Socrates Quote Marks on Papyrus

On the earliest papyrus recordings of Plato’s dialogue with the mathematician Theaetetus, quotes from Socrates are indicated by “>” to the left of each quotation.

A screenshot of a tweet shows two images of ancient papyrus manuscripts alongside a claim that quotations from Socrates were marked with “>” in early recordings of Plato’s dialogue with Theaetetus. The joke is that the modern Twitter retweet symbol supposedly originated as an ancient quotation marker, humorously connecting social media conventions with classical Greek writing. EN: A screenshot of a tweet shows two images of ancient papyrus manuscripts alongside a claim that quotations from Socrates were marked with “>” in early recordings of Plato’s dialogue with Theaetetus. The joke is that the modern Twitter retweet symbol supposedly originated as an ancient quotation marker, humorously connecting social media conventions with classical Greek writing.

• @eternalclassic / 45506 2024-01-27