cf. A. Dain, Les manuscrits I35 f. not 22-22-22.

I Cf. J. Irigoin, Histoire du texte de Pindare 107, on the 13 The Descent ofManuscripts, 414 if.

26 E. R. DODDS


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NOTES ON SOME MANUSCRIPTS OF PLATOThese calculations confirm the opinion that the exemplar was an uncial codex. A line of38 letters is rather too short for an early minuscule book, rather too long for a papyrus roll (whichis in any case excluded by the distribution of the lacunae). But Mr. Roberts has noticed thatthe dimensions I have calculated would suit very well the type of cheap papyrus codexwhich wasmanufactured in quantity in and after the third century A.D.-'the omnibus volumes of a poverty-stricken age', as he has called them.'4 The guess is attractive. For such an origin would not

only explain the frequent agreement of F with papyri and citations of Roman Imperial date;it would also fit Stuart Jones's conclusion that the F tradition 'represents the commercial textswhich circulated amongst the reading public, rather than the more scholarly editions'.x5 F infact tends to vulgarise the text'6 by eliminating Attic idioms like Oavlaaucos os (Gorg. 47Iag) andbAvapEt?s wv(49oe4), and Attic forms like rovrotcr (458eI) and ESt KaOes 483a7); by introducingvulgar forms like a'ToKTrvvvEt (46ga9); and by interpolating unwanted 'explanatory' words likefirqivat 477e2. These features are just what we should expect to find if Mr. Roberts's guess is right.II

A BYZANTINE RECENSION OF THE T TEXTThe past hundred years have seen a progressive increase in the number of recognised primaryauthorities for the text of the first six tetralogies. Cobet (and at one time Schanz) admitted

only B; but first T, then W and P, then F, had their independence vindicated. To these the Budeeditors have added Y (not, I think, with equal justification in all dialogues).I7 Have we reachedthe end of the process? No one is in a position to say so; and Wilamowitzs8 was certainly rightin stressing the need for a critical valuation of those witnesses whom Burnet too often lumpedtogether as 'scribae recentiores'. The present note is concerned with one group of such witnesses,to whom Professor TheilerI9 has called attention.Among the numerous progeny of T, Schanz2o distinguished a group of three manuscriptscharacterised by common omissions in the Gorgias. These are Laurentianus 85. 6 (which wascalled b by its collator Stallbaum but will here be called Flor to avoid confusion with the correctinghands in the Clarkianus), and two late Parisini collated by Bekker, 2IIO (V) and I8I5 (Bekker's I,here called J with Schanz). Flor contains tetralogies I-VII (the seventh in a jumbled order)together with Clit., Tim. and the beginning of Rep.; its date is not later than I355,2 and probablynot very much earlier. V consists of two distinct manuscripts which were bound together in thereign of Henri II. The first contains the Axiochusonly; the second, in a different hand and withan independent numeration of quaternions, contains the Gorgiasand some works of Lucian. Thesecond part belonged to the fifteenth-century humanist Francisco Filelfo, and may well have beenwritten for him.22 J contains Gorg., Crat. and Parm. only, and is attributed by Omont to thesixteenth century.Schanz discerned no particular merit in these manuscripts; but Theiler points out that in theGorgias they have in common a number of good or at any rate plausible readings which are notfound in B T W or in the original text of F, and concludes that they derive these from a distinctancient recension. He has also noticed (as already mentioned in note I. 2 above) that some ofthese readings were introduced into F by the second hand f. Had he pursued his researchesfurther, however, he would have discovered that for many of the readings in question Flor V J fare not the only, or the oldest, extant sources.

'4 C. H. Roberts, 'The Codex', Proc. Brit. Acad. I954,195. Examples of third-century papyrus codices ofAttic authors having similar dimensions are P. Rylands549 (Xenophon) with an average of 39 letters to a line and32 to 35 lines to a page, and P. Oxy. 459 (Demosthenes)with about 42 letters to a line and 32 to 34 lines to a page.'5 CR I6 (1902), 391. Immisch had already spoken insimilar terms of F, op. cit. II, 15.

