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Why is knowledge of early Greek ethical thinkers often incomplete?

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Ethics Detail of the stela inscribed with the Code of Hammurabi showing the king before the god Shamash, bas-relief from Susa, 18th century bce; in the Louvre, Paris.

Knowledge of early Greek ethical thinkers is often incomplete primarily because very few original writings from that period have survived to the present day. Instead, scholars must rely on scattered fragments and later accounts, which are frequently of dubious accuracy.123

The transmission of these ideas was hindered by the necessity of manual copying over many centuries, a process that inevitably introduced corruption and errors. Furthermore, the surviving evidence is often biased or filtered through the perspectives of later writers, whose own philosophical agendas or prejudices may have influenced how they quoted or interpreted earlier thinkers. For example, the study of pre-Socratic philosophy is largely a process of detective work, as historians must piece together information from sources whose faithfulness in transmission is often suspect.43

Because of these limitations, our understanding of figures like Pythagoras—who may have written nothing at all—remains restricted, leaving significant gaps in the historical record of early Western ethics.12