Manuscripts from the Byzantine era hand down lists of outstanding Greek authors or canons in the various literary and scientific-philosophical genres, but there has been a lack of research into their nature, chronology, origin, formation and use. The volume Παραδείγματα, the term used in rhetorical texts to designate the canons, provides a new critical edition of these lists as a basis for the topics discussed.

One of the lists, hitherto thought to be unitary, turns out to be composed of two originally independent and diachronic lists, later joined into one: an older...