The Letters of Phalaris, between Manuscripts and Editio Princeps

Abstract

This article deals with the letters of Phalaris, a large corpus of 148 letters contained in the second volume of the Aldine edition of the Greek epistolographers. It explores the role of the Aldine edition in the transmission of these letters and mainly focuses on its sources. Building on the works of Lauri Tudeer and Martin Sicherl, it determines the text on which the Aldine edition is based and its position within the manuscript tradition, while stressing the remaining uncertainties: the Aldine is an editorial construction, conflating the text of two different classes of manuscripts with the text of the editio princeps from 1498; its main sources are a close parent to the now-lost London, British Library, Harley MS 5610 and a copy of the manuscript Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. Pal. graec. 356 (and not necessarily the antigraph of Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. gr. 134 as Sicherl thought); Marcus Musurus might have used another corrective manuscript.