Antigone, along with the six other extant plays of Sophokles (out of
over a hundred that he wrote), survives primarily in numerous Byz-
antine manuscripts, ranging in date from the tenth to the fifteenth
centuries CE. There is, therefore, a period of some 1,500 years between
Sophokles' original text and our earliest manuscripts. In some cases the
manuscripts can be supplemented by quotations or comments in other
classical authors (themselves transmitted in medieval manuscripts) or
occasionally by papyrus fragments preserved from Hellenistic and
Greco-Roman Egypt, generally dating from the third century BCE to
the fifth century ce. In the case of Sophokles, however, we are de-
pendent mostly on the Byzantine manuscripts. The first printed edition
appeared from the celebrated Venetian printing house of Aldo Ma-
nuzio (Aldus Manutius) in 1502.

Before reaching the medieval manuscripts, these texts (like those of
most classical Greek authors) were copied, edited, and recopied nu-
merous times. This process resulted in numerous errors or corruptions.
Later scribes often made mechanical errors or misunderstood and
hence miscopied the text because an earlier script was unfamiliar or
because they did not fully grasp Sophokles' dense poetic vocabulary
and syntax, especially in the choral odes. It used to be assumed that
the earliest manuscripts were the most reliable (especial the tenth-
century manuscript designated as L and now in the Laurentian library
in Florence), but even these have many errors, and recent research has
shown that good readings are to be found in a much wider range of
manuscripts.

Since the Renaissance, classical scholars have worked intensively to
restore the text to something like its original form through comparative
study of the manuscripts and through close critical examination of So-
phokles' language and meaning. The process still continues. In

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