[sramsay]

And just to add to the above . . .

This is not a problem confined to ancient texts. If you read The Great Gatsby any time before the 1990s, you probably read a quite "corrupt" version of it. And, of course, there's Hamlet -- a textual situation so complicated, that some scholars have spent most of their careers trying to work it out.

[dorchadas]

If anyone is interested in this with Greek Manuscripts, Peter Adamson has an interview with Oliver Primavesi, who created a critical edition of De Motu Animalium that fixed quite a few old errors and is currently working on one for the Metaphysics using some newer manuscripts that the previous edition didn't use because they were considered too 'young', about it in his 'History of Philosophy Without any Gaps'. The episode right before the interview discusses Greek manuscripts during the Byzantine Empire and how they were copied and such, and various other historical aspects of manuscript design. Two of the more interesting episodes in a podcast filled with interesting things. Episodes 317 (manuscripts) and 318 (interview with Primavesi).