Practice question · Put in order
Arrange the stages by which an ancient Greek play reached a modern reader, earliest first.
- Transcribed to parchment codices in Byzantium
- Edited into a modern critical edition
- Performed at an Athenian festival
- Selected into a school edition of a few plays
- Printed in the Renaissance
- Copied onto papyrus for teaching
Hints
- The chain runs through two changes of physical medium.
- Papyrus gives way to parchment codices, which give way to print.
Show the answer
- Performed at an Athenian festival
- Copied onto papyrus for teaching
- Selected into a school edition of a few plays
- Transcribed to parchment codices in Byzantium
- Printed in the Renaissance
- Edited into a modern critical edition
Why
The narrowing happens at step three. Byzantine school editions kept about seven plays each of Aeschylus and Sophocles, and those selections are most of what we have, meaning a teacher's syllabus decision, made once, silently determined the canon for the next thousand years.
Practise The Canon, Tradition and the Idea of a Classic
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