TextuallCriticism

and Editorial Technique

applicable to Greek and Latin texts

By Martin L. West

1973

83 B. G. Teubner Stuttgart
 Dr. "v[ artin L West
CONTENTS
Born in London 1937. Educa;:ed at S1 Paul's School and BallioJ.
Since 1963 Fellow of University College, Oxford. Editor of
Greek poetic texts, also au chor Df a book on earl y Greek
philosophy and lnany ar6cie,) on classical literature.
Bibliographical Note, 5

PART I. TEXTUAL CRITICISM

1. Habent sua fata libelli, 7

Types of source, 9. The nature of manuscript transmission, 12.

Various causes of textual discrepancy, 15

2. Organizing the data, 29

Dealing with a closed recenSlOn, 31. Dealing with an open

recension, 37

3. Diagnosis, 47

The evaluation of variants, 48. Emendation, 53

PART n. E D I TING A TEXT

1. Preparation, 61

Collecting the material, 62. Digestion, 68. The use of comput­

ISBN 3-S19-07401-X (paperb&ck)
ISBN 3-519-07402-8 (clothbound)
ers, 70

2. Presentation, 72
All rights reserved. This pubLcation, or parts thereof, may not
be produced in any form, or by ,any means electronic mechanical Prefatory material, 72. Choice of sigla, 74. The of the
photocopying, recording or otherwise, �r transmi;ted withou; edition: general layout, 75. Text, 77. Between the text and the
written permission of the publisher.
(£) B. G. Teubner, Stuttgart 1 ')73 apparatus, 82. The critical apparatus, 86. Some special types of
Printed in Germanv by Dr. Alexander Krebs, HemsbachjBergstr. edition. Papyri, inscriptions, 94. Fragment collections, 95.
Cover design: \1(1. Koch, Stuttgart
Scholia, 97. Indexes, 98. Printing, 101. Conclusion, 102

3
PART Ill. SPECIMEN PASSAGES

1. Hesiod, Theogony 105

2. 'Hippocrates', De morbo sacro 1, 29-44, 119

3. Aesop. fab. 57 . Xenophon,
Memorabilia 1, 3, 8-9, 128
4. Catullus 61, 1 132 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

5. Ovid, Amores 3, 141

This book was written at the invitation of the publishers, who
6. Apuleius ( De Platone 2, 20, 145
wanted a replacement for Paul Maas' s Textkritik (3rd ed. , 1957)
and O. Stahlin's Editionstechnik (2nd 1914). Stahlin' s
INDEX, 153 the detailed treatment of editorial method, was excellent in
its day, but many of its recommendations have been left behind
fashion. Ma.as's work will not date in the same way, for the
canons of textual criticism have long been established, and fashion
can only bring aberrations or alternative formulations; but it is
too one-sided to be satisfactory as a general introduction. It
emphasizes the stemmatic aspect of textual analysis, and treats
contamination as a regrettable deviation about which nothing
can be done, instead of as a normal state of affairs. I have tried
in Part I of the present manual to redress the balance, and given
some practical advice on dealing with contaminated traditions,
which I think is new. Otherwise there is little here that cannot
be found in other works on textual criticism, of which there are
plenty.
I could draw up a formidable list of such works if I the
student ought to read them. But textual criticism is not something
to be learned by reading as much as possible about it. Once the
basic principles have been apprehended, what is needed is obser­
vation and practice, not research into the further ramifications of
theory. I therefore offer no formal bibliography, but content
myself with the mention of three books that will be referred to
several times in what follows.

L. Havet, Manuel de critique verbale aux textes latins

(Paris 1911).

4
5
G. Pasquali, Storia della ttadizione e ctitica del testo (2nd ed. ,
Fitenze
H. Ftankel, Einleitung zut kritischen Ausgabe det Argonautika
des Apollonios (Abh. d. Akad. d. Wiss. in Gbttingen, Phi1.­
hist. K1., Folge 3, Nr. 55, 1964).
of these may be read with considerable profit, especially PART I TEXTUAL CRITICISM
Pasquali's wise opus.

1. Habent sua fata libelli

Eduard Fraenkel in his introduction to Leo's Ausgewahlte kleine

Schriften recounts the following tnFclmatic experience which he
had as a young student:
"I had by then read the greater part of Aristophanes, and I
began to rave about it to Leo, and to wax eloquent on the magic
of this poetry, the beauty of the choral odes, and so on and so
forth. Leo let me have my say, perhaps ten minutes in all, without
showing any sign of disapproval or impatience. When I was
finished, he asked; " I n which edition do you read Aristophanes?"
I thought: has he not been listening? What has his question got
to do with what I have been telling him After a moment's ruffled
hesitation I answered: "The Teubner". Leo: " Oh, you read
Aristophanes without a critical apparatus." He said it quite
without any sharpness, without a whiff of sarcasm, just sincerely
taken aback that it was possible for a tolerably intelligent young
man to do such a thing. I looked at the :,awn nearby and had a
single, overwhelming sensation: VUV f1.0L ZXVOL supsLa Later
it seemed to me that in that moment had understood the meaning
of real scholarship."
Textual criticism is not the be-all and end-all of classical
scholarship, which is the study of a civilization. But it is an
indispensable part of it. By far the greater part of our knowledge
of that civilization comes to us from what the ancients wrote.
In almost all cases those writings have survived, if they have

6 7
 editor
survived at all, in copies many stages removed from the sity of textual criticism, but they are content to leave it to the
are reading and to trust in his superio r knowle dge.
originals, of which not a single one is free from error. of the text they
people who can be trusted ,
Often the errors are so great that it is no longer possible to tell Unfortunately editors are not always
so that readers are not
what the author meant to say. It follows that anyone who wants and critical apparatuses are provided
the editor's long
to make serious use of ancient texts must pay attention to the un­ dependent upon them. Though the reader lacks
may nevertheless
certainties of the transmission; even the beauty of the choral odes acquaintance with the text and its problems, he
ordinary common
that he admires so much may turn out to have an admixture of surpass him in his feeling for the language or in
ed to consid er the facts presented
edi�orial guesswork in it, and if he is not interested in the authenti­ sense, and he should be prepar
judgm ent on them. He must
city and dependability of details, he may be a true lover of beauty, in the apparatus and exercise his own
but he is no serious student of antiquity. The dangers are obviously do so in places where the text is important to him for some further
ed solely for editors,
more far-reaching if the text is being used as a source f or historical purpose. This book, therefore, is not intend
and desires some
events, ancient life and manners, Greek or Latin linguistic usage, but for anyone who reads Greek and Latin
ch textua l questi ons. Textual criticism
or whatever it may be. guidance on how to approa
each new proble m calls for
But the practice of textual criticism is more than a prophylactic cannot be reduced to a set of rules:
which are useful
agajinst deception. It brings benefits which go beyond its immediate new thought. But there are general principles
to explain.
aims of ascertaining as exactly as possible what the authors wrote and not always self-evident, and these I shall
and defining the areas of uncertainty. When scholars argue about
whether Aristophanes wrote dE or --;-2 in such-and-such a passage,
the debate may seem trivial to the point of absurdity, and indeed Types of source
the sense may not be affected in the least. But '�y asking the
or paper manu­
question "which in fact did the poet write?", scholars may be Most classical authors come to us in parchment
century and often
led to inquire into the usage of the particles and the habits of scripts which are seldom earlier than the ninth
are preserved in
Aristophanes more closely than it would ever have occurred to as late as the sixteenth. Some authors and works
other cases the numbe r may run into
them to do otherwise. In the same way, by asking such questions only one manuscript, in
in wbich printed
all the way through the text, they learn all kinds of things that hundreds. There are also a few cases
cript(s ) from which
they did not know and never wondered about, sometimes things editions serve as the only source, the manus
differe nt \vorks
that were not known to anybody. So our understanding of the they were made having since been lost. Sometimes
, or even differe nt parts of the same work, arc
languages, metres, and styles of the Greeks and Romans has been by the same author
cripts. Most classica l manus cripts are
continually refined by the observations of clever critics. That in contained in different manus
m collect ions, but some are
turn helps us to form correct judgments about passages where the now in European libraries or museu
owners hip, and
sense is affected. This is to say nothing of the interest and value in monasteries (particularlv in Greece) or
lem, or in American
that the study of such matters as the proclivities of scribes, and some are in such places as lstanbul or Jerusa
be mentioned those
the processes governing the spread of texts at different periods, libraries. Among the larger collections may
eca Medic ea Lau renziana in
has in its own right. of the Vatican library, the Bibliot
Ivfarcia na in Venice,
Students have sometimes said to me that they recognize the neces- Florence, the Ambrosiana in Milan, the

9
8

t '.'
 the Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna, the Bibliotheque
Nationale in Paris, and the British Museum in London.
For many Greek authors (and a few Latin) we possess also,
or
only, remnants of ancient copies on papyrus or parchment, often
very small remnants but occasionally substantial. These continue
to be published year by year. They are very rarely older than
3 00 B. C. and never older than about 35 0. The largest number
date from the second and third centuries A. D., but they continue
into the sixth and seventh.
Apart from straightforward copies of complete works there
may exist excerpts in anthologies, epitomes, paraphrases,
or
translations, e. g. of Greek works into Latin or Arabic. In some
cases these are the only sources extant, and even when they are
not, they may be of use as evidence for the text from which thev
O
were made - which is not, of course, necessarily the true text bu
t with the already
may well be an older text than that of surviving manu�c ipts.
:
; the possibilities of cross-contamination occurs in the Byzantine
Ancient or medieval commentaries and scholia hold out the
same
promise. Their evidence about the text is of three kinds. First.
there are the actual quotations from the text, known as lemmata
: rather different form by Diogenes Laertius. One of the manuscripts
which serve as headings to sections of the commentary. Second,
there may be explicit statements of variant readings. Third, there
is the interpretation offered, which may presuppose a particular
version of the text. Unfortunately scholia are not usually docu­
ments wlth a definite date. They are added to a" well as shortened
or altered in the course of time, and are liable to contain a rr.ixture
of material of very different dates. At best they can inform us of
Alexandrian scholars' readings, at worst they testify only to the
obtuseness or perverse ingenuity of some medieval reader. It is
also worth noting that as they are usually transmitted together
with the text, the lemmata are liable to be adjusted to fit the
accompanying text, which may cause a discrepancy between
lemma and interpretation.
The evidence of ancient quotations, more surprisingly, is also
affected by this interaction with the direct manuscript tradition
of the author Cl uoted. It might be thought that when one ancient
10
author quoted a passage from another, that passage would from
then on be preserved in a manuscript tradition quite independent
of the main one, so that agreement with the main one or with part
of it would take us back to the time of the quoting author. But
in practice it often happens that both traditions, that of the quoted
author and that of the quoting, show similar sets of variants. In
some cases these are such as could have arisen independently in
the two traditions, in others it is necessary to assume interaction J).
A well-known ins'cance is the quotation of Virgil, Eel. 4,62, by
Quintilian 9 ,3 , 8. Virgil must have written qui non risere nee
deus hune mensa, dea nee dignata eubZii est, and Quintilian's comment
on the change from plural to singular proves that he quoted it in
that form. But his manuscripts, like those of Virgil, give cui non
which must be an importation by a copyist familiar
risere parentes,
corrupted Virgil. A more dramatic example of
historian Nicetas Choniata (p. 772 Bekker), who c[uotes some
lines of Solon that had earlier been quoted by Plutarch and in a
follows Plutarch's version, the other Diogenes' . Nicetas must have
taken the quotation from one of the two authors, but a copyist
who knew the other has seen fit to write it in - first no doubt as
a marginal variant, but subsequently put into the text. More will
have to be said presently on the limitat ions of quotations as evi­
dence for the text.
Imitations and parodies are occasionally of use, especially in
the case of verse texts. For example, in Iliad 1,4--5, where the main
tradition gives c(\J.rouc; oE EA0Jpw. TEUX.E X.UVE(j(JlV Otc,)Vf)lcrl ,10 -;CIXue,
Athenaeus records that the pioneer of Alexandrian scholarship,
Zenodotus, read the more forceful O!XLT!X instead of 1C:;((Jt: it has
been observed that this is supported by the echo in Aeschylus,
Suppl. 800f. lwatv 0' E1CSt6' �A(0p!X ,cXmx.<J)p[OtC; o pv t (J t 8E�1C'IOV, (But
I
1) See E. R. Dodds, Plato: Gorgias, p. 64; W. S. Barrett, Euripides:
Hippolytos,
pp. 429 f.; my Hesiod: Theogony, p. 69 n. 1.
11
 OIXLTIX if places; he might retain and omit v; he might v in place
the imitation could not have been used to infer a reading
of t, without mention of t; or he might put v in the text and t in
its existence had not been recorded. ) The text of an imitation, of
course, may in its turn have light thrown upon it by comparison the margin.

