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Recent Questions
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- When they say "one generation", how many do they mean?
If we take into account the fact that Plato is one of the few authors whose works have come down to us in full (if, of course, we do not count the secret teaching, which was not written down by him, but presented in the form of lectures), then the question becomes very large-scale, since we would need to trace the fate of a huge number of manuscripts. You can handle this task yourself by looking at the situation with the manuscript tradition in any critical edition of any text of Plato. In short, it was like this. Plato himself published his works in tetralogies, some of which were published after Plato's death. As an example, I will mention the “Laws” that, according to Diogenes of Laertes, Philip of Opuntum rewrote and added a conclusion to them. Then books began the natural path for ancient works: they were reprinted and distributed by copying. The earliest finds of such texts are among the papyrus texts (about 250), but here we are dealing with fragments that rather convince us of the prevalence of Plato's texts than help to recreate the full body of texts. It is known from the reports of the narrative tradition that Plato was very widely read, while his Academy was alive, and there was a constant study and commentary of his legacy. Plato was read by both the Greeks and the Romans: For example, Cicero even translated it into Latin, and Alexander Severus counted Plato among his favorite authors. It is important to note that the court astrologer of the Emperor Tiberius published Plato's writings (probably he checked the texts for their quality). Complete manuscripts (on parchment) they have come down to us since the IX century, and they are, of course, Byzantine. In the medieval West, Plato was almost unknown due to the language situation. Apart from the occasional translation of Plato into Latin, it is worth noting that it would have been brought back to the attention of Western science only in the Renaissance: a landmark event in the XV century was the translation of Marsilio Ficino (founder of the Platonic Academy in Careggi). Well, then the texts were distributed in the conditions of the printing era. Modern editions of Plato, as well as any other classical author, rely on a thorough analysis of the manuscript tradition, which aims to restore the text to the highest degree of authenticity (see Text Criticism).