L’importance de la tradition manuscrite dans l’exploitation historique des textes litéraires: l’exemple de Plutarque, De Pythiae oraculis 409 B-C

Abstract

Some historians recently suggested that the famous lacuna at the end of the De Pythiae (409 C) could be a “conscious erasure”, that deleted Domitian's name after the damnatio memoriae of this emperor. Such a hypothesis does not fit very well with the common opinion of the Plutarchists, who consider this dialogue to be a late work, but, above all, it does neglect some important features of the transmission of the manuscripts, which I purpose to go over in the present article.