of the model. Thus in the case of Catullus 4 and the early parody This confluence of readings from more than one exemplar is

in Catalepton 10 of the Appendix Vergiliana, each poem is partly known as c o n t a m i n a t i 0 n. \X/hen it is not present, the relationship

restored from a corrupt manuscript tradition with the help of the of copies to exemplars can be represented by di verging lines. For

other. example the diagram

The nature of manuscript transmission

Whenever a manuscript is copied, some mistakes will almost

certainly be made. But manuscript transmission is not simply a
mechanical process of cumulative error. The scribe may notice
errors in the exemplar before him and be able to correct them,
expresses the fact that B and were copied from and D and E
even without recourse to another copy; so it is quite possible
for his copy, the to be on more accurate than from B. But if the scribe of E mingled reading�, from Band C,

the On the other hand, the number of errors corrected this calls for converging lines:

must be less than the number and the overall trend

will necessarily be towards a less correct text. Besides, some of
the scribe's 'corrections' may themselves be mistaken, and this
kind of corruption is often more insidious than inadvertent
miscopying, being less easily detected afterwards.
The fact that errors occur in copying, and that the comparison It is to be noted, however, that the line BE now represents a

of different manuscripts brings variant readings to light, is no different relationship from the line BD, namely a Je/ee/ion from
the readings that characterize B, instead of a more or less complete
of them.
modern discovery. was well known in antiquity, as well as in
the Middle Ages, and the precaution was sometimes taken of reproduction

checking a newly-made copy not only against its immediate exem­ If we were in a position to see the whole tradition of any ancient

plar but another manuscript. When a variant was noticed, author, that is to say if we had knowledge of every copy ever

it might be introduced into the new copy correction, Of it might made, and knew in each case which other copies the scnbe used,
and if we had tae patience and ingenuity (and a enough sheet
be noted in the margin or between the lines, preceded by some
EV of paper) to set out their relationships in the way illustrated,
such as sv �, yp. yp:xcpsTca),
we could expect to see a complex system of lines ramifying from
al. (= alibi or aliter), l)e/. When a copy furnished with this kind
of primitive critical apparatus served in its turn as an exemplar to the point representing the author's original. Most of the lines

another he might do any of four things. He might preserve would be diverging, and there might be considerable areas of the
diagram where they were all diverg:ng, to periods
both the variant in the text (t) and the marginal variant (v) in their

13
12

F
at which was not customary, whether from scarcity
of or lack of awareness of the advantages. In other areas,
there would be much convergence. There would also be many lines
that came to a stop, corresponding to all the manuscripts from
which no copies were made. These would become increasingly
frequent as we approached the end of antiquity. In the case of
some authors the transmission would here peter out altogether;
for mhers it would be reduced to a single line, others again would
be a little luckier. Then, from the late eighth or ninth century
the stream would begin to broaden out once more,
thouuh '
it would never recover its former dimensions, and might
b
again run or be reduced to a trickle before the final salvation
of the Renaissance.
That is the sort of picture that must be held in mind. But
all the manuscripts that existed, only a small fraction have sur-
and often all belong to the same small corner of the
whole diagram that we have imagined. If they happen to come
from an area where the lines are all diverging, we shall have what
is called a c l o s e d r e c e n s i o n, that it will be p08sible to con­
struct self-contained diagram (known as a s t e m m a) which
represents the historical relationship of the manuscripts accurately
enough for useful conclusions to be drawn about the antiquity
individual readings. The principles on which this is done are ex­
plained in the next If the extant manuscripts do not come
from such a straightforward area of the tradition, they may still
appear to, if not enough of them are extant to reveal the com­
plexity of their true relationships; or it may be apparent that no
stemma can do justice to the situation, and we shall realize that
we are faced with an o p e n r e c e n s i o n2).
2) The term and its opposite were invented by Pasquali, who also speaks of
'horizontal' as opposed to 'vertical' transmission when cross-contamination is
involved. Note that if only two manuscripts are preserved from a contaminated
area of the tradition, there will be nothing to show that it is contaminated: what­
ever errors they share can be attributed to a common exemplar. It needs a third
copy to show that are more complicated.
14
=
But it is only if the number of extant manuscripts is rather
small
that the recension is likely to be completely open or complet
ely
closed. If there are twenty or so, it will probably turn out
that
some of them are related simply and without contamination
and
others not. If the older manuscripts can be fitted into a stemma,
the promiscuity of the younger ones should be easy to establish
and may be unimportant. If the relationship of the older manu­
scripts resists analysis, it may still be possible to identify sub­
groups whose structure can be stemmatized.
Various causes of textual discrepancy
Miscopying is far from being the only cause of textual variation
,
and misreading is far from being the only cause of miscopying..
of r conclude this chapter with a survey � which in the nature of
things cannot be exhaustive � of the variety of ways in which a
text may suffer change.
The first way is that the author himself may change after
copies have already gone into circulation. Aristophanes revised
his Clouds after its production in 424/3, and both versions sur­
vived into Hellenistic times (we have the revisionrl). The scholia,
of
to Apollonius Rhodius' Argonautica are able to quote from an
'earlier edition' (rrpotx:5ocHc;) of the poem, which differed here and
there from the current version 4) .. 'J7e have it on Ovid)s own
authority that his Metamorphm:es got into circulation before he
had fully revised it (Tristia 1,7,13 and our manuscripts of the
poem offer alternative versions of certain passages The tradi­
tions of several other ancient works have been shown or alleged
to betray the effects of issue at different stages of completion 6 )
,
3) See K. J. Dover's larger edition of the play, pp. lxxx-xcvi
ii.
4) See H. Frankel, Einleitung . . . , pp. 7-11.
5) See, most recently, the brief but judicious remarks of A. S. Hollis, Ovid: Meta"
morphoses Book VIII, pp. x-xi. xxvii. 102-4. 117-,8. 123-4.
6) See Pasquali, Storia . . . , pp. 397-465; H. Emonds, Zweite iml\ltertum
(Leipzig 1941) ; further bibliography in M. D. Reeve, Proceedings of the Cambridge
Philological Society 15, 1969, 75 n. 1.
15
 the treatises 'j"::spl cr[r,(1.:X'(,l') and the collec-
sometimes on the of doublets standing side by side in the
text, sometimes on the ground of divergences between
tions, or any body of ancient scholia, will serve as 11 ).
different branches of the tradition, if both versions convince the The divergences between the two primary

connoisseur of their authenticity. In such a case it is not necessary Daphnis and Chloe show that copyists of this
felt themselves at liberty to change the as went
to assume that the two branches of the tradition have come
down independently of each other from the time of the along. In this case one cannot properly speak of different recensions;
but it is otherwise with the so-called Alexander which
author
Th ere are others besides the author who may take it upon them­ exists in six different versions dated between 300 and 700 A.
to say nothing of medieval and modern
12 .) The two
selves to improve the composition. Greek tragedies suffered ex­
tensively from interpolations by actors (or at any rate for their Lives of Aesop belong in the same category, and the various
collections of Aesopic fables. at least of the Hippo­
use), more in the fourth century B. C. than at any later
time 8); the plays of Plautus may have undergone something of cratic corpus were subject to revision or rearrangement Some of

the sort on a smaller scale in the second century, but the evidence the idiosyncrasies of an Ambrosian manuscript of the Oath have
now been proved ancient P. 2547; it does not follow
is less clear 9 ) . The embellishment of the Homeric poems by
that the medieval alternatives are not also ancienL Another text
is a similar phenomenon. It seems to show itself in
quot:J.tions by authors of the fourth of a technical nature, Aratus' Phaenomena, was rewritten in places
B. and in the
earlier by Maximus Planudes (e. 12')5-1305; see Bekker's apparatus at
which are characterized additional lines of an
lines 502-6, 51 ; and as late as 1704 an editor of
inorganic nature (often borrowed from other contexts) and some
other divergences from the vulgate Dionysius Periegetes' geographical poem thought it permissible,

Some kinds of text were always subject to alteration. Com­ in the interest" of students, to omit and transpose certain passages
and to add new sections dealing with Muscovy, ,America,
mentaries, lexica and other works of a grammatical nature were
rightly regarded as collections of material to be pruned, adapted ete.
Changes of a less drastic but nevertheless kind may
or added to, rather than as sacrosanct literary entities. When the
rewriting becomes more than superficial, or when rearrangement arise when a passage is the subject of q u o t a t i o n. The main cause

1S 111vol ved, one must of a new recension of the work, if not is inaccurate memory, as it was the practice of most ancient writers
(apart from grammarians, who hunted for their in texts
of a new work The various Byzantine Etymologica,
as a rule) to quote short passages as they remembered them instead
of laboriously looking them up without the aid of numbered chap-
7) See W. Buhler, 109, 1965, 121-33, on Tertullian's Apologeticus.

11)
8) Sce D. . Actors' Interpolations in Greek Tragedy (Oxford 1934).
") See R. Reitzenstein, Geschichte def griechischen 1897);
See F. Leo, Plautinische Forschungen (1912"; Darmstadt 1966), pp. 29 fL The
M. L. West, 'Tryphon, De Tropis', Classical Quarterly n. s. 15, 1965, 230ff.
12)
of later scribes may be involved, cf. C. C. Coulter, Retractatio in the
See K. Mitsakis, Der Alexanderroman n3ch dem Codex Vindob.
Ambrosian and Palatine Recensions of Plautus (Bryn Mawr, Pa.· 1911). At some
date a second ending was composed for Terence's Andria; it does not appear in Theo!. gr. 244 (Munchen 1967), pp. 5 ff. , and Ancient Maceclonia (First Inter­

all and did not appear in all those known to Donatus in the fourth national Symposium, Thessaloniki 1970), pp. 376 ff. The related work of Palladius
on the peoples ofIndia and the Brahmans survives in two recensions; Sce the edition

)
century.
10 See Stephanie West, The Ptolemaic Papyri of Homer (K(jln & Opladen 1967).
by W. Berghoff am Clan 1967).

17
16
ters or verses. are not the only alternatives: very often a
quotation is remembered or copied from another author who has
used it.. Of from an anthology. Hence a whole series of quotations
can appear in two or three different writers, with the same distor­
tions in each.) It was easy to make mistakes, to substitute or trans­
pose words, or to conflate the passage with some other similar one.
Quotations particularly tend to trail off inaccurately at the end,
as the quoter's memory fails. Another thing to beware of is that
he may adapt the construction or some other aspect
of the quotation to suit his own purposes. One type of adaptation
characteristic of anthology excerpts (which can be treated as a
sort of quotation) consists in making the passage more self­
contained; for example cOL has been substituted for ylip at the
beginning of at least two excerpts from Solon in the Theognidea
( 153.315), and a number of excerpts that cannot be checked from
fuller sources seem to have been altered at the end to fill out the
verse.
Christian zeal occasionally affected texts, as in the Vienna
manuscript of Ps.-Hippocrates TCEpl where the names of
Greek have in places been effaced, and 8EOl replaced by
(ko;. There are cases of scribes bowdlerizing a text, that is, sup­
pressing obscenity, though it is surprisingly rare. Herodotus'
chapter on sacred prostitution, 1,199, is passed over by one
group of manuscripts; one copyist of Martial toned down the
vocabulary somew,hat, substituting e. g. adulter for /ututor and
turpes for cunnos in ,90,6-7; and we know of ancient critics who,
shocked by Phoenix's admission that he seduced his father's
mistress at his mother's instigation, altered cn m8ol1.y)v xocl SpE�OC
to 0\) 01)0' sp�Q( (H. 9,453).
Early Greek and early Latin texts underwent a natural process
of orthographical modernization in the course of time. The early
Ionians wrote the contraction of E and 0 as EO, but the texts of
their works usually show the later spelling EU; and many a quoi
and quom has given way to cui and cum. But there was also a con­
trary probably starting in late Hellenistic times, to try
18
to preserve or restore original dialect forms. The effect was to
introduce quantities of pseudo-Ionic forms into the traditions of
Herodotus and the Hippocratica, and pseudo-Doric into that of
the bucolic poets. Otherwise it is difficult to point to of
systematic change prompted by grammatical theory; but Planudes
and his disciples regularly replaced y[vOi1.Ct.l, in the texts
they copied by ylYVOi1.cu, and indulged one or two
other private preferences 13). Mention may be l11ade here of the
phenomenon that a certain manuscript or group of manuscripts
will sometimes consistently deviate in a fixed direction in series
of places, not always for any apparent reason; for instance, one
late copy of Apollonius Rhodius, Casanatensis 408, substitutes
vUfLCjlY) for xoupY) in 3,886. 1025 and 1098.
It is a general truth that emendation by scholars and scribes is
much more evident to us in the Middle Ages and Renaissance
than in antiquity, and at the same time that it constitutes a more
serious problem. The conjectures of ancient critics are some
times recorded in scholia and similar sources, but seldom appear
to have affected the textual tradition. The contribution of any
individual must usually have been as evanescent as a pee into the
river. It was different in the Middle Ages when copies were few
and corruption rife: emendation was at once more often called for
and more likely to colour the whole stream, or a conspicuous
branch of it. Scribes emended what they could not read or were
unable to understand, and sometimes what was Of seemed un­
metricaL For imtance, in the I-Iomcric Hymn
/.Clt: pE �)_cu 2.: czAQ( 11.i>!O::;
xod, TcaUJJC; Kl�),ITPOU,
the words underlined were not legible in the damaged copy from
which the oldest manuscript M is derived, and
dVOCAlY); n: have been supplied instead, not altogether metrically.
In Lucretius 3, 1,
13) See my commentary on Hes. Th. 190. 480" 491.
19
 tenebriJ tantis tam darum extol/ere
the scribe of the copy from which all our manuscripts descend
left the initial r; to be done more ornamentally in red, but, as
often in such cases, the rubricator never got round to the job.
Of the two extant ninth-century copies, one reproduces the omis­
sion, the other supplies 0; some later copies supply A; another
again hits upon the correct jj'. In Juvenal 8, 148,
ipJe rotam adstringit sufflamine mulio consul,
we can see the of mulio to multo leading to the metrical
'correction' multo sufflamine 14) . Scribes' understanding of metre,
however, is seldom more than rudimentary, and often less. An
outstanding exception is Demetrius Triciinius (c. 1280--1340), who
had read metrical treatise, and broke (1uite fresh
ground venturing metrical emendations in Pindar and the
choruses of Greek drama on the basis of the strophic responsion.
Admitted! y he made many mistakes even in the simplest metres 15 ) .
We may now turn to the consideration of semi-conscious and
unconsclOus made by scribes in copying. It must be
emphasized that many of these are not visual but phonetic or
psychological in When one is writing (whether one is
copying or not, but especially if one is), one tends to say the
words over to oneself. One may then find oneself writing down
a word that sounds the same as the one intended. Hence we find,
STrd as a variant for Od71:1J in Mimnermus 9,1 (the
for
Byzantine pronunciation of the two words being identical), and
similarly for " in Theocritus 7, 12 (em·on). ( The con­
stant writing of e for ae in Latin texts, and v for b (less often the
converse), is not the same thing; most cases belong under
14 ) Other from Latin poets are collected by A. E. Housman, M. Manilii
Astronomicon liber primus, pp. Jix-lxix.
I") For a of his emendations in Hesiod's Thcogony see Class. Quart. n. s. 14,
1964, J 81 f. (Add 94 EX y6cp M "vC;O:C)V for EX YO:P -.-Ol For those of a slightly
earlier, P:anudean manuscript see ibid. 176 f.
the heading of modernized spelling. But the implications for the
textual critic are similar.) Spoonerisms are not infreguent, i. e.
confusions like r:1:X/,G!v for for There is a
tendency to simplify consonant clusters, and to write e. g.
for S){),.Q(y�sv, or ClJtersi for ab.rtersti.
The substitution of one word for another can be brought about by
m e n t a l a s s o c iat i o n s of a non-phonetic nature; e. g. Tr'.)i.rx� and
6up:xc are often variants. A word that little in a monk's
life may be mistaken for one that plays a greater part,. c. g.
for ( Some examples from the tradition of
collected by R. M. Ogilvie, Greece & Rome n. s. 8, 971, 32-34;
other Latin examples in Havet, M'l11uel.., pp. 263-264.) The
scribe may be reminded of a similar word or that he has
copied earlier, it may be many page; earlier. Thus for
Dc),.QV in Hes. Th. 454 the writer of B gives
a
compound which has occured in 17 and 136. At Ovid Met. 12, 103
inritaJnina cornu is corrupted to inritamenla malorum remi­
niscence of 1,140. Memories of particularly well-known an thors
like Homer and Virgil were liable to intrude even without recent
copying being involved. The ends of verses or sentence::; suffer
most from this kind of error, because they regularly coincide with
the end of the piece of text that the scribe carries in his head while
his pen is in motion.
Because he. carries a block of text in his head, at least a whole
phrase or half a line, he may unwittingly alter the order of the
words. One special type of that occurs in Greek tragic
texts is the so-called v i t i u m B y z a n t i n u m, by which a paroxytone
word is moved to the end of the iambic trimeter to make it sound
more like a Byzantine dodecasyllable. Parallel to this is a type
found for example in one family of Plutarch manuscripts, by which
the rhythm at the end of a sentence is adapted to habits
(on which see P. Maas, Greek 962, para. 23). /\nother type
aims to avoid hiatus in prose: a Ptolemaic papyrus of Xenophon's
Memorabilia Heidelberg reveals that the medieval tradi­
tion has suffered from this kind of refinement. But much more