I6 Deneke put forward the opposite contention, that inthe Gorgias (though not elsewhere) the F tradition showstraces of having been revised by an Atticist. But heproduced as evidence only two words, one of which,ErrTrJ at 471c2, turns out not to be in F, while the other,dpTorrotlo for dpTroKoiro at 5 8b6, has no claim to becalled an Atticism.

I7 Y is a 'Mischcodex' whose contents are drawn fromvarious sources, and as Alline observed (Histoire du textede Platon 235), its value varies widely in different dialogues.In the Gorgias, and also in the Meno (for which Mr. Bluckhas kindly shown me the results of his collation), I doubtits claim to primary status. In both dialogues Y appears

to me to descend from W through a MS. which wascorrected in places from F; to this mixture it adds agood many false guesses, as well as accidental corruptionsof all sorts. In the Meno it seems to contribute nothing;in the Gorgias very little, and nothing that exceeds therange of easy conjecture.18 Platon II, 334. Ritter had made the same point in areview of Burnet's text, Bursians Jahresbericht 161 ( 913),64 f.'9 op. cit., I34f.

20 Uber d. Platocodex in Venedig,68 f.21 Flor has on the flyleaf a note referring to events ofthat year which was almost certainly made at the time oftheir occurrence; it is not in the scribe's hand. Immisch,overlooking this, assigned the MS. to the fifteenth century;Rostagno made it late thirteenth.22 I am indebted for these particulars to my pupilFather H. D. Saffrey, O.P., who kindly examined V forme. The fact that Immisch and Post have considered Va primary authority for the Axiochus has thus no bearingon its value in the Gorgias.

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In the first place, on collating the Gorgiasin the Malatestianus (M), which for close on fivecenturies23 has lain almost24unregarded in the library of the Malatestas in the little town of Cesena,I found in it a large number of the readings characteristic of Theiler's group. It is probably olderthan any of the group-Dr. Maas assigns it tentatively to the thirteenth century, Rostagno saidtwelfth-and I was at first inclined to regard it as their source. Its contents are tetralogies I-VII,Spuria, Clit., Tim., Crit., Minos, Rep., in that order. But secondly, Schanz25 long ago gave reasonsfor thinking that in tetralogies I-VII both M and Flor derive from Parisinus I808 (Bekker's B,which I shall call Par since the symbol B is now appropriated to the Clarkianus), and through itfrom T. Initially I was disposed to discount his arguments, as Theiler appears to have done,since such a pedigree seemed to offer no explanation of the distinctive readings of these manuscripts.But a fresh examination of the text of the Gorgiasin the three manuscripts has confirmed Schanz'sview, at least as regards this dialogue, and has shown the source of the novelties common to M andFlor to be the hand of a corrector in Par. [The converse hypothesis, that M or Flor is the sourceof the corrections in Par, is excluded (a) by the fact that M Flor reproduce characteristic errorsof the first hand in Par, e.g. 526b8 davlaos B T W F recte,tSvvaros Par (corr.s.l. Par3) M Flor;(b) by places like 5Ioa8, where the scribe of Par omitted the word av3rovand restored it in themargin with the result that it is misplaced in M.]Par contains tetralogies I-VII followed (as in M) by the Spuria, and is assigned by Omont to.the thirteenth century. Before correction, its text was nearly everywhere identical in the smallestdetail26 with that of T; since, however, in one or two places it corrects an error of T,27 we maysuppose with Schanz that it descends from T through an intermediary which had been occasionallycorrected from B (or W). In its original state Par offered virtually28 no readings of interest whichare not in one or other of the older manuscripts. But it has been corrected by at least two handsother than the scribe's. The earliest of these, Par2, is responsible for all the novelties common toM and Flor. A subsequent hand (or hands), Par3, has added interlinear variants which oftenreappear in Y, but never in M or Flor. Par3 has also in some places restored, with the sign yp.,the original reading of T Par erased by Par2.The primary question, then, is whether Par2 derived his readings from Theiler's 'ancientrecension' or from his own powers of divination. But this is not the whole of the problem: thereis a complication. For in addition to the novelties of Par2, Flor presents others that are absentfrom Par and M (they usually reappear in V). We have to ask ourselves a similar question aboutthese readings. And we have to ask it yet again about certain readings peculiar to V or (in onecase) VJ.z9 To enable my readers to form an opinion, I list below the most plausible of thereadings belonging to these three groups,3o noting those which are adopted by Bekker, Burnetor Theiler.i. Novelties introducednto the traditionby the irst corrector f ParisinusI8o8 (Par2).452ai av post avrtLKaadd. Par2 M Flor V f Bekker: om. B T W F (el post ort add. F)452b2 y' davPar2 (ut vid.) M Flor V Bekker: rav B T W F454e7 r3 ante imTarEVE'dd. Par2 M Flor V Bekker Theiler: om. B T W F456d2 c`JaaOE st Par2 M Flor V f Bekker: E'LaOcvB T W F458d8 Kal ravcra ante avrov add. Par2 M Flor V f Bekker: om. B T W F

