Textual Transmission

The chapter opens with the manuscript transmission of Dissoi Logoi. For the first time, each of the twenty-three codices featuring in Robinson’s edition is described as to its material, dimensions, transmitted works, provenance, date, scribe, first possessors, and current place of conservation. Then, new findings and identifications are introduced that bring the total number of the studied codices to twenty-six, the highest so far. Their relationships are amply analysed and a new stemma codicum produced. The second section of the chapter reconstructs the history of the printed editions, translations, and commentaries of Dissoi Logoi, all of them being recorded in a conclusive analytical bibliography. Three vexed codicological questions are finally answered: the identity of the so-called codex Vaticanus Perditus, the relationship between codices Taurinensis B.I.3 and Leidensis Vossianus misc. 1.4, and the handwritten source of the work’s first edition, printed by Henri Estienne in 1570.