20
21
 general cause which in all kinds of text is the i n s t i n c t is Petronius 36, quo facto uidemu.r {.reiiicet in aitero ferctlio} a!tilia
t o s i m pI i Baccbylides 5,47 wrote
Ot}t.rxLu)V; but in the London papyrus the last three words
TL:; np(;lToc; Mywv et sumina. A that resembles the word explained is particularly
liable to be mistaken for a correction; e. g_ &yyD,oIJ has ousted &YY!X­
:tan �i unmetrically in the more straightforward order (kPXEv Myu)v pOU in the manuscripts of Aeschylus Ag. 282, and Tcldy:J(JWG�V has
OLY.rxl(,)V. OVld Am. 1,14,1 wrote dicebam 'medicare
tuos desiste capillos'; ousted p�G(J(D(WI at Callimachus Hymn. 3,243. A particularly com­
m some manuscripts this has become dicebam 'desiste tuos mon type of gloss consists of a proper name supplied where the
medicare
eapillos'. Examples could be multiplied indefinitely 1 6) . author used a circumlocution, as in the Panegyric of Messalla
This simplification of word order is only one manifestation (Corpus Tibull. 3,7) 56 Aetnaeae Neptunius incola where the
of
the tendency to banalize, to erode away the unusual form gloss Cyclops has intruded into the line above
or ex­
pression in favour of the everyday. o(Joowc becomes OGOlC;, &VTdvrx When, however, a scribe wr ites above 6S Tb. 16 1
c;
becomes &vrxTdvrx�, dein becomes deinde, !audarit becomes laudaue this cannot strictly be called a ; nor IS 1t meant as a correction
rit.
Asyndeton is eliminated by the addition of a connecting particl or variant. It is advice to the reader on how to interpret the
e.
Thmgs that the author left to be understood are made sequence of thought. The writing of 0 over vocatives in some
explicit.
Constructions that look incomplete are supplemented. It Latin manuscripts is not dissimilar 18). In these cases too, as with
is often
dlffJcult to say how far these processes are
conscious. Perhaps glosses in the proper sense, incorporation in the text will have a
the thinks he may as well make the text a bit easier to read. banalizing effect. There are also kinds of marginal note which
Perhaps he genuinely thinks a mistake has been made. are not glosses but can enter the text. The most consists
Perhaps
he wntes down what he expects to see, without thinking. He of a quotation of some other passage that a reader has been re­
may
be misled by notes inserted in the margin or between the lines minded of. So at Aeschylus Persae 2"i3, the somewhat similar verse
of
his exemplar to aid understanding, and take them as part Sophocles Ant. 277 is written in dIe margin of 'vI ; copies made
of the
text or as corrective of it. from M have incorporated it in the text.
The best-known species of this genus is the 0 s s, that is, a There are several ways in which an individual word m.ay be
word or phrase that explains a word or phrase in the text. miswritten without having been misread. By far the commonest
Glosses
may intrude into the text, either in place of what they were way is partial a s s i m i l a t i o n to some other word nearby. Endings
meant
to explaJil or in addition to it. For example, in Hipponax are particularly liable to be assimilated, bringing confusion to the
fr. 72,7
A.cVELul'! TCrxAfLuC;, t he rare word 7tCXAfWC; survives
( "'" I

syntax. The following examples occur in a hundred lines of Euri-

pi'des' Herac 1 cs: 364 TCl..' ') T OPS[,'101J.(J)';) cx:ypt(J)V
only in one manuscript the corrupt form TCrx),rxwxc), while the " , "
; .. f).2 YE')'\)'X'V
-,�, ,

others give instead. In fr. 66 of the same poet, trans- (for OpELVclfLov, assisted by phonetic equivalence); 372 TcA-�-
mitted as ;wux POUVTCXC; (for Tc),'fJPOUVTE::;); 396 XpUGS(DV T:ET!t.A0lV &TcO /Ept
V(J':"EPOV 7P(;lYEl, the
gloss has got in without displacing Arx(l)8rxpyoc;. xrxpTC6'1 (for /P')()"EOV . .. ?); 398 &TChTO') D.LY.'
Another example, which will illustrate a different kind of
gloss,

16)
17 ) A number of ex.amples, and references to other discussiom. of the phenomenon,
Sec YXI. Headlam, Classical Review 16, 1902, 243ff.;
W. Ronsch, Cur et quo­ are given by R. ;vIerkelbach, Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und 1, 1967,
modo 11brarll verborum collocationem in Ciceron
is orationibus commutaverint 100-2.
'
Diss. Leipzig 1914, Havet, M.anuel . . . , pp. 242-6. 18 ) See G. P_ Goold, Phoenix 23, 1969, 198; Havet, Manuel . ., p. 291.

22
23
 ne, so that
(for &:yopov), scribe's copying unit tends to be the line or half-li
n) or line-be­
EuIlIX[IJ.OWJC;); 456 (;) O\)C)T(XAIX�V' verbal similarities at line-end (h o m o e o t e le u t o
ginning (h 0 m o e a r c h 0 n) 1 9 ) are particularly
EfL':;:)V 70
to mislead
XIXL T�X'i(0V
(for Medial assimilation is well illustrated
him. In general it may be
by the inscription on a sixth-century vase ( Berlin F 1794): one said of these mecha nical omissi ons that
: En 0 lEL EN, the other has or two much more freque ntly
side has the correct they affect shor t passages of a line
IC\ EL: El! y remem bers appro xi­
Nocopying is involved here, which than long ones, because the scribe usuall
proves that the error is entirely mental, not visual; and in a batch mately where he has got to on the page.
of examination scripts which I had to muk in 1967 I noted no
Letters
Simple m i s re a d i n g o f wor d s is not uncommon.
less than 77 slips of the pen of the assimilative type, e. g. 'a critique
ination. The
could be mistaken for other letters singly or in comb
ally varies accor ding to the
of the Roman of his time and of human nature in general' (, Rome' particular errors liable to occur natur
ent times . Familiarity
assimilatcd to the 'human'); 'an excellent examplic of the different styles of writing current at differ
manu scripts or
rhetoric of ; 'bread, not oxen was the only food known with these can only be acquired by examining
teacher 20).
to Dicaeopolis which was put into an oxen' (fo/'an oven'). facsimiles, preferably with the guidance of an
letter-confusions.
Other standard types of psychological crror are apl o g r a p h y, But it will be in place here to list the standard
d i t t o gr a p h y, and simple o m i s sio n. Haplography means
Greek uncial:; (from 300 A = L1 = A. r = T. e = (�)
writing once what ought to be written c. g. defendum instead
o = C. H == E:1. fl = N = K 1= N. '1'=
of is the opposite, reduplication of a syl-
concurrent
unit. examination scripts produced Greek minmcule (from the ninth century, at first
with capitals): :t. = IXI). IX = El. rx= w. ? = x = (1..
S = Etl. i) = x.
of dittography (,renonown' for 'renown', etc.,
of a short word like 'be' or '0£'), only fL = v. v = p. 71 = GG.

Omission too is especially liable to occur = R. C = P.

Latin capitals (down to the sixth century): B
insofar as it results from lack of coordination
C = G = O. D = O. E = F. H = N. 1 = L= T. :vI = NI.
AI. 0 = Q. P = T.
between mind and hand. There is, another kind of
N=
omission which may be of any length, and here we must make the
transition to error by misreading. of
of words or phrases, not only to lines
I refer omissions committed by the scribe because he fails The terms are applicable to any pair
19 )
t forma tion 'ho11lo earcto n'.
the cllually correc
verse. For 'homocarchon' some use
to notice a portion of the text before him. Often the oversight has established itself as a useful additio
n
'Homoeomeson', coined by Housmw,
has cause: similar words or phrases appear twice on
) e Tho mpson , Introduction to Gre ek
to the group.
the same page, and the after as far a�3 the first, 20 A useful start can be made from E Maune
C. H. Roberts, Greek Hands
mistake:; the second for the place he has reached, and so omits and Latin Palaeography (Oxford 1912); .
Greek of the Ancien t World (Oxford
what comes in This is the so-called s a u t d u mem e a u (Oxford 195:)); E. G. Turner, .
ann, Specimina C:odicum Graecorum Vatl­
1971); P. F. de' Cavalieri and J. Lietzm
mem e. For instance, in Seneca epist. 74,8 modo in banc partem, P. Liebaert, Specimina C:odicum Latinorum
canorum (Bonn 1910); F. Ehrle and
modo in if/am one group of manuscripts omirs the first ?vIerkelbach and H. van Thiel, Griechisches
phrase, while in 1 3,17 repetition of the phrase ergo non sunt
(Berlin & Leipzig 1927, repr. 1967); R
Lesehcft (Gottingen 1 %9), where further
Leseheft (Gc)ttingcl1 1965), Lateinisches
animafia has caused the omission of six sentences. In verse the bibliography.

25
24
 Latin uncials to century): B = R. C =€::= G = O. language even if they cannot quite foHow its meaning, and it is not
cr = U. D = 0= U F = P = R. 1= L = T. M = CO. N = often that they abandon all pretence of articulacy. That happens
AI. 0 ==
in the Medicean manuscript of Aeschylus' Supplices, where
the

Latin minuscule (from the eighth century): a = u.. b = h. scribe had a single damaged uncial exemplar before him and was
c = e. cl = d. c = t. f = s. in = m = ui. n = u. often baffled by the difficult text. It happens most surely when
a

Latin copyist who does not know Greek suddenly finds himself
It should be understood that this classification greatly over­
to
. faced with a Greek phrase or quotation: then he is reduced
slmphfles, particularly with regard to Latin script: there were
imitating the shapes of unknown letters, and gibberish soon
several transitional forms between uncial and minuscule, and
results, leaving the critic with beautiful examples of purely visual
�
some very differe t types of minuscule. In all the categories it is
CAI-li\-
corruptions unspoiled by other factors: i\
the case that 111dIvIdual hands vary, some allowing more ambiguity
I10AXPl'COIOlVIYICHNHC (cx.tOEO[.LIXt �CWlA�cx. Muxy,-

6,505 Keil).
than others.
V7)C;. Gramm. Lat.
As long as a scribe finds his exemplar reasonably intelligible,
IS a common source of error. In
The use of ab b r e v i a t i o n
he does not read it letter letter but takes in a whole word or
and
antiquity abbreviation was little used except in documents
phrase at one glance. His misreadings a.re therefore not always
only
texts of a sub-literary nature such as commentaries. The
analysable terms of individual letters : the aspect of the word as
a
abbreviations common in literary texts are the numeral signs;
a whole may deceive him if he happens to combine the strokes he
of the line, indicating final v in Greek,
stroke above the last vowel
11 or m in Latin, and b', q', for
sees in the wrong way. This is especially easy in Latin minuscule
-que. Later, when Christian
where slightly sinuous uprights play an important part in th �
scribes appear the scene, we find the so-called n o m i n a s a c r a
on

abbreviated in the style (3C for Gsoc;, DS for deus; declined, ace
formatIOn of several letters. For example (ftnit) in Manilius
3,229 is misread as (sunt); mau:m.r(il1uciu.f) in 4,3 1as"luue-mf
eN, DM, gen. , DI, dat. DO. In time these abbreviations
(iuuenis) .
came to be used in pagan texts too, and it is worth noting the ones
likely to be encountered there: (�)C = Os[)c;,KC
Texts were written without word-division down to the end of
X1JpWC, YC
:=: =

utoc;, erc = cn:cx.upoe;, AN OC = u.vElPC0ITOC;, OYNOC =

antiquity, and even later the division is sometimes incomplete or

gen. rIPC, dat.

