The Textual and Material Transmission

An Investigation into the Manuscripts of Plato’s Theaetetus

Individual Research Project

Plato’s Theaetetus has long been regarded as one of the most important dialogues in the history of Western epistemology. Despite the dialogue being aporetic, the task set out in the text by Socrates is remarkable in itself: to seek out a universal definition of knowledge. Such an inquiry sparked great interest among different intellectual circles across time and space, resulting in the transmission of the text in around 47 manuscripts characterised by many interesting material and content features, such as the inclusion of exegetical paracontent and the addition of a web of annotations over time.

This project conducts a thorough investigation of the manuscripts that transmit the Greek text of the dialogue, in order to understand their philological links, origins, and further stages of their trajectories. This is done by using both text-critical analysis and the analysis of the materiality of the manuscripts. Text-critical analysis involves collating the text of every extant witness, including marginal commentary and identifying major common and separative variant readings. The analysis of materiality focuses on a detailed study of the physical features of the manuscripts, especially those that may have triggered innovations in younger manuscripts during a copying process.

Such an approach, combining philology, palaeography, prosopography, history, and manuscript studies, ensures the acquisition of more evidence and increases the degree of its reliability. Aside from providing more detailed evidence for grouping the manuscripts and thus constructing the first comprehensive stemma codicum for the manuscripts containing the Theaetetus, this approach also helps to determine more accurately the production settings, different life cycles, and changes that these manuscripts underwent during their circulation in various intellectual circles.