Clementis Alexandrini Protrepticus

Book excerpt: The Protrepticus of Clement of Alexandria is preserved virtually in a single manuscript, the famous Codex Arethae, copied in the tenth century for Arethas, the Archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia. The text was copied from an exemplar in poor shape, to the extent that the codex is full of textual corruptions. The only critical edition of the Protrepticus was prepared in 1905 by Otto Stahlin, who published a revised edition in 1936. The problem with this edition is that the editor was not sensitive enough to meaning and textual problems. As a result, scholars are still lacking a reliable critical text of the treatise. The present edition aims to fill this gap. It is based on an in-depth study of all the relevant sources, including the entire collected works of Clement, since he frequently employs the same locus communis in different works.