111consplcuoUS. mistakes result from a copyist seeing part
nHP = TCClT�P (voc.
of one word as part of another, or one word as two, etc.; e. g.
01. 10,55 appears in some manuscripts
pl. fIPEC ete), MHP = ITVEUflcx.
TO OE Gw:pcx.vEc; 111 P111dar
0' se; .
(gen. HNC, dat. fINT, pI. SPS

domil1us, se;
==

as 70 TI: e rare word was hard to recognize. Similarly

JpmtuJ, DNS= S(J.1ZCtUJ, NR= l10ster (NRA,
VR = ueJter22). Derivatives can be formed from these,
111 PropertlUs
2,32,5 deportant esseda Tibur, where N has made
deportantes sed abitur . Obscure words and proper names fre­ NRI, etc.),
e. g. (1)VWIJ' == OlJpcXVWC;, TCPOXAEYlC = fIcx.7pOXAE7)C. It is this type of
quently baffle the scribes. Catullus' annaieJ VobtJi (36,1) be­
comes annuale suo iUJi - totally meaningless, but Latin \!fords 21) .
COpYIsts grasp at indications that they are writing the required
22)
There are numerous variations. The classic study is L. Traube,
Nomina Sacra

)
evidence in A. H. R. E. Paap, Nomina Sacra in the
(Munchen 19(7); more recent
21 Further examples in Havet, Manuel . .. , pp. 206-7. 1959).
Greek Papyri of the first five centuries A. D. (Leyden

26 27
 Finally i t m u s t b e noted t h a t o n e c o rrupti o n often leads t o
abbreviati o n that i s r e s p o ns i b l e s uc h c o n fu s i o n s a s TW.TO[
'
for
TC P lV ,
I
&VElp (0TC�, >i"
an other, s o m e effo r o f i n terp r etati o n o n t h e p a rt o f t h e scribe
g. a t A ri s t o p hanes Ach. 8 3 2 an'
fo r diu ( C atullus 6 1 , 2 5 ) .
b eing u s u ally involv e d .
and then p.. l V became
T h e ri s e o f m i n u s cule s crip t , with i t s cursive ances t r y , b rought
w a s wrongly divi d e d a s &'A)jx fJ.h (R), or
a much wi d e r range o f a b b reviati o n s i n t o use, a n d n o attemp t
fJ.E:v . U n d e r this heading b e l o n g s t h e whole large clas s o f s c ri b al
can be made here to give an account o f the m . j\1 an y o f them involve
emendation s that are p r o mpted b y a corrupt readi n g a n d are them­
the replacement o f letters ( p arti cularly i n termi nati o n s ) b y s h o rt­
selves mis ta k e n . M ulti- stage c o rrupti o n a purely grap h i c kind
hand s y m b o l s . V aluable works o f reference exis t o n the s u b j ect 2 3 ) ,
i s rare : where non-adj acent letters i n a word o r phrase have b een
but there i s n o s u b stitute fo r experience with m an u s crip t s i f the
mis read, as at Thucydides 6 , 7 4,2 OPIA b ec am e
c ritic i s t o handle i t with real s kill . H o we v e r , it i s p o s s i b l e to
KAC , o r a s at P l a t o G o r g . 4 6 7 b CX€ T A became € X€TAIA,
exaggerate i t s i m p o rtance : a b b r e v i ati o n s are n o t actually
- mis read
it i s o ften e a s i e r t o a s s u me that t h e y w e r e misread s i multan e o u s l y .
as o ften a s s o m e ingeni o u s emenders thin k .
I n emendati o n , acco rdingly, o n e s h o u l d n o t g o t o o far in p o s tu­
A typ e e r r o r that l 11 v o l v e s visual misinterp retati o n b u t n o t
lating multiple mi s readi n g .
actual mi s r eading o c c u r s when t h e c o p yi s t refe r s a marginal o r
The m a i n c au s e s o f textual dis crepancy h a v e n o w been surveyed,
i nt e rli near c o rrecti o n t o w r o n g p l a c e i n t h e text . At Hesiod
and it will s een how vari o u s they are . They are n o t all equally
T h . 2 3 9 , fo r instance, L gives at the b eginning o f t h e line
o p erative in any given text 24) . O n the other hand the critic m u s t
instead of b u t i n the margin the s cribe has w r i t t e n su pu :
keep i n mind a l l tho s e t h a t are o r may b e o p e r ativ e in the text he
i n o n e o f the ap o g r a p h a has been added to i n 240 , making
is d e aling wIth, and n o t follow a o n e - s i d e d app r o ach . How he
. I t i s much the same when an intru s i v e g lo s s di s p l ac e s ,
may best s e t about his t a s k i s the s u b j ect o f next two chap te r s .
n o t t h e w o rd b eing g l o s s e d , but another nearby (an example was
' '
given on p. 2 3 ) . I t may al s o hap p e n that a g l o s s or vari ant ritten �
b etween the l i n e s b e c o m e s conflated with the word below or
a b o v e , p r o d u ci n g a mixture o f the two w h i er! may b e b izarre .
2. Organ izing the data

T h u s at H e s i o d T h . 3 5 5 the l o s t c o p y k m u s t have had

O l&'WY) at T h e s p ade- w o r k of collectin g i n fo rmati o n a b o u t t h e reading s o f
the end, m i s t akenly repeated fro m 3 5 3 , with the c o rrecti o n � owmc; t h e manu s c ripts a n d other s o u rc e s i s m o r e l i k ely t o b e done by
above T h e ap o g rapha K and u p r e s e rv e d thi s arrangement, b u t an editor than by anyone el s e , and I will deal with it in Part lI .
i n the next g e n erati o n t h e M o s q u e n s i s 4 6 2 ( c o p i e d fro m K) pro­ F o r the m o m ent I will a s s u m e t h a t the critic has a b o d y o f s u ch
duced and U ( c o p i e d fro m u) � o o ,wvY) . Again, i f a phrase info r mati o n at hi s dis p o s al .
or line is a c c i dentally o mitted and then r e s t o r e d i n the margin, H i s fi r s t j ob i s t o make a n a s s e s s ment o f the q u ality o f t h e dif-
the next copyist may i n s e rt i t in the w r o n g p l a c e i n t h e text : this ferent s ou r ce s , which is . n part a q u e s ti o n thei r rel ati onships

)
is the c au s e o f many tran s p o sitions .
24 I m a y m e n t i o n h e r e the copious coHections of in Douglas Young ' s

) articles ' S ome Types of Error i n Manus cripts o f Oresteia' (Greek,

23 S e e E. M aunde T h o mp s o n , Intro d u ction to Greek and Latin Palaeography,
R o m an and Byzantine Studies 5, 1 964, 8 5-9 9 ) and ' S ome Types of Scribal Error
7 9 if. ; W. M. Llndsay, Notae Latinae (Cambridge 1 9 1 5) ; D o ris Bains, A Supple­
in Manus eripts of Pindar' (ibi d . 6 , 1 9 6 5 , 247-7 3 ) ; W. The S peeches of I saeus
m en t t o N o tae Latinae ( C a m b r i d g e 1 9 3 6 ) ; A. Capp elli, Dizionario di a b b reviature
(Cambridge 1 904) , pp . xxxvi-xlvi ; C . Austin, M enandri A s p i s et Samia I (Berlin
1 9 69), pp. 59-65 ; H. Frankel, Einleitung . . . , pp. 22-47 .
btine ed i t aliane ( J'vl i l an o 1 ( 29) ; A. Pelzer, A b reviations lat i n e s m(§ d iev al es
& Paris 1 96 4) ( s upplements Cappelli) .

29
28
to o n e anothe r . S up p o s e are, b e s i d e s a m e di eval man u s cript
traditi o n , s o me fragments o f a p ap yr u s a t h o u s an d years o l d e r
t h a n a n y o f the co mplete manu s c ri p t s , a n d a few anci ent q u ota­
ti o n s . Can c o nnexi o n s b e s een b etween the t e x t o f t h e p ap y r u s
and t h a t o f the later c o p i e s ? A r e t h e r e a n y cas e s w h e r e the s am e
c o rruption i s p r e s ent in b o th ? A r e there c a s e s where the papyrus
o ffer s an infe ri o r reading ? D o e s i t ever share an infe r i o r reading
with p art o f the later traditi o n , a n d i f s o , does i t side c o n s i s tently
with a p a rticula r g r o u p o f manu s crip t s ? How were the q u o ta­
ti o n s made, fro rn direct knowledge o r at s e c o n d hand ? F r o m
m e m o r y o r fro m a b o o k ? s crupul o u s w a s the q uoting auth o r ,
and h o w g o o d was t h e t e x t k n o w n t o h i m ? H o w reliable a r e the
manu s c ri p t s in which h e is p re s erved, and d o they give the q u o ta­
ti o n in the fo r m which h e made it ? S up p o s e again there is a
translati o n . When was it made ? H o w accu rate was i t , and h o w
accu rately has i t been transmitte d ? T h e n t h e r e i s the main manu­
s c ri p t tradition its elf. Are any o f the manu s crip t s directly de­
s cended fro m other extant c o p i e s ? I s i t p o s sible to recognize
g r o up s o f cl o s ely related c o p ie s , or t o c o nstruct a stemma ? What
are the habits of the indivi dual s crib e s ?
The i n q uiry p ro c e e d s on two fro n t s , fro m extern al and fro m
internal evidence. I t m a y b e k n o wn fro m a n external s ource who
made the translati o n , fo r i n s tanc e . Manu s c ri p t s m a y c ontain dates
or s ignatures ; if not, a p al a e o g rapher will b e able to t ell ap­
p r o xi m ately at what p eri o d s they were writte n , a n d s o m eti m e s
where (in the c a s e o f Latin manu s c rip t s , the regional varieti e s o f
Latin s crip t b eing fi rmly i d entified) o r b y w h o m . I n dating p ap e r
manu s crip t s watermarks c a n b e a u s eful g u i d e t o the d a t e o f m anu­
facture 1 ) . Or there may be a r e c o r d of a manu s crip t ' s o riginal p ro -
1) See C . M. B riquet, Les filigrane s . Dictionnaire historique des m arques du papier
des leur apparition vers 1 2 82 j u squ'en 1 600. T. 1-4 (Leipzig 1 9232) . - Opuscula,
(Hilversu m 1 9 5 5) ; The Briquet Albu m . A mis cellany on waterm arks, s u pp le­
menting D r . B riquet's Les fi l igr ane s (Hilversum 1 952) . ( = M onumenta chartae
papyraceae histOJriam illustrantia, e d . by E. J . Labarre. Vol. 4 and 2 .)
,
30
venanc e . Such data can b e c o mbined with is known of
general h i s t o ri c al c o n diti o n s that g o v e rned tran s mi s s i o n of
cla s s i cal texts at different times 2) , as well as with more p arti cular
facts s u ch a s the m o vements o f indivi dual known s crib e s , or
p resence o f the autho r in a me dieval catal o g u e p e rtaining t o an
i dentifi e d library.
U p o n this hi s t o rical backcloth we p ro j ect the m o r e exact i n­
fo rmati o n derived fro m internal evi dence, in p articular the inter­
relati o n s hip s of the copies a s inferred fro m compari s o n o f their
readings . H o w far they can be infe r re d , and i s done, are
the q u e s ti o n s that they will occupy us fo r the rest of thi s chap ter.
I am c o n s c i o u s o f c o mmitting a hysteron p roteron here, in
leaving for the next chap ter the s u b j ect the evaluati o n of
variants . Although this evalu ati o n - which involves deciding n o t
o nl y w h i c h variants are true and which fals e , but which are
s c r i b e s ' e mendati o n s - b e c o m e s easier afte r the character and
relati on s hi p s o f the s ou r c e s have been defined , i t i s nece s s ary, in
o r d e r that they can b e defined, t o carry out as much of i t as p o s ­
sible b efo rehand . I think it will b e better, neverthel es s , if I
p o ne d i s cu s sing i t s p rinciples till later, an d for the p r e s ent simply
a s s u me p o s s e s si o n o f the evaluative faculty .
D ealing with a clo s e d recension
Whenever there are two o r more manus crip t s available, the at­
tempt m u s t b e made t o d etermine their hi s t o ri cal r elati on s hip ,
s o that thi s can b e taken into account, t o g ether with other con­
s i derati o n s , in the evaluati o n o f their variants . Th e attempt will
succeed approxi mately in p ro p ortion t o the fre e d o m o f the tradi-
ti o n fro m contaminati o n : ' the traditi o n ' , c o u r s e , means in
context that area o f the tradition which i s repres ent e d b y the extant
manus c rip t s .
2 ) F o r a good brief survey s e e L. D . Reynolds & N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars
(Oxford 1 96 8) .
31
 In the ea c h copy will contain are further errors c o m m o n to B C D E F but avoided
same e rr o rs exemplar fr o m which it was they have their own ' h y p a r c h e t y p e' . A has errors
minus th o s e that the s cri b e has s een and corrected , p lus own, this h yp arche t y p e is n o t derived fro m A b u t in de­
a d diti o n al ones (unles s , p e rhap s , the text i s very short) . tly from [ a ] . A s B CD E F each have some errors which are
axi o m i s t h e b a s i s s temmati c anal y s i s . S up p o s e ther e are shared by th e who le g ro u p , none of them i s i d entical with
extant m an u s cript s , A B C D E F , related a s foll o w s ( [ a] [b] [ cl and w e mus t a s s u m e another copy, [b] .
non- extant c o p i e s ) : s o me further e r r o r s fro m which C D E are fre e . B u t there
errors in B which are not al s o in F, F s o m e errors
raj
to i t s e l f. Therefo r e F i s dire ctly des cen d e d fro m B iI }
�[b share errors fro m which B C F a r e fre e , al s o h a s p e c u -
] errors, s o neither i s derived fro m t h e o t h e r , b u t b o th a r e

