The Painted Stoa › Manuscripts & transmission
Manuscripts & transmissionΠαράδοσις
How each author's words reached us: copied by hand on papyrus and parchment, edited, and at last printed. The accounts from the author articles, side by side.
- Homer
- Hesiod
- Aeschylus
- Pindar
- Sophocles
- Herodotus
- Euripides
- Thucydides
- Hippocrates
- Aristophanes
- Lysias
- Isocrates
- Xenophon
- Plato
- Aristotle
- Demosthenes
- Menander
- Epicurus
- Callimachus
- Euclid
- Theocritus
- Archimedes
- Old Testament
- Polybius
- Flavius Josephus
- Plutarch
- New Testament
- Epictetus
- Claudius Ptolemaeus
- Marcus Aurelius
- Lucian of Samosata
- Galen
- Plotinus
- The author The author's own life and writing.
- Copies Papyri and manuscripts: the text copied by hand.
- Print and editions Printed texts, translations and modern editions.
- Readers What later readers said and did.
The marks of each author article's own timeline, drawn on one scale. Look for the gaps: between an author's own time and the copies of their words, and between the last copies made by hand and the first printed books. Point at a mark for its year; the article tells what happened.
33 authors, in time order
- 7th century BCHomerAlexandria. Zenodotus, appointed the first director of the Library of Alexandria in 284 BC, was the first critical editor of Homer: he compared manuscripts, and marked or removed lines he doubted. Aristarchus, who led the Library from 153 to 145 BC, made the most historically important edition; …How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 7th century BCHesiodIn antiquity. Pausanias was shown, at the spring on Helicon, a lead tablet “mostly defaced by time, on which is engraved the Works”. The Boeotians there said that “Hesiod wrote nothing but the Works”, and that even that poem began without its hymn to the Muses. The scholars agreed that something was odd. …How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 6th century BCAeschylusFrom Athens to Alexandria. Athens itself kept an official text. A law of the statesman Lycurgus, who ran the city's finances from 336 BC, had the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides written out and kept in a public archive; the clerk of the city read them to the actors, and it was “unlawful to depart from the authorized text in acting”.How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 6th century BCPindarAlexandria. Pindar's poems reached the Library of Alexandria, and its scholars set them in order. Aristophanes of Byzantium (about 257–180 BC) most probably made the authoritative edition in seventeen books arranged by kind; an anonymous life of Pindar found in medieval manuscripts says he put Olympian 1 at the head of the collection. …How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 5th century BCSophoclesThe main manuscript. The Florence codex Laurentianus 32.9, called L, is of the tenth century. It holds Sophocles, Aeschylus (where it is called M) and Apollonius Rhodius. Its twin in Leiden, BPG 60A, is a palimpsest, and most of it can no longer be read.How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 5th century BCHerodotusWhat we read today comes from two families of medieval manuscripts. The “Florentine” family includes a book in Florence (Laurentianus plut. 70.3, called A) and one in Rome (Angelicanus gr. 83, B). The “Roman” family is led by two in the Vatican (gr. 2369, D, and gr. 123, R), one now at Emmanuel College, Cambridge (S) and one in Vienna (V). …How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 5th century BCEuripidesTwo streams. The plays reached the Middle Ages by two routes. One was a select edition of ten plays, circulated about AD 200 and “possibly for use in schools”; its plays survive in many medieval manuscripts. The other was a group of nine plays in alphabetical order. “Some unknown Byzantine scholar” put the two together, which gave the nineteen plays we have.How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 5th century BCThucydidesPapyri. Grenfell and Hunt found about twenty papyrus fragments of Thucydides at Oxyrhynchus, copied between the first and sixth centuries AD; two are known as P.Oxy. 16 and 17.How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 5th century BCHippocratesCollected. The treatises were gathered under Hippocrates' name in Hellenistic times, certainly at Alexandria by the middle of the third century BC. How and by whom is disputed. The collection may be the remains of a library on Cos, or a compilation made at Alexandria. …How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 5th century BCAristophanesPapyri. His plays were still being copied in Roman Egypt. At Oxyrhynchus in 1897 Grenfell and Hunt found three scraps of a comedy that is probably by Aristophanes, from a roll copied in the first or second century AD; they are now in the British Library. …How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 5th century BCLysiasAncient collections. In the age of Augustus, 425 works circulated under Lysias' name. Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Caecilius accepted 233 of them as genuine. Dionysius had his own test: true Lysias has a charm, χάρις, and its absence led him to reject many speeches that most people took for genuine. …How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 5th century BCIsocratesAncient collections. In Roman times sixty speeches went under his name; Dionysius accepted twenty-five as genuine, the critic Caecilius twenty-eight. By about AD 850 the scholar Photius knew only the twenty-one that survive today. Besides these there are nine letters, and a lost Art of Rhetoric, known only from scattered quotations; …How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 5th century BCXenophonIn antiquity. Xenophon was copied on papyrus: A. H. R. E. Paap's collection, The Xenophon Papyri (Leiden, 1970), gathers papyri of the Anabasis, the Cyropaedia, On Hunting and Ways and Means. …How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 5th century BCPlatoNine groups of four. Thrasyllus says Plato published his dialogues in tetralogies, like the tragic poets; he counts fifty-six genuine dialogues (the Republic as ten, the Laws as twelve) in nine tetralogies. The text we have rests on that arrangement from the first century AD, by Thrasyllus of Mendes.How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 4th century BCAristotleSulla's library and Andronicus. Plutarch's account of Apellicon's library, its arrival in Rome and Andronicus' lists is above; it is the ancient story of how the treatises came into the form we have.How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 4th century BCDemosthenesPublished in his lifetime. Demosthenes put many, perhaps