Editing Diogenes Laertius (section)

===Textual tradition===
==== Manuscripts ====
There are many extant [[manuscript]]s of the ''Lives'', although none of them are especially old, and they all lack the end of Book VII.{{sfn|Long|1972|p=xxv}} The three most useful manuscripts are known as B, P, and F. Manuscript B (''Codex Borbonicus'') dates from the 12th century, and is in the [[National Library of Naples]].{{efn|The statement by Robert Hicks (1925) that "the scribe obviously knew no Greek",{{sfn|Hicks|1925|p={{page needed|date=March 2016}} }} was later rejected by Herbert Long. The more recent opinion of Tiziano Dorandi, however, is that the scribe had "little knowledge of Greek ... and limited himself to reproducing it in a mechanical way exactly as he managed to decipher it". A few years later an "anonymous corrector" with good knowledge of Greek rectified "many errors or readings that, rightly or wrongly, he considered erroneous" {{harv|Dorandi|2013|p=21}}.}} Manuscript P (''Paris'') is dated to the 11th/12th century, and is in the [[Bibliothèque nationale de France]].{{sfn|Dorandi|2013|p=2}} Manuscript F (''Florence'') is dated to the 13th century, and is in the [[Laurentian Library]].{{sfn|Dorandi|2013|p=3}} The titles for the individual biographies used in modern editions are absent from these earliest manuscripts, however they can be found inserted into the blank spaces and margins of manuscript P by a later hand.{{sfn|Dorandi|2013|p=52}}

There seem to have been some early [[Latin]] translations, but they no longer survive. A 10th-century work entitled ''Tractatus de dictis philosophorum'' shows some knowledge of Diogenes.{{sfn|Long|1972|p=xxvi}} [[Henry Aristippus]], in the 12th century, is known to have translated at least some of the work into Latin, and in the 14th century an unknown author made use of a Latin translation for his ''[[De vita et moribus philosophorum]]''{{sfn|Long|1972|p=xxvi}} (attributed erroneously to [[Walter Burley]]).

====Printed editions====
[[Image:Laertii Diogenis De Vitis Dogmatis et Apophthegmatis Eorum Qui in Philosophia Claruerunt.jpg|right|thumb|Title page of an edition in Greek and Latin, 1594]]
[[File:Vitae et sententiae philosophorum.tif|thumb|1611 Italian edition]]

The first printed editions were Latin translations. The first, ''Laertii Diogenis Vitae et sententiae eorum qui in philosophia probati fuerunt'' (Romae: Giorgo Lauer, 1472), printed the translation of [[Ambrogio Traversari]] (whose manuscript presentation copy to [[Cosimo de' Medici]] was dated February 8, 1433{{sfn|de la Mare|1992|p={{page needed|date=March 2016}} }}) and was edited by Elio Francesco Marchese.{{sfn|Tolomio|1993|pp=154, ff}} The [[Greek language|Greek]] text of the lives of Aristotle and Theophrastus appeared in the third volume of the [[Aldine Press|Aldine]] Aristotle in 1497. The [[editio princeps|first edition]] of the whole Greek text was that published by [[Hieronymus Froben]] in 1533.{{sfn|Long|1972|p=xxiv}} The Greek/Latin edition of 1692 by [[Marcus Meibomius]] divided each of the ten books into paragraphs of equal length, and progressively numbered them, providing the system still in use today.{{sfn|Dorandi|2013|pp=11&ndash;12}}

The first [[Textual criticism|critical edition]] of the entire text, by H.S. Long in the [[Oxford Classical Texts]], was not produced until 1964;{{sfn|Long|1972|p=xxv}} this edition was superseded by [[Miroslav Marcovich]]'s [[Teubner]] edition, published between 1999 and 2002. A new edition, by [[Tiziano Dorandi]], was published by [[Cambridge University Press]] in 2013.<ref>{{Cite web| url=http://www.cambridge.org/fr/academic/subjects/classical-studies/ancient-philosophy/diogenes-laertius-lives-eminent-philosophers |title=Diogenes Laertius: Lives of Eminent Philosophers| publisher=Cambridge University Press |access-date= 14 March 2014}}</ref>

====English translations====
Thomas Stanley's 1656 ''History of Philosophy'' adapts the format and content of Laertius's work into English, but Stanley compiled his book from a number of classical biographies of philosophers.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Stanley |first1=Thomas |title=The History of Philosophy |date=1656 |publisher=J. Mosely and T. Dring |location=London |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DUArteSohcMC}}</ref> The first complete English translation was a late 17th-century translation by ten different persons.<ref>{{harvnb|Fetherstone ''et al''|1688|loc=Volume 1}}, Volume 2 (published 1696).</ref> A better translation was made by [[Charles Duke Yonge]] (1853),{{sfn|Yonge|1853}} but although this was more literal, it still contained many inaccuracies.{{sfn|Long|1972|p=xiii}} The next translation was by [[Robert Drew Hicks]] (1925) for the [[Loeb Classical Library]],{{sfn|Hicks|1925}} although it is slightly [[bowdlerize]]d. A new translation by [[Pamela Mensch]] was published by [[Oxford University Press]] in 2018.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Lives of the Eminent Philosophers - Diogenes Laertius|
date=14 May 2018|
publisher=Oxford University Press|
isbn=978-0-19-086217-6|
access-date=22 May 2018|
url=https://global.oup.com/academic/product/lives-of-the-eminent-philosophers-9780190862176}}</ref> Another by [[Stephen White (translator)|Stephen White]] was published by [[Cambridge University Press]] in 2020.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers - An edited translation|date=2020|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-88335-1}}</ref>