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Homer is an exception to this! There are almost a thousand Homeric manuscripts. There are 7 Plato manuscripts. Aristotle was significantly more popular, with
by bodhiandphysics 5y ago
Homer is an exception to this! There are almost a thousand Homeric manuscripts. There are 7 Plato manuscripts. Aristotle was significantly more popular, with almost 300 manuscripts, almost all from the west, and due to Byzantine originals starting in the 11th century
- dr_dshiv 5y agoDo these Homeric manuscripts all come the Thrasyllus edition in Alexandria? It’s crazy that every single one of Plato’s books survived.
- asimpletune 5y agoI think Plato had a bunch of manuscripts that weren't designed to be public facing that don't exist today. It was like he had stuff for the public, and then he had stuff only for his students. I imagine the tone and narrative voice would have been much different, and that he would have expected much more from his readers in these other works.
- bodhiandphysics 5y agoI like to joke that the world would be very different if we had Platos lecture notes and Aristotle’s dialogues (which were famous in antiquity)