458eI rovrotcal Par2 M Flor Bekker Burnet Theiler: TovTrotcr(v) B T W: TOVTOtSF46od2 KaKtK post rVKircK1-add. Par2 M Flor V et revera f: om. B T W F23 M belonged to Dr. Giovanni Marco da Rimini,

who left it at his death to the library of the Franciscanconvent at Cesena, which formed the nucleus of theBiblioteca Malatestiana.24 Lewis Campbell described M in J. Phil. 11 (1882),

195-200, and collated it for his edition of the Republic;but so far as I know it has not been collated for any otherdialogue. For tetralogies I-VII and Spuria collationwould probably in fact be labour wasted, but its remainingcontents should be examined.25 Platocodex,56 ff. and 104. Post has since shown thatM derives from Par in the Spuria also (Vatican Plato, 53 f.).It seems to be a direct copy, while Flor is an indirectderivative. Parisinus 1809 (Bekker's C) appears to have(as Schanz thought) the same origin, but I have not per-sonally examined it.26 e.g. 49Ib8 o0rIe [sic] T Par M Flor. Schanz,

Platocodex,47 if., cited instances where Par omits a com-plete line of T, and others where Par is corrupted throughmisunderstanding T's corrections.27 Notably at 507c8, dAAO6TravraT: avTradAr1O0 W F

Par Oxy. Stob. Here T's false order could not have beencorrected by conjecture.28 The sole exception which I have noticed is at523d7, where Par and its derivatives have vvv 'zevwithPlutarch (vvv B T W F).

29 M has a few small and obvious corrections whichI cannot trace in Par as it now stands and which Stall-baum has not noted in Flor: OavMuda' for Oavutdatol at454b9 (also in E and Y); 0rTOt for o67nat 456b6 (also inJ);puots.l. for ue at 486d7 (also in E, Y and V); 16ta foribla at 514c2. J's only independent contribution wouldseem to be oirot (which is not in F) for ov'Tt at 450e4.It is a hybrid MS.: its text has been systematically con-taminated from F as far as 472d, and perhaps sporadicallyelsewhere. On f see above, p. 25.3? The collation of Par, M and f is my own, and I havepersonally checked some though not all of the readingscited from Stallbaum's collation of Flor and Bekker's of V.For the unimportant J, I am entirely dependent onBekker.

28 E. R. DODDS


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NOTES ON SOME MANUSCRIPTS OF PLATO46ICI465b3497e4503d2505c35 e35I7d4

o post TovTo add. Par2 M Flor V f Bekker Burnet Theiler: om. B T W Fovacrpost re add. Par2 M Flor V f cum Aristidis libro E Bekker Theiler: om. B T W FTrov a4q>povasPar2 M Flor V J f Bekker: aipovas B T W FE XEL elTrewvpost 7eyovEVaC add. Par2 M Flor V J et revera f Bekker: om. B T W FavTo Parz M(primitus) Flor V (primitus) Theiler: avTorB T W FaTrotgqraaaca Par2 M V J f Bekker Burnet Theiler: adromltgSaaa B T W: om. FaAAadv Par M Flor V J f (etiam rec. p) Bekker Burnet Theiler: aIAAwvv B T W F2. Novelties whichappear irst in Laurentianus85. 6 (Flor).457b5 Kara Flor V Bekker Burnet Theiler: Kara B T W F Par (KalPar2 in mg.)457cI SiKaca Flor V (etiam Y) Bekker Theiler: 8&Kalov B T W F Par et suprascr. m. pr. Flor462dI i rivos r1sFlor VJ: rlvos f Bekker Theiler: Ts B T W F Par503a2 ro0VTo lor V J cum Aristide Bekker Burnet Theiler: 7rov0 B T W F Par505c8 KarAv'wtpev Flor V J et revera f Theiler: KaraXa;opEvT W F Par506cI ~e4ey'7 Flor J f Bekker: E'EAE2YXs T W F Par512C7 tCo uav-ov post avros add. Flor V Bekker: om. B T W F Par5g9d4 Flor V J f Bekker Burnet: o B T W Par: cAA'F

