Philostrats ,Briefe‘ – Einheit in der Vielfalt, Vielfalt in der Einheit?

Abstract

Abstract The complex manuscript tradition of Philostratus’ ‘Letters’ cause a row of problems and uncertainties: it is unclear, for example, which of the several surviving versions of the letter collection is the original one, which sequence of the letters is authorial, which version of some letters that have survived in different lengths is authentic, why some letters differ that much in form and content from others, and, last but not least, if the collection was written by Philostratus at all. These questions seem to pose insurmountable difficulties for the project of a new edition. Therefore, we still rely on editions from the nineteenth century for Philostratus’ ‘Letters’. The question is whether the problems of the formation of the epistolary corpus and the evaluation of its multiple versions can be explained by traditional textual criticism. I argue that a codicological, palaeographical, and historical examination of the individual textual witnesses could shed new light on the open research questions by focusing on the overall context, position, and function of Philostratus’ ‘Letters’ in each manuscript. At the same time, research on the still uncertain purpose and function of the ‘Letters’ could possibly contribute to understand the mechanisms of ( manuscript ) tradition of the corpus.