Works (Laws, Definitions)

that the book was copied from an exemplar written in uncial letters. Since Joseph Král, with his characteristic kindness, collated the remaining dialogues for my use, I introduced this new witness in the Gorgias, Meno, both Hippias dialogues, Ion, Menexenus, Clitophon, Timaeus, Critias, and Minos (cf. Preface to Vol. III, IV).

It is of less importance that I have taken into account all the papyrus fragments that have become known. I was also able to turn some points from the Anonymous Commentary original: "Anonymo Commentario" to my advantage in the Theaetetus when Volume I was sent back to the press in 1905.

These, then, are generally the things I have been able to add of my own in editing the text. Regarding emendation, I hope I have never rashly departed from the transmitted text. For I set this goal for myself: to approach as closely as possible to the archetype written in the fifth or sixth century, at which time the successors diadochi successors/followers of Plato still flourished in the Academy.

I do not wish to be lengthy regarding Tetralogy IX and the Spurious Works, since O. Immisch Philologische Studien zu Plato, II (1903). has recently discussed them at length, and I agree entirely with his reasoning. Indeed, just as the Parisinus A is by far the most complete witness here as well, it cannot be denied that traces of a different tradition are still preserved in the Laurentian manuscript lxxx. 17 (L = Stallbaum’s δ) and in the marginalia of the Vatican 796 (O = Bekker’s Ω This book, collated by Bekker and Bast, cannot be found today.). Indeed, I myself saw, while collating the book, that many things were added there in the Paris manuscript itself by a hand that seems to be of the XIIth century (A³). However, a suitable witness of this tradition does not seem to exist today, so it is much to be regretted that the Vienna manuscript F has nothing after the Minos.