B
��" �1J."UU�.Ht u p on
the three copie s o f
another h y p a r chetype [ c l .
[b 1, namely B, C , [cl as reconstructed
DE, no two agree i n error where the third has the co rrect
C [cl

F
I /\
D
and could not have got i t b y con j ect u r e . N o two o f them,
E re, are dep endent u p o n one an other o r o n a further
: all t hr ee c o m e i n d e p e n d e ntl y from [b] .
It be p o s s i b l e t o deduce their
relati onship fro m t h e p established the s t e m m a , we can u s e it to eliminate s o me
o f ag ree ments and dis agreements a m o n g t h e m ; only it i s . variants b y s h o wing that they o riginated in s u ch - an d - s u ch
to realize that what is s i gnificant fo r thi s p u r p o s e i s not ,"'''-UU0LL ' p t a n d w e r e not inherited fro m e a rli er tradi ti o n .
i n true readings inheri t e d fro m m o r e ancient t r a d i t i o n , but aim will b e t o d i s c o v e r a s fa r a s p o s sible w h a t w a s in [a] .
ment in readings s e c o ndary o ri g i n , viz. c o rruptions and shall ign o re F, since we have found its exemp lar ; it can o nly
d ati o n s , p ro v i d e d that they are not s u c h as might have b een of use to us as a s o urce of emendati o n s , o r a p lace where
duced t wo s cri b e s i n d e p en d ently . T h e argument will ru n text has become o b s cured o r damaged since F was c o p i e d
thi s : it. Fro m t h e a g r e e m e n t o f D with E g o o d readi n g s as
There are s o m e e r r o r s 3) c o m m o n to all s i x manuscripts, as bad) we can infer what wa s in [ cl . If an d E disagre e , it
fo re they all d e s cend fro m a c o p y in which all these readings be p o s si b l e t o decide which o f them is fai thfu l to [ e] on t h e
p r e s en t , unl e s s o n e o f the s i x i s i t s e l f the s o u r c e fro m which of agreement w i t h B a n d / o r C , p rovided that [ c l rep ro du c e s
other fi ve d e s cend ; but this is not the c a s e , b e c a u s e each of reading of [b] ; and even w h e r e i t d o e s n o t , will be
has other e r r o r s which are n o t rep r o d u c e d in the r es t . The a r c h
t y P e ( d efin e d a s the l o west c o m m o n anc e s t o r o f the known
s crip t s ) is a l o s t copy [a] . practice i t is
easy to mistake a n apograph for a closer congener a n d vice versa.
H," of direct dependence i s more certain if it is possible to
."OO lHUIJU' ,JU to
physical feature of the exemplar which accounts for the reading of the apo­
3) In what follows 'errors' should be understood as a convenient abbreviation : a lost or t o rn page, words obscured by damp o r written in a way that
' readings of secondary origin' as just define d . misreading.

32 33
easy to decide which of the variants in D E must have arisen first We would j udge F D to two copies of [b] , and so removed two
(in [ c] ) and which second, N ext, from comparison of B , C and [c] , step s from [a] . We would not b e able to tell that there were in
we shall usually b e able to tell what was in [b] , because it will b e fact intermediate copies between [ b] and F and between and
seldom that more than one of them will diverge fro m [b] at the D, unless we found corrupti ons such as could only have occurred
same time, and then the agreement of any one of the three with A in two stage s . Any stemma that we construct for the manuscripts
would gi ve the reading of both [b] and [ a] . of a classical author is liable in the same way to an oversimpli­
We attain our goal, knowledge of the reading of [a] , whenever fication of the historical reality. H owever, it will not b e a serious
we find A in agreement with [b) , i. e . with BeDE, B C D , BCE, BC, falsification., provided that our reas oning has been careful, and
CDE, CD, B D E, B D or B E ; or even with a single one of these provided that contamination is not p resent the system. shall
manuscripts where two copies of [b] have admitted innovations get the readings of [ a] in nearly all cases fro m a s surely a s
llldependently. We can then treat this as the sole transmitted read­ w e would fro m A B C D K Even if only AF a r e extant, their agree­
ing (to be j udged on its merits ) , and dis regard the other variant s . ment will still give u s [a] , though we shall be worse off in that
But what if a n d [b] disagree ? In some cases i t m a y be clear they will disagree more often than A and did, and so us
which reading was the source of the other . O therwi s e the question more often in doubt.
must b e left open 5 ) . If contamination is p resent we may b e seriously misle d . Suppose
Now that the p rinciple has been explained, i t is necessary to that the scribe of F, besides copying kept an eye on A and
out some p o s sible complications that were deliberately borrowed some readings fro m there, and suppose then that
excluded fro m the hypothetical situation given above. Suppose was lost. The true stemma would now b e :
that of the nine manuscripts in the system only three were extant
instead of six, namely F and D. C o mparison of their readings
would gi ve us the following stemma : [a]

///'�b
[A ]
[a ] [ ]

�b \,\,
\
� C
A
B [c l
[ ]

/\ \\\F /\
D E
F D

5) Sometimes the condition of an archetype allows deductions about earlier copies.

The Lucretius archetype, for instance, contained some errors caused by misreading We would observe that F s ometin"les avoided errors c ommon to
of Rustic capitals, others caused by misreading of insular minuscule, so that two the rest, and that B s ometimes sided with C and [c J, s ometimes
'proarchetypes' are conjured up. with F . We would construct this stemma :

34 35

We would discard B a s a c ontaminate d m anu s cript offering
n o t h ing that was n o t to b e fo u n d in the other s ources , and we
would treat the p e cu li a r readings of F as b e i ng as li kely a s t h o s e o f
to be tho s e o f the archetype . Insofar as they were drawn from
this would be correct, but insofar as they were errors made
by B , or in c o p ying fro m B, it would b e fal s e . If a c o d i c ol o g i s t
told us that B was in fact written earlier than F, we w ould merel y
p o s tulate an intermediary between [a] and F, a nd adj ust our
dotted line s .
S u c h misapprehensions n o d o u b t occur, and t nere is no infal­
lible way o f a v o i di n g them . The b e s t one can d o is opt fo r the
hyp o t h esi s that fits the facts most s trai g h tfo rw ar d ly , t a k i n g great
care that it d o e s fi t the m . If contamination i s present in m o r e tha n
slight degree, it will found that no stemmatic hypothesis i s
s atisfactory. Before w e c onsi d e r what t o d o i n thos e circum­
stances, let u s notice one o the r kind o f c o m p li c a t i o n that may
affect a closed r e c en s i o n .
S u p p o s e that the ar c het y p e raJ (in our o riginal , u n c o ntami na te d
s y s t em) c ontained marginal variants o r c o r recti on s , s o that the
s c ri be s of A and r b ] were faced with the various choices l i sted on
pp. 1 2 f. We mi g h t find as a consequence an inferior variant share d
A with one of the three c o pies of [b l , s o m eth i n g that could
not h ap p e n , except by c o i n cidence, with the s i mp l e fo rm o f lineal
d e scent that we began b y envi s aging . I f we found that it had
hap p ened, there would b e two e x plan ati o n s available : (i) that
36
there were variants in [ a] , r e pr o d u c ed in [b] , and the scd b e of C
(let us s ay) made the same choice as the s cribe of A ; ( i i ) that the
link b etween A and C is the result of cross-contaminati on, C
having consulted A or a copy c l o s e l y related to A , o r vice versa.
There i s a g o o d chance th a t if (i) i s the case, one o r two of the
extant m a n u s crip ts will still give both variants . At Catul1us 1 2 , 4 ,
for instance, t h e p rimary m an u s c ripts , be i n g related as shown,
g1v e :
[V]
o
�
[X]
fal s u m
a1 . s al s u 111 /��
G R
salsum falsum
a1. fal s u m a1. salsum
V must have had t he variants ; the agreement of O R do e s not
show that it had fa/sum i n t h e text . Whenever several m a n u s c r i p t s
sporadically or simultaneously record each o t he r ' s rea d i n g s as
variants, this is a probable sign of variants i n thei r ex e m pl a r s .
When on the other hand a single m a nusc ri p t offers a series of
ma rgin a l variants which correspond to those known fro m anoth e r
m a n u s c ript o r fa mil y , it i s a s i g n o f contami nat io n .
Dealing with an open recension
Besides OGR there are many later, d erivative manu s cripts o f
Catullus whos e affinitie s cannot b e reduced to a stemma. B u t
b e c a u s e t h e three p rimary manu s cnpts permit us to re co n s tr u.c t
the ar che ty p e , it i s p o s sible to concentrate o n t h e m and treat the
tradition as a closed one . The situation I S similar with, for examp le,
Lucreti u s and Theo gni s . W e speak o f an open recension when
the older manuscripts , or more s t ri c tly all those m a n u s c r i p t s lil
37
 which worthwhil e v a ri a n t s than em endations) a ppe a r for B C D E F
the first time, are not related perspicuou sly and do not allow us 6 14 16 7 19 8
t o c o n s truct an archetyp e . B 12 6 7 9
Different kinds of situation may b e in v ol v e d here . F irs t ly , the C 27 25 8 11
c ontaminatio n ma y not be as total as it s ee m s at first s ig ht : some of D 22 7 10
the manuscripts descend fro m an archetype di r e c tly enough for E 9 8
it to be recons tructed, and it is only the eclecticism of the others F 20 ,
that confuses the p icture. In its s i mplest form this situation may
be represented thus : itwill soon be s een whether there are any moanus cripts that n e v e r
e rr to g e the r where another p art of the tradition preserves the
truth. (Any very low figures will deserve clo s er investigation ) It
should be p o s sible to put any such manuscripts in a ser v i c e a b l e
A C B
ste m m a t i c rel a t i onship . instance, if B n e v e r errs w i t h H o r P ,
S e c on dl y , there may b e an archetype from which all th e e x t a nt
though H a n d P often err with each o ther, we can extract the
stemma
c o p ies a re i n d i r e c t l y
des cended, b u t with c ro s s - contamination
making intermittent l i n k s between all the branches of the tradi­
tion, s o that their agreements are never r el i a b l e indications of
w h a t was the archetyp e . i t may be that there w a s n o B
/� H P
arch e t yp e at all , apart from the a u th o r ' s o riginal , b e ca u s e two o r

an d d i s card all the other man u s c ri p t s , hi ch n o b e tt e r read-

m o re unrelated anci ent copi e s s u r vi ve d into the Middle Ages to
w

ings to offer (ex h y p o th e s i ) e r e l y co nfuse matters .

become independent fo u n tain - h e a d s .
and m

I s p o k e of a 's ervi ceable' s temmatic relati on ship , meaning

H o w i s the cri ti c to whi ch of the s e si tuati o n s he is
facing ? There i s n o infallible b u t certain cri teri a are ap-
nece s s arily h i s t o ri c all y exac t ' . S u p p o s e we have m an u s c rip t s
pli cable. S upp o s e the first case is true, the one ill u s trated b y the
B C D EFM, act u al l y related as in the s t e m m a o v e rl e a f.
s temma a b o v e . I t i s e a s y to s e e that whereas AC will s o m eti mes
their rea d i n g s are c o m p ar ed j t
is that B C E F form
in error aga i ns t B , a n d B C agai n s t A, AB will never agree
When
a c l o s e - k nit group ; further i n s p e cti o n reveal s its s tru cture, and
agree

we c an now quote b instead of the indi vi dual copies . What i s

in error a gai n s t C 6) . Here lies a criterion. If w e tabulate the
c o mbinati o n s i n which t h e m an u s crip ts e r r , a n d fill in the number
of agreements s i gni fi c a n t error n o t s hared by the whole tradi­
ti o n , thus 7) : Instead o f entering numbers , one may simply tick the spaces a s the vari o u s agree­
ments are e s tabli shed (more care m u s t then be taken to s ee that they are s I gmfican t) .
ng , i t
Or if it is once e s tabli shed that C alone preserves s u ch-and- such a true readi

6) I m u s t refer again to p . 32 n. 30 l
on y remains to show that each of the other manuscrip ts is s omewhere in error

7)The table can n o t show agreements o f three o r m o r e man u s cnpts � b u t th � t I S

o '
with C If each of three s o u rces is s o m ewhere the only o n e to p re s e rve the
the question is answered.
unnecessary fo r the p r e sent purp o s e . There are quicker ways of d omg the J ob .