3. Noveltiesapparently eculiarto V or VJ.469c8 TovAo'yovuprascr. V cum Olympiodoro: rw Aody V cett.474e7 Tr om. V476d5 'LoAoyLrtev&ov : 6dcoAoyovLedvwv cett.483d1 a3 V Bekker Theiler: aYvY: av7r cett.486a8 darayayot V Bekker Theiler: a,rdyot cett.49oa5 pLrjIa7a V Bekker: p'CraTL cett.49Id4 7T 7 TapXovT7as dcpXot,LEvovs m. V Bekker5I7e8 T7 om. V J Bekker Burnet Theiler: TE F: 7r cett.524c8 7e post KaTeaydTa add. V Bekker: om. cett.: ) ante KaTeayo'ra add. Eus.524eI oi 8E' fsKrTS vpoSrrl tap& 7rv alaov post 'Paca&avOvv add. V: om. cett.It will be seen that Bekker, the exponent of an uninhibited eclecticism, accepted without demurnearly all these novelties; and that even Burnet, sceptical as he was about the value of'apographa'and conservative as is his general treatment of the text, felt himself constrained to adopt four

readings from the first group, three from the second, and one from the third. It will be seen alsothat Aristides once confirms Flor and once (perhaps) Parz; and that V has in one place the seemingsupport of Olympiodorus (but here the possibility of contamination cannot be ruled out).On the other hand:(i) It appears that the later the manuscript, the greater its wealth of good readings: Florhas more good readings than Par2, and V surpasses them both. This is contrary to the normalbehaviour of manuscripts.(ii) It is relevant toeancall that Par and Flor date, so far as can be judged, from the age ofManuel Moschopoulos, Thomas Magister and Triclinius-that is, from the age of deliberate andsystematic textual emendation3I-and that V has all the appearance of an 'edition' of the Gorgiascompiled by a Renaissance scholar.32(iii) Most of the readings I have listed can fairly be described as 'normalisations' of a moreor less abnormal (in some cases manifestly corrupt) text, and are such as might occur to any tolerablyscholarly reader.(iv) These 'good' readings are accompanied by others which are quite plainly false emenda-tions dictated by ignorance of idiom or misconception of Plato's meaning. Such are, to quoteonly a few:45oe5 8tort for ovX o't, Par2 M Flor V f;456b8 insertion before larpov of p7Jropa ), Par2 M Flor V f;5I IeIi ev-evetpyeTlas marked for deletion in Par, relegated to the margin in M, omitted byFlor V, and 7xrv inserted before oaouraa by Parz M Flor V.

31 Cf. Paul Maas, Byz. Zeitschr. 1935, 299 if., 1936,27ff., and Gnomon 25 (I953), 441 f.; also A. Turyn,'The Sophocles Recension of Manuel Moschopoulos',T.A.P.A. I949, who shows that the Byzantine recensionsof Sophocles reach well back into the thirteenth century.As F. H. Sandbach has recently observed, 'there is adanger of underestimating the powers of the late Byzan-tine scholars, and so, through unnecessarily creditingthem with access to unknown traditions, of according

unwarranted honour to their conjectures' (CR 68,I954, 25I).33 While the main basis of V appears to be Flor, it hasreadings apparently derived from F (e.g. oT, aiv/ at48Id6) and others characteristic of the Y group (e.g.Kat a'iaXtovKai KtKov at 508e5). Theiler himself expressesuncertainty 'coniecturaene debeantur bonae lectionesunius codicis V'.

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Documents

DODDS - 1957 - Notes on Some Manuscripts of Plato