Editing Diogenes Laertius (section)

==== 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]]).