39
 Cl.
By the u s e of the tabulation method, then , we can determine

/�"
r) y
whether there are lines of tradition that have remained more or
less independent of each other throughout. It does not tell u s ,

I�
however, whether there w a s an archetype. T a k e t h e stemma given
above for B H P . It p o sits an archetype , and for practical purp o ses
the assumption will be harmle s s . But it i s p o s s ible that B derives
( l fro m one ancient copy and HP from another that was not cognate
� with the fir st . The c ommon as sumption that t he transmission of
Y) a Greek o r Latin autho r normally depends o n a single minuscule

I manuscript, the first and last to b e transcribed fro m an ancient

o copy or copies (with variants recorded in some cases) , i s of rather
�
NI
limited validity, as Pasquali has demonstrated 8 ) . What criteria can
D
be applied here ?
b It might b e thought - Pasquali himself thinks - that if
� the manuscripts agree i n error that implies mis reading of minu­
B scule s cript, there must have been a minuscule archetype .
C�"-F E
necessarily. there has been c ontamination, there i s n o certainty
that thos e errors were all to b e found in the same p rototype, or,
relati onsh ip to D and NI ? o b s erve that D NI s ometimes agree if they were, that it was an archetype in the s ens e that all its errors
b, and M b at other times again st D ; but
.

1n error agam . st were inherited b y the later tradition. But the quantity and the
? . st
b again
neve r
for M cann ot p reser ve the truth b y itself . If it got quality of the errors come into consideration here . The greater
. woul
1 t fro m �-"t)-O 1t d als o be in and if it got it from E i t woul d their number, the less chance there is that were diffused
�l s o be In b (whi ch has n o choic e when E and agree) . We will 'horizontally ' ; and again, more obviously fals e they are, the
mfe r a s temm a of the form less credible it i s that they were chosen b y s cribes to who m alter­
native readings were available.
That there was no single archetype may be inferred in the fol­
lowing ways . (i) From the p resence in the medieval tradition of
many p airs of variants known to be ancient. A reading can
o M b taken as ancient either if it is attested by an ancient s ource or if
it is tru e . If the medieval traditio n in a series of places p reserves
N o w this i s clearl y rathe r more than an overs impli
ficati o n o f the true readings which could not have b een restored c o n j ectu r e ,
true s tate of affair s . But i t expre s s e s corre ctly the
basic truth that side by side with fals e v ari a nts which alr e ady occur in papyri or
readi ngs from IX_ which survi ve in extan t manu script
s must have
foll � wed one 01 two route s , and , barri ng two
indep ende nt c o r­ 8) S t o ria . . . , chapter VI, particularly p p . 2 1 0-3 . 2 5 9-6 1 . 273 ·8. 2 9 5-- 8 . 303 -4 .
ruptl Ons, must app ear in D o r b .
375-8. 3 8 6- 9 . S e e also B arrett, Euripides : H i p p olytos , p . 5 8 .

40
41
 ancient quotatio ns and if more than can reasona bly
be accoun ted for by the recordi ng variant s in the margin s of an
archety pe 10) or in a body of scholia , then it is necessa ry to assume
more than one line of transmi ssion from antiqui ty. (ii) From the
presenc e of diverge nces so substan tial, or at so early a date within
the Middle Ages, that one cannot believe them to have arisen in
the short time availabl e or under the conditio ns that prevaile d
after the end of antiquity .
In absence of such indicati ons it often be an open
question whether there was a single archetyp e or not. As I have
intimate d, it is not actually a question of much p ractical :impor­
tance. What is importa nt is to recogniz e that medieval variants
are often ancient variants , and that ancient attestati on of one of
the manusc ript alternatives does not necessar ily mean that it is
the true alternati ve.
When the critic has establish ed that no stemma can be cons truct­
ed, how is he to proceed ? He must, of course, see what groupin gs
are apparen t among the manuscr ipts, and whether the individu al
groups can be analysed stemmat ically, as was the case with B e EF
in the exampl e on ; even if they cannot, he can treat them as
units his further cogitati ons, p rovided that they have a sharply
defined identity . Thus he reduces his problem to its basic terms.
In distingu ishing fundam ental affinitie s from the superfic ial ones
produce d by contam ination, in other words, in distingu ishing
vertical from horizon tal element s in the transmis sion, he may
sometim es be h lped e the principl e that the most significant
agreeme nts between manuscripts are those involvin g omission s
and transpo sitions (insofar as they are not due to some evident
mechan ical factor such as homoeo teleuton ), since these are not
easily transmi tted horizon tally � though it is not imposs ible.
9 ) Provided that t h e q u o ta ti o n s were unknown to the s crib
e s . See als o p p . 1 0- 1 1
HI) Barrett p o i n t s o u t t h a t s u c h
on the influence of direct tradi ti o n s an the text o f quotati
ons .
an archetyp e w o u l d have to c ontain far m o r e
v a r i a n t s than the number p r e s erved a m o n g its s u rviving
des cendants .
42
The aim now is to determme which of the manuscripts or manu­
script families are most independent of each other, for these must
go back most directly to the earliest phases the tradition
we can reach, and they must be the most fruitful sources of ancient
readings. The critic will take note of the gener l appearance
a
the various witnesses first - that this one is a humanist's
liable to contain much emendation ; that here is a maj or family
that preserves its identity from the twelfth century into the
fifteenth , and so on. His attention will naturally be drawn by
any manuscripts that stand out from the rest reason of their
age, or are notable for agreements with an ancient source. He may
well consider whether these apparently noble documents are
that he needs, or whether there are others that preserve further
ancient readings.
This approach perhaps savours of trial and error, but it is not
difficult to develop it into a generally applicable sorting procedure.
The steps are these :
1 . Whenever the manuscripts are at variance, a note the
reading or readings that seem to be ancient (true, and not found
by conj ecture, or else attested an ancient source unavailable
to the scribes) and the manuscripts in which it or they appear.
2. Any manuscript that is sole carrier such readi gs is ob-
n
viously indispensable. Adopt it .
3 . Remove from the list all the readings for which the manuscripts
j ust adopted may serve as sources ( no t j ust the readings that
appear only in them) .
4. See which manuscript contains the largest number of the re­
maining readings . Adopt it. Remove from List the readings
it contains .
5 . Repeat (4) until every ancient reading i s a c o nted for.
c u
This is the most efficient way reducing t o a minimum
number of manuscripts that have to be quoted as witnesses to the
tradition. The remainder can be eliminated. elimination is
marily for practical convenience : it is not quite like the elimination
43
 of apogra pha which cannot u s anythi ng new. to five, AD]\.,1 b g. Further stemmatic construction turns out to
Never theless , there must be a c orrelat ion betwe en lack of indivi be imp o s sible . None of the five is the direct source of another - not
­
dual good readin gs and lack indep enden t source s . Even thoug h consistently, at any rate � and each o f them shares errors with
the s o rtIng metho d canno t elucid ate the compl ex affinit ies of t one, two o r three of the others in bewilderingly various combina­
he
m anuscripts, it p r o duces results that s tand i n some relatio tions . We apply the s o rting p rocedure . We fin d that only A has
�hem. T h i s m a y perhap s be made clear with the help
n to
a n imag­ good readings peculiar to it ; b has the largest number of the good
Hlary examp le. Sup p o s e we have fou rteen manus cripts ABCD EF readings that are not in A ; and D contains all the remainder,
G H I K L M N O , actuall y related as follow s (the stemm a i s an ex­ whereas there are s ome that are not in M and others that are not
tended form of the one on p . 40 ) : in g. We decide therefore to base our recension on b D.
What can w e guess about s ources lying behind our manu-
scripts ? A ' s unmatched ability t o produce individual good read­
� v
ings (despite its late date) i mplies access to a s ource independent of
p I those that feed others 1 1 ) . others p erhap s draw on the s ame

r
range of s ources, but b and D have p rofited most from them.
;;;
M and g have chosen les s well , o r found them i n a less pure state ;
I each s ometimes has a good reading that one o r two of the trio
A b D have mi ssed, but never one that all three missed.
These conclusions approximate to the truth . has individual
good readings because of its acce s s t o A . When it i s in the wrong,
the right reading is more often found in b than anywhere else,
because A followed M more often than b , and M followed "�-8
more often than the purer line 3-0: . When A and b are b oth in the
wrong, the right reading i s preserved in D if a t all, because, i f a
b corruption occurs (or i s present fro m the start) on the line
/� y-3-0:-( M-) b, and A fails t o pick up the true reading fro m A, then
N B C��F it can be preserved only by way of 'IJ and 8, and D is the only
- -- E- - A manuscript consistently faithful to O . M cannot p reserve the truth
-
- - - --- - - --:
_ --

agains t both and b , for the reason given on 40, and a similar
argument applies to g .

When their readin gs are comp ared i t i s s o o n di s cover ed

1 1 ) I f there had been a second copy that also had good readings peculiar t o itself,
that N O
are copie d fro m D and can be dispen sed with ; that BCEF
are s o that would not necessarily imply a second s uch source. It and A m ight he s electing
independently from the same source. But in this case we sh ould e x p ec t them at
relate d their hypar chety pe b can b e used instea d ; and that
GHIK L form a group which can be treate d a s a unit,
even if its least as often to mak e the s ame choice and agree in good readings unknown to the
s tructu re resist s analy sis . fourt een witne s s e s are thus reduc ed rest of the tradition .

