Note 8 — Chapter VI · PLATONIC CANON, AS RECOGNISED BY THRASYLLUS.

Straton, the Peripatetic Scholarch who succeeded Theophrastus, B.C. 287, bequeathed to Lykon by his will both the succession to his school (διατριβὴν) and all his books, except what he had written himself (πλὴν ὧν αὐτοὶ γεγράφαμεν). What is to be done with these latter he does not say. Lykon, in his last will, says:—καὶ δύο μνᾶς αὐτῷ (Chares, a manumitted slave) δίδωμι καὶ τἀμὰ βίβλια τὰ ἀνεγνωσμένα· τὰ δὲ ἀνέκδοτα Καλλίνῳ, ὅπως ἐπιμελῶς αὐτὰ ἐκδῷ. See Diog. L. v. 62, 73. Here Lykon directs expressly that Kallinus shall edit with care his (Lykon’s) unpublished works. Probably Straton may have given similar directions during his life, so that it was unnecessary to provide in the will. Τὰ ἀνεγνωσμένα is equivalent to τὰ ἐκδεδομένα. Publication was constituted by reading the MSS. aloud before a chosen audience of friends or critics; which readings often led to such remarks as induced the author to take his work back, and to correct it for a second recitation. See the curious sentence extracted from the letter of Theophrastus to Phanias (Diog. L. v. 37). Boeckh and other critics agree that both the Kleitophon and the Kritias were transmitted from antiquity in the fragmentary state in which we now read them: that they were compositions never completed. Boeckh affirms this with assurance respecting the Kleitophon, though he thinks that it is not a genuine work of Plato; on which last point I dissent from him. He thinks that the Kritias is a real work of Plato, though uncompleted (Boeckh in Platonis Minoem, p. 11).

Compare the remarks of M. Littré respecting the unfinished sketches, treatises, and notes not intended for publication, included in the Collectio Hippocratica (Œuvres d’ Hippocrate, vol. x. p. liv. seq.)