The transmission of a philosophia from one generation to the next was, of necessity, fundamentally personal. One did not need to study texts to gather the requisite knowledge on how to live one's philosophia, one just simply imitated one's teacher or master. The genuine transmission of the tradition of a philosophia was not accomplished by exegesis, but by dialogue and common life. Very few of the originators of various schools left any substantive writings. Socrates did not. We have nothing Zeno wrote initiating Stoicism. So, too, for Pyrrho of Ellis. If the tradition of a philosophia was the whole of a way of living, including beliefs and the understanding of sacred texts, then the transmission of that tradition could have only taken place personally in an unbroken, and thus living, chain of relation.
The ancient Hellenic philosophiai understood this, and this is why Plato's Academy, as a primary example, was in existence for more than a millennium (from 387 B.C. until A.D. 529 when Justinia