44 45
 Now this manufactured example illustrate a general truth.
Whenever the manuscripts give divergent readings, one of which
is p�imary and the secondary, the secondary reading has
ongwated at a given point in the tradition, and has come down by
certain routes to all the copies in which it appears ; the primary
rea ding has come down a route or routes which bypass that
. and have no station in common with those other routes.
powt
The extant tradition will depend ultimately upon a very limited
number of early medieval copies, and there will be a very limited
number of possible routes fro m them to the extant ma;lUscripts
that do not touch at any point. To escape from the oldest corrup­
tlOns we can escape from, we depend on those routes. The extant
readings will not have consistently come down by those routes to
particular manuscripts, in a contaminated traditi on ; but the sort­
ing procedure that I have recommended must have the effect
of isolating the manuscripts which have benefited from them
most.
Of the value of other sorting methods, in particular statistical
methods, I remain sceptical. A numerical table of significant
agreemen�s between every two manuscripts, as described on p . 3 8 ,
wIll p rovIde obj ective confirmation of groupings suggested by
casual inspection, will indicate how clear-cut t h e y are (e. g.
how much more often GHIKL agree with each other than with
other manuscripts) ; but simply collecting the evidence, without
reducing it to fig1.: res, will probably have given a clear enough
pIcture already. Indeed, where groups of three or more manuscripts
are concerned it will have given a clearer one, for the information
that A agrees with B 81 times, B with C 92 times, and A with C 79
times does not enable us to deduce that ABC all agree to gethe r
7 3 times, or even once.
A more elaborate way of using such a table has recently been
advocated by J . G. Griffith 1 2 ) . It involves comparing manuscripts
1 2) J . G . G riffith : A Taxonomic Study of the Manuscript Tradition of J uvenal,
Museum Helveticum 25, 1 9 6 8 , 1 0 1 -1 3 8 ; Numerical Taxonomy and some p rimary
46
in respect of the whole numerical series of each one's agreements
with the others ; no distinction is made between and se­
condary readings, though agreements that may represent coin­
cidental innovation are excluded. Suppose manuscript A shows the
following numbers of agreements with the others '
B F G H J K L N 0 P R T Z
50 44 6 1 49 52 48 6 2 6 2 48 42 44 61 43
For e e- ch manuscript a similar series of numbers is found. The one
whose series matches that of A rnost closely is then grouped most
closely with A . Finally the manusc ripts are all arranged in a
'spectrum' : those with the most dissimilar patterns of agreement
appear at opposite ends, with a continuous gradation from one
end to the other, while certain clusters or ' taxa' mark themselves
off along the line 1 3) . The trouble \liTith this kin d of analysis is
that it is not clear what useful conclusions can be frorn
Two manuscripts nuy be grouped together j ust because show
110 particular tendency to agree with any manuscript more than
any other, in other words because they are equally promiscuous ,
even if they have no special similarity with each other textually
In some cases it is evident that taxa reflect real affinity-gro ups,
in others it is not. In any case we are given no guidance as to the
distribution of ancient readings .
3 . Diagno sis
When the evidence of t b e varJOus sources for the text has been
collected and organized, apographa eliminated, hypar�hetypes
and archetypes reconstructed w here possible, and so on, the time
manus cripts of the Gospels , J o u rnal of Thcological Studies n . 20, 1 9 6 9 , 3 8 9-40 6 ,
Hc is preparing a book.
1 3 ) For the method of perform ing these operations see the author' s articles ,
1 4) An example is the taxon J U which Griffith consti tutes for J uvenal .
47
has come to t r y to auth o r origina lly wrote.
S om etim e s this is a matter o f choosin g b etween trans
mitted
variants , s o metimes it i s a matter o f g o i n g b e y o n d t h e m and
emendin g the text by c onj ectu r e , o r a d o p ting an e men d ation
a l r e a d y propose d . cons i d e r the s e al t e rn a ti ve s s e p a r at el y ;
but th e req u i re m ent s which a sati s factory s oluti on must fulfil are
the same in both cases .
1. I t must c orrespon d
sense to what the auth o r intended to
s ay, so far as thi s can b e determin ed fro m the context.
2 . I t must correspo nd in language , s tyle , and any relevant technical
� oi n t s (me t re " prose r h y t h m , avoidanc e of hiatus , et c . ) to a way
iD whIch the author m ight naturally have e x p resse d that
sens e .
3 . I t m u s t b e fully compatib le with t h e fact that the survi v ing
s o ur c es g iv e what they do ; i n other w ords i t must be clear how
the pres u me d o rig i n al r ea d ing could have bee n co rr u p te d into
any different r ea d i n g that i s t r ansmi t t e d .
The fulfilmen t o f these three condition s does not l ogically
guarante e that ti:le true s oluti o n h a s b e e n fo u n d , and t her e may
s ometIme s be more than one s olution that fulfils them . An element
of uncertai nty may therefo re persist even if a rea d ing is open to
no CrItlcIsm -- j us t as it may exi s t in places w h e r e t h e s o u r c e s are
unanimo us and what they offer unexcep tionable . But often a
reading seems s o exactly ri g h t that thos e most familiar with the
author can feel absolute certainty abo ut it.
The evaluati on o f variants
M any variants a r e o b v i ously wrong because they offend against
gramm ar, metre o r the plai n sense o f the passage . The more care­
fully a c ritic has stu d ied these things , natu rally, the more such
faults will d e t e c t ; t h ou g h it i s p o s sible to g o too far, a n d to
fall into error b y applying mo r e r i g id canons of l a ngua g e o r logic
than the autho r observed .
I f there are tw o o r more v ariants in a g i v en passage, and only
48
one of them is not o b vious l y w rong, it does not ow that t h a t one
is right. It may be a p l au s ible but n e ve rthele s s i ncorrect e menda­
tion b y a scribe whos e exemplar g a v e the corrup t tex t . t\ n d there
are oth e r p o s s i bili ti e s . That a p l a usi b l e readi n g is not neces sari l y
a genuine one is prov e d b y many thousands o f p la c e s w h e r e mor e
than one of the variants i s plau s ibl e . (In only a minority of
these can authors' variants be i nvo J. v e d . ) By criteri a C3.n w e
j u dg e between them ?
Such variants are ' pla u sible ' i n t h a t t hey
th e first t w o
h o w far
of the thr e e requir e men t s . It remai n s , then, to
up w ith an
th e y s ati s fy the third. To s o me extent thi s i s
evaluation of the sources that attes t t h e m tIle inter-
v a r i an ts
r elati ons hi p s of these s ources . If t h e s ource o f one of
is a quotation, the assump tion that inaccurate memory is responsible
for i t may in many cases be the likeliest e xpla n a t i o n of th e d i s cre­
pancy. If yo u think that in general a r e ading which most of the
m a nus cr i p t s g i v e is more li k e l y to b e right than one whi c h
a few give, then to make the sam e ass u mp t ion in a particular c a s e
where the m a nusc rip ts are unevenly divi ded b e t ween p l a usi bl e
r ea d ings , and to p refer the one attested by the , will
to make the choice that (on your view) fit s t h e facts be s t . That
would, of course, b e a v e r y naive p rinciple . If t h e manu s c ripts
happen t o be related a s i n the s temma on p. 32 , it is to s e e
A
that a reading g iv e n only by has j ust as m u c h chan c e o f being
right as one in which B C D EF all a gr ee .
M a n u s c r i p t s m u s t b e w e i g h e d , n o t c o u n t e d . That i s an
old �l ogan, one of s everal which deserve remembrance and com­
ment in this con n exion . A in stemma j ust m entioned 'weigll s '
e q u al to t h e o ther fi v e c op ie s combined. ' Weight ' i s n o t determined
s olely by s temmatic considerations . Let us a contaminated
tradition for whi ch no s t e mma can b e set up . th e credit of a
pla us i b l e readi n g is c once r n e d , a te n th - c e n tu r y manuscript who se
scribe is not g i ve n to e m e n d ati o n obviously carries wei g h t
than a fifteenth-century one that is rich in c o p yi s t ' s conj ecture s , at
least if the r e adi n g migh t b e a con j e c t ur e .
49
 when we deci de that one is derived another. with &x- being restored b y conj ecture a t the last stage . This case
The p rinciple can b e extended. If are more than two variants where more than one analysis is pos sible is not excep tional, and
at a gi ven place, we should to put them into a stemmatic rela­ the critic must consider what different hypotheses arc available,
tionship (if this has not already been done for the manuscripts in for they may lead to different choices for reading as the original
which they app ear) . For instance, at Aristophanes Ach . 1 21 one.
S1JVOUXOc; � fLLV '�A8�,c; ZGxwO'.O'[LIi;'I OC;, there are three different readings
in the manuscripts, logically related as follows :
Emendation
(R, Suda)
As the comparison of manuscripts may lead to the reconstruction
-fl"U.LV (A) of a lost archetype, so compari son of the variants at a particular
place may lead one to p o s tulate another reading as thei r common
�A8sv (r) . source. E. g. Hipponax fr. 1 04,49 (ap . Athenaeum a) :

This does not mean that r derived its text from A at that place, T O'.pYYJAlo �acv ( Schneidewin)
only that it derived it directly or indirectly from a copy which
had the s ame stage of corruption as we see in A. At 408 the ���
/
(h pP)A l o C Cf LV ycxpy�A[ O l\5 LV
'stemma variantium' reads :
(A) (recentiores) .

The reading of A represents a banalization of Ionic into the

familiar form of the name the festival, the other variant a
mis reading of uncial T as 1" . S chnei dewin's emendation accounts
for both readin gs and at the same time restores what Hipponax
meant to say in the correct dialect ; it thus satisfi es perfectly the
three requirements formulated on p. 48 .
This assumes thar the substitution of �:y- for sx- took place inde­ But the archetypal reading, reconstructed or extant, may be
p endently in the Suda (or an antecedent copy) and in A (or an ante­ unsatisfactory. In that case, fu rther conj ecture is called for, j ust
cedent copy) . But a valid alternative would be as it may b e called for if there i s complete agreement among the
manuscripts. It starts, so far as p ossible, from the 'paradosis'
sxxuxA�8�TL (R) (7tO'.paoocnc;) , which is a rather imp recise but convenient term
I meaning ' the data furnished b y the transmission, reduced to
ZYXUXA�e�TL ( Suda) essentials' . It w o uld be almost true to define it as the text of the
I archetype in a closed tradition, and the effective consensus of the
zyxux"A'it GSL Tt CA) manuscripts (disregarding trivlal or derivative vanants) in an open
I one. But reduction to essentials i mplies s omething further, namely
SxxuxA� aS L TL (r), the elimination fro m the archetype· text or the consensus-text

S2 S3
those features we our general knowledge of represent some later person's interpretation of a text consisting
the and to have introduced since virtually nothing but a continuous sequence of letters . The criti c is
the the author. The category includes orthographical at liberty to re-interpret e . g. ,'IXUTIX as TW�JTlX, as maxima
modernizations , capital l etters , word division, punctuation and meque as maXim(lm aeque,Jiliam artis as Jilia or to repunctuate,
other lectional sign s . even if he has taken a vow never to depart fro m the p aradosis 5) .
take orthography first, in Lucretius 4, 1 0 1 1 , where the The same applies to the division and attribution speeches in
p rimary manuscripts give dialogue texts. In ancient b o o ks a change of speaker ,vas normally
signalled only by a dicolon(:) and/or a paragraphus, a dash over
porro bominum mentes, que moti/JUs edunt
m agna,
the b eginning of the first complete line. It is not certain whether
even this practice goes back to the earliest times , and the divisions
we must choose (recentiores) qui (Lachmann) ; given by manuscripts are s o often erroneous cannot
but as is a way of writing quae, it would b e legitimate regarded as u seful evidence the author's intentions 6 ) . Certainly
to describe quae as the paradosis and not an emendat:! on. In the attribution of a speech to such-and-such an interlocutor rests
S emonides 7 the p rimary manuscripts give XUA�VOSr:'t(X�, and a on no tradition that reaches back to the author perhaps
Renai s s ance copy which is a form better attested for where the speaker makes his first appearance) but on l ater
early Ionic. From one p oint of view the paradosis may b e s aid to interpretation. The p ractice of regularly the speaker
b e ){U)\lV OSL7CU . But when one reflects that S emonides would have seems to have been invented b y Theodoretus in century 7) .
written the contraction of s s simply as it appears that the The critic i s free to distribute the dialogue as best the sense.
p aradosis really amounts to an ambiguous rN�ETAI : XUAlV- In what circumstances i s it legitimate to depart the
OSL7(Xt is s o me interpretation dosis, to entertain a conj ecture ? M any would answer,
to p refer the alternati ve interpretation 4) . is an emendation in " only when it is clear that p aradosis cannot be . Tho s e
the sense that it corrects a presumed error, but not in the sense are s cholars who will dismiss a conj ecture consideration on
that it p ostulates a form of the text for which evidence is lacking. the ground that it is 'unnece s s ary' . But it does not have to
In books there was no distinction proper names, and 'necessary' in order to be true ; and what we should concerned
hardly any word division. Punctuation existed fro m at least the with is whether or nor it may b e true. Consider Hippo-
fourth century B. C . and accents fro m the s econd, but the use of lytus 9 9-1 0 L
thes e and other signs (such as the apostrophe marking an elision)
was very sporadi c ; in theory an accent or a breathing in a medieval
copy a p ost-Hellenis ti c writer might go back to the author's 5) Where a vox nihifi (nonsense-word) i s t ra n s m itt e d , a ccents etc . may b e
autograph, but general all such features of the tradition will valuable clues to what l i e s behind it, since t h e y m u s t have b een sup plied w h e n thc
text was in a m o re i ntelli gible s tate.
6) See ] . Andrieu L e D i al o g u e 1 9 5 4 ) , p p . 2 8 8 ff. ; J. r: . B . L o w c ,
cl) In t h e case o f t h e H o me r i c p o e m s , h o wever, s u c h d e c i s i o n s w i l l have been m a d e B u lletin of the Institute of C l a s s i cal Studies 9, 1 9 6 2 , 27-42 ; a n d g ( ) o d m o d ern

b y men familiar w i t h t h e s o u n d of the v e r s e as p reserved b y generati o n s o f reciters, editions of l'vI enander (Ll o y d - J o n e s ' s D y s c o l u s , K a s s el ' s Austi n ' s
and m i s t a k e s are mFch rarer t h an has s o metimes been thought . S e e Glotta 44, 1 9 6 7 , a n d S a m i a) .
1 3 5-6 . 7 ) N . G . Wilson, Classical Q u arterl y , u. s. 2 0 , 1 970, 3 0 5 .

54 55
 np OCl'8VV8n8tc; ; keeping with the author's thought and expression 9 ) , w hether
!

! ,
TlV ;; ,l Cl'OU acprxAfI a,6fLlX.
So the medieval parado s i s (with a variant Kll7tpCV) ; but i n a p apyrus
of the third century B. C the third line ends ] €AAC, doubtless
nEAcxc; in place of the p roper name. This is almost certainly the
right reading : the intrusion the name to clarify a circumlocution
i s a very familiar phenomenon (above, p. 23), whereas there i s no
reas on why an o riginal s h ould have been corrupted into
irE),cxC; 8 ) . Befo re papyrus appeared, however, anyone who had
suggested reading " e . g. nfAcx c, " would have been told, "your
conj ecture i s unneces s ary : K v n p t c; is p erfectly satisfacto r y " . H e
w o u l d have b e e n j u stified in replying, " I am not s aying that
Kvnptc; i s unsati s factory, I am only warning you not to rely on it
too much, because i s j us t the s o rt of sentence i n which a
proper name i s liable to be interpolated" . His warning would have
b een timely and his conj ecture correct . Probably no edito r would
have thought it worth mentioning . Yet it would have deserved
mention, becau se it fulfilled the three requirements stated at the
beginning of thi s chapter, being in full accord with the sense and
with Euripides ' and metre , an d easily compatible with the
fact that the gi ves K{mp tc; .
Thi s may seem to b e opemng the door to innumerable p rofitles s
speculations . If we a r e to attend to every conj ecture that is pos­
sible, it may s ai d , there will be no end to i t . B u t this i s really not
s o . The number of conj ectures that genuinely s atisfy the require­
ments will not be thos e that d o ought to be attended t o .
T h e c ritic should not b e content to exercis e h i s a r t onl y o n pas sages
where his predecessors have exercised it. He should scrutinize
every singl e of the text, as king himself whether i t i s in
there are o ther better or equ ally good ways of interpretin g the
paradosis (e . g . a different punctuation ) , and whether the assump­
tion that the wording of the p aradosis reproduces what the author
wrote is the only hypothesi s that s atisfactori ly accounts for it.
want to know not only where the paradosis is certainly at fault,
als o how far we can depend on it in other places, and what the limits
of uncertain ty are. The discovery of new s ources (especially papyri)
has often revealed the p resence of corruptio n where no one had
suspecte d it. It follows that one ought to be more susp icious .
The textual critic is a patholog ist. I t i s his business to i dentify
disorder s known to him fro m professio nal experien ce and from
textbo o ks (and the more he can supplem ent the latter from
former, the more sagaci ous will be) . When notices that all
is not well with a passage, however the p aradosis i s interp reted,
his first problem i s to discover as preci s ely as pos sible where the
corruptio n lies . It may be obvi o u s that one p articular word is
wrong and everythi ng else in good order, or it may not. In that
case he must go over the passage word by giving careful
thought to the meaning and to the autho r's habits ,
making prelimina ry decisions of the form "whatev er has gone
wrong here, this w o rd at least is j ust right and not to be tampered
with" .
Finding the exact location of the co rruption will sometime s
lead him at once to recognize its nature, and perhap s to see the
solution. At other times he will only b e abl e to say where the
corruptio n is but not what kin d it i s ; or what kind it i s , but not
what exactly lies behind it. For instance , if somethin g essential to
the s yntax of a s entence or to the p rogress of an argument i s
ing, h e may b e able to s ay " there i s a lacuna at this p oint, but
there i s no knowing what it contained " ; o r " there is a lacuna
which must have contained the words . . . " ; or again " there is a

8) Barrett's argument fo r (p . 4 3 9 of h i s edition) i s a.rlswered b y M e r kelbach, 9) It is a g o o d plan to make a translati o n . N othing more brings one face
Zeitsch rift fU r u n d Epigraphik 1 , 1 9 67, 1 00 . to face with the d i ffi c u l ti es of the text.

