Dear David,

I wanted to have a good look at the material you sent me before replying to your previous note, but because it may take some more time before I find the time to do it properly, here are just a couple of points merely explicatory of my November reconstruction.

1) It is *aitia mathêsews* - sorry, David! My idea was that the talk there is about tetralogy, characterizing it as *methodic* (concerning method), and thus as *cause of learning*. Further, that the tetralogy is taken as a music *nomos* with the first dialogue (Cratylus) like a prooimion (cf. proêideto), while this Theaetetus etc., then Sophistes and Politicus etc.

2) I’m aware about the general question regarding licit and division, but I think we are rather prone to apply too rigorously the rules that no doubt were generally observed in book writing in antiquity. I’ve come across exceptions to them in papyri. Here, however, I took the en- to be from a brachygraphy in the end of l.3. In ll. 9-10, I thought there was not enough space in l 10 for the initial d. But I need to check again.

3) I believe I an show that names of dialogues can appear with or without article – even with hontos, in which case the inarticulate use of the noun may be more idiomatic. In your papyrus, I think the question has chiefly to be resolved on mechanical grounds – what is the available space. Again hontos can b e demonstrative by itself, so the question of its strengthening through –i depends on the question of traces being discernible and consistent with it.

4) As for the final section of the fragment. Some used to divide the dialogues into parts or sections according to the number of main positions or arguments constituting their structure. Theaetetus himself considers three main positions refuted in it. Adding the vain attempts before sensationalism as a further untenable position(s?), we may get four. We could thus reach seven, with adept divisioning! Since we seem to have securely the e-, another possibility (noncommittal as to the number of erroneous positions involved) would be to read exês.

This off-hand – just in explanation of what I was thinking when I proposed the reconstruction I sent you. However I need a second thorough go at it.
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Business is progressing very smoothly with the (!) Oxbow Books, and I’m really very pleased to have followed your insistent prodding at it. The second volume of my *Emergence of Reason etc.* is just out. I’ll send a copy to you shortly.

All best and cordial wishes for a joyous Easter,
Apostolos