all, of his speeches into circulation himself. After his death copies survived in Athens and in the Library of Alexandria. There the scholar Callimachus collected fifty-six openings of speeches, the Prologues, and believed them genuine.How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 4th century BCMenanderRead and performed. In antiquity Menander was not only staged. Plutarch says his poetry had become the most widely shared of all the good things Greece produced, in theatres, in discussions and at dinners, “for readings, for instruction, and for dramatic competitions”. Later writers quoted him constantly. …How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 4th century BCEpicurusLearning by heart. Epicurus meant his teaching to travel in short form. His letter to Herodotus calls itself an epitome for those who cannot work through all his writings on nature, and Diocles reported that he trained his friends to learn his treatises by heart. …How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 4th century BCCallimachusPapyri. The Aetia was copied for centuries: some 37 papyri of it are known. The oldest, the Lille papyrus, was copied within a generation of the poet's death, with notes between the lines; a roll of the first century BC is the main source of The Lock of Berenice; a second-century roll from Oxyrhynchus holds the prologue; …How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 3rd century BCEuclidAncient copies. The oldest traces of the Elements are potsherds of the third century BC from Elephantine in Egypt that deal with two propositions of Book 13, and an Epicurean critique of geometry by Demetrius Lacon, found among the papyri of Herculaneum, which quotes phrases and proofs close to Book 1 (though, as Jones points out, without naming Euclid). …How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 3rd century BCTheocritusAncient editions. The poems were first gathered with those of other country poets by Artemidorus, a scholar of the first century BC: Cholmeley puts him about 70 BC, Wikipedia's account in the time of Sulla. His little poem on the collection survives in the Greek Anthology; LSJ explains its word “scattered” as “not collected into a volume”. …How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 3rd century BCArchimedesAntiquity. Archimedes' inventions were famous, but his mathematical writings were little known in antiquity outside the circle of Alexandrian mathematicians who read and quoted them. The geographer Strabo cites a treatise by its title, «ἐν τοῖς περὶ τῶν ὀχουμένων», “in his On Floating Bodies” (our translation). …How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 3rd century BCOld TestamentRevisers. In the second century AD Jewish scholars made new Greek versions that kept closer to the Hebrew of their day: Aquila (active about 130), Symmachus and Theodotion. …How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 2nd century BCPolybiusForty books, five whole. Polybius himself speaks of his «βύβλους τετταράκοντα», his forty books. Only the first five survive complete. Of the rest we have sections and fragments, some long, gathered from Byzantine selections of excerpts.How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 1st century ADFlavius JosephusKept by Christians. Jews are not known to have preserved his works; the oldest surviving manuscripts were copied by Christian monks, who valued him for the background to the New Testament. There are about 120 Greek manuscripts, 33 of them older than the fourteenth century. …How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 1st century ADPlutarchPapyri. A volume of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri published in 2016 contains a small fragment of Plutarch: the first copy of the Life of Alexander known on papyrus.How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 1st century ADNew TestamentLetters and papyri. Paul's letters were circulating, perhaps already gathered into collections, by the end of the first century. No page written by the authors survives; the oldest copies are papyri found in Egypt. The Rylands fragment P52, a scrap the size of a credit card with a few lines of John 18, was published by Colin Roberts in 1935. …How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 1st century ADEpictetusFrom notes to books. Arrian says that his notes reached the public without his knowledge. In the second century they were already being read aloud: Gellius tells how Herodes Atticus, at his country house near Athens, silenced a boastful young Stoic by sending for a volume of “the Discourses of Epictetus, arranged by Arrian”. …How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 1st century ADClaudius PtolemaeusIn antiquity. The Almagest became the standard textbook almost at once. Pappus (active about 320) and Theon of Alexandria wrote commentaries on it; Theon's survives, of Pappus' only parts, and a third, by Ammonius, is lost. The Handy Tables survive in a later version, usually credited to Theon; …How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 2nd century ADMarcus AureliusHints in antiquity. Nobody knows how the notebook survived its writer's death. Herodian, in the third century, says Marcus loved old literature, «δηλοὶ δὲ ὅσα καὶ ἐς ἡμᾶς ἦλθεν ἢ λεχθέντα πρὸς αὐτοῦ ἢ γραφέντα», “as everything of his that has come down to us, spoken or written, shows” (our translation); he may have meant the Meditations. …How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 2nd century ADLucian of SamosataNo outside witnesses. No writer of Lucian's own time mentions him. When Martin Wittek listed the manuscripts of Lucian in 1952, he knew of no papyrus of him at all.How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 2nd century ADGalenIn his own hands. Galen wrote many of his books for friends and pupils, with no thought of publishing them. Copies went out without his name on them, and some were passed off by others as their own work; that is why he wrote On My Own Books. Late in life he wrote On My Own Opinions to do the same for his views. …How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
- 3rd century ADPlotinusPorphyry's edition. Plotinus had asked Porphyry to revise and arrange his writings. Porphyry decided to set aside the order in which they were written and to group them by subject, as Andronicus had done for Aristotle: fifty-four treatises in six sets of nine, starting with the easiest, on ethics, and rising to the One in the Sixth Ennead. …How the words reached us: the whole account, with its sources
These come from the author articles, each checked claim by claim against the sources listed with it. More authors join as their articles are checked.