56 57
lacuna : the required sense would example, by . . . " . argum ents . These a r e the comm onest faults i n twentieth--c entury
I n this case the supplement proposed would fall into the category emend ation
of ' diagnostic' conj ecture, is, a conj ecture which, while no Even comm oner i s to deny the need for emend ation and to
one can feel confi dent that it is right, serves purp o s e of indi­ defend the parado sis at all costs. good argume nts can be produc ed
cating the kind of sense that i s really required o r the kind of to show that the conj ecture is mistak en (not merely 'unnec essary' ),
c o rruption that may have occurred. s omeone had c onj ectured that is fine . Under standin g has advanc e d . All too often , howev er,
TCE:ACXC; KUTCpcC; in the Hippolytus discussed above, that would the defend er only succee ds in s howin g that he has no feeling for
style, or does not know where to draw the line betwe en unusu al
have been a diagnostic conj ecture, which was diagnosed
as an interpolati o n of a well-known kind 1 0) . There i s a dictum of and the impos sible ; he asks " could these words the requir ed
Haupt, quoted with approval b y Housman and others : "If the meanin g ?" instead of " w ould the meanin g have b een expres sed in
these word s ?" S ometim es one sees a conj ecture dismi ssed simply
on the ground that all the manu s c ripts agree in a differe nt reading .
sense requires I am p repared to write Constantinopoiitanus where
the manus cripts have the monosyllabic interj ection 0 " . The p oint
he is making i s tha t emendation must start fro m the sens e . But the As if they could not agree in a fals e reading , and as if i t were not
fail ure to explain Constantinopoiitanus came to b e corrupted in the very nature of a conj ecture that it depart s from them ! Some­
into 0 may leave o thers with certain doubts as to whether that is times the emend er must hold hi.nsel f back and admit thai the means
Japientiae eJt
really the sense was . U n til tho s e doubts are stilled, the to a s olution are lacking : nescire quaedam magna
conj e cture has the status of a diagnostic one. The vast maj o rity (Groti us) . But to mainta in that emend ation generally is an i dJe
of c orruptions in manus cripts are explicable. A conj e cture which p ursuit with little chance of succes s w ould be absurd . Hundr eds
presupposes an inexplicable corrupti on i s not necessarily false, of conj e ctures have been confirm ed (or at least rai s ed to the status
1 2) .
but it is not fully c onvinci ng . The more completely the c ritic can of varian ts) by the appear ance of papyri or other new source s
demonstrate that it s atisfies the three req uirements, the rnore O u r knowl edge o f Greek and Latin, o f the author s w h o wrote in
plausible it will seem. S o far as the first requirement is concerned, Greek and Latin, their ideas, styles , metres etc . , and processes
he can do this b y analysing the argument of the passage, pointing of textual change , i s not s o inexac t that we are helples s when our
out defects in other interpretations, and c omparing similar pas­ manus cripts let us down .
sages from elsewhe re . the second, too, he will adduce evidence
about the author's p ractice generally and that of other authors of
the same peri o d o r genre . the third, he will, if the c orruption
is not of a widely- known s o rt, quote examples similar one s .
When he claims that one w o r d is a glos s on another, he will if
p o s sible reinfo rce his case b y showing fro m scholia o r lexica that 1 1) T he palaeog raphical c ri t e rio n i s l o o k e d up t o a s a n i deal by many w h o s e c nder­
the other word was s o glos s e d . But he will be well advised not to s ta n din g of palaeog raphy is minimal , and who think that in o r d e r t o m a k e a con­
j e c tu re p al a e o g r ap hi c al ly plausibl e i t i s only necess ary to p rint i t a n
d the trans­
make his case too complex assuming chancy multi-stage cor­
12) S o m e L atin example s are c o llected by H avet, Manuel . . _ , pp. 1 7-20 . He p o i nts o u t
m i t t e d r e a d i n g in capital s .
ruptions, and not to too much on intricate palaeographical
t h a t in some c a s e s t h e same c o n j e c tu r e n u y have suggeste
d i t s e l f to an ancient
1 0) T he concept of the d ia gn os t i c is d u e to Textkrit i k , p. 33. scribe as to the m o d e rn s c h o l ar ; but thes e cases are i n a m i n o r i ty
.

59
58
PART n EDITING A TEXT

1 . Preparation

I s y o u r e d i t i o n r e a l l y n e c e s s a r y ? That is the question.

Sometimes a new edition may be called for sImply b ecause no
existing one is easily available to a certain sector of the public -
s choolchildren, Poles, or s cholars at large. If it is not a question
filling s o me such gap , a new edition can only be j ustified if it
represents a marked advance on its predecessors in some respect,
whether in the fullness, accuracy o r clarity w ith which the evi­
dence for the text is presented, or in the j u diciousness with which
it is used in constituting the text . The intending editor must
therefore be clear, first of that he is able to contribute some­
thing for which the critical world will be grateful. All too often
editions of classical authors appear that are not only no better
but distinctly worse than existing editions . S ometimes this is
due to careles sness in reporting the evidence or in correcting
printer' s proofs .. The commonest cause, however, is lack of com­
p etence in fundamental matters such as language, styl e and metre.
M etre at least i s reduced to rules : one would supp ose th at any
editor of a verse text would make a p oint of mastenng the rules
relevant to his work, but in fact they frequently fail to (particularly
in the more s outherly countries of Europ e) . are they greatly
abashed when their mistakes are pointed out. They seem to feel
they have merely overlooked a minor technicality, and not to
realize that there is a large body of competent s cholars whose
contempt is earned b y nothing more surely than by metrical

61
 blunders . Since editors are clearly the most part quite
unaware of their limitation s, it i s diffi cult to offer advice that is
likely to deter them . But it may be worth pointing out a common
fallacy concernin g the qualificati ons required. For editing a text
it is not a suffici ent qualifi cation to have a long-stand ing interest
in it, to have written articles or books about it, in short, to b e
firmly associated with it in the public's mind. Nor even to have
investigated all manuscrip ts and s k etched the history of the
tradition : codicology and textual criticis m are very different things,
and an expert on manuscript s may p roduce a dismal edition.
Publi shers are s o m etimes at fault here . Wishing to publish an
edition of such-and-s uch an autho r to fill a place in s ome series,
they turn to whoever is known to have busied himself with that
author - no matter - and invite him to undertake the tas k .
Flattered by this compliment , a n d s haring the p ublisher's assump­
tion that his acquaintanc e with the text qualifies him to edit it, he
readily accedes, not stopping to reflect that this will expose his
philological weaknesses to his contempo raries and to posterity
m o re ruthles sly than anything else. A b etter p olicy for publi shers,
when they want a good e dition of s omething, would b e to look for
s omeone who has done a good edition of s o mething else, even if
he has not hitherto concerned him self with what they want 1) .
Collecting the material
The editor's work begins with a peri o d of study of what has
already been achieved b y others . He does not necess arily read at
this stage everythin g that anyone has ever written on his auth or, but
he works through the main editions carefully , and whatever else
has been p u blished on the manuscript s and other s ources for the
text. the absence of a complet e and up-to-da te special biblio­
g raphy on his author, he will derive most help from library cata-
logues and from following :
1 ) Reviewer s of criti cal editions should be chosen
on the same p rinciple.
62
W. Engelmann & E. Preuss , Bibliotheca S criptorum Classi­
corum, 8th ed. (Leipzig 1 880). Covers literature from 1 700 to 1
R. Klu s smann, Bibliotheca S criptorum Classicorum Graecorum
et Latinorum, = Bursians J ahresbericht (see Suppl .-Bde.
1 46. 1 5 . 1 56 . 1 65 . Covers literature from 1 878 to 1 896.
S . Lambrino, Bibliographie d e l'antiquite classigue 1 896-1 9 1 4
(Paris 1 95 1 ) .
J . Marouzeau, Dix annees bibliographie classique : 1 9 1 4-- 1 924
(Paris 1 927-8) .
J . Marouzeau and others, L' Annee philologique. Published . re­
gularly since 1 928, covering literature from 1 924 on.
(Bursians) J ahresbericht uber die Fortschritte det Altertums-
wis s enschaft (Berlin & Gbttingen 1 875-1 955) ; continued as
Lustrum (Gottingen, si nce 957) .
Gnomon (Berlin & Munchen, since 1 925) : Bibliographische
Beilage several times a year.
N. 1 . Herescu, Bibliographie de la litterature latine (Paris 1
A s s o ciation internationale d' etudes patristiques : Bulletin d'in­
formation et de liaison (Amsterdam, since 1 968) . Records pro­
j ected editions of patristic \\rriters .
If earli er s cholars have argued for certain rel ationships among
the manuscripts used b y them, he should check their conclusions
as far as he can fro m the evidence available to him. He may find
that he cannot do s o without fuller evidence about those manu­
scripts ; or he may suspect that there are other manuscripts which
have not so far been used at Then it is time to start doing some
collating for himself. Even if he i s satisfied that the manu­
s cripts have been investigated and their relationships correctly
assessed, he will b e well advi s e d to make h i s own collations
the important ones , for two reasons . Firstly, it is very likely that
no complete collations have been p ublished, only selecte d variants ,
and he will want to make his own s election from the complete
evidence. S econdly, no one ever checks anybody else's collations
(or his own, for that matter) without finding mistakes in them .
Even what appears to be very detailed collation i s liable to
63
contain amazing mis-statements ; when it comes to making
inferences fro m its silence, the scope error i s large i ndeed .
He should not b e afraid of collating because he has never done
it before, or because manuscript facsimiles that he has s een strike
him at first sight as indecipherable . Reading manuscripts is s ome­
thing that has to learned, but it i s by no means as diffi cult as
it may lo o k to the uninitiated. Becoming an expert p alaeographer,
able to date and i dentify hands , is another matter ; but the main
thing, what one canno t easily get s omeone else to do for one, is
to be able to read the m . There is great need to extend our knowledge
of clas si cal manuscripts . People often assume that the task of col­
lating has by and large been done, but there are many maj or
authors for whom dozens manuscripts remain unrea d . The
s onner they are the b ette r . Numerous man u scripts have b een
lost since the Renai s sance : how many of thos e that seem s afe in
lib raries today still be there when another hundred years
have passed ?
Of the whole collating proj ect, the hardest part to carry out
with complete su ccess is probably the b usine s s of finding out
what manuscripts there are. For most of the libraries that come
into question, catalogues o f manuscripts have been published in
book form or in periodical s . As far as Greek manuscripts are con­
cerned we now have an excellent guide to thes e catalogues in
M. Richard, Repertoire des bibli o theques e t des catalogues de
manuscrits grecs , 2nd e d . (Paris 1 9 5 8 ) , with the s upplement to it
published in 1 9 64. When he has consulted as many of the cata­
logues as he can , the inquirer may be recommended to apply to
the Institut de Recherche et d ' Histoire des T e x t e s , 1 5 quai
Anatole-France, Paris Vlle, where he may obtain help in supple­
menting his list of manuscripts (though he must not expect them
to d o all his work for him) . Papyri come in a different category : here
he can get his info rmation fro m R. Pack, The Greek and Latin
Literary Texts from Greco-Roman Egypt, 2nd ed . (Ann A rb o r
1 965) , supplementing it fro m t h e p ap yrological bibliographies
published regularl y in Aegyptus .
64
He should note down from the catalogues such information as
dating s , identifications of s crib es, the pages on which the work that
concerns him b egins and ends, and the o ther works contained in
each manuscript. This last item may be a useful hint of a manu­
s cript's affinities, for groupings of works changed frequently in
th e Middle Ages and Renaissance. The investigator will not put
off the question of the interrelati onships of the manuscripts till
he has fini shed collating them : he will b e considering it while
he collates them, forming and modifying hyp o theses all the time.
This will not only make the work considerably more interesting
to do (which will make hi m m ore alert and accurate while doing
it) , it will als o shorten it, as will be explained p resently.
T o do the collating he can either go to where the manus cript
is and ask to see it (some libraries will require a letter of recom­
mendation from an offi ci al-looking source) , or photo­
graphic reproductions . (In m os t cases writing to the library will
p roduce the desired result ; in cases of difficulty the lnstitut de
Recherche ( s � e ab ove) may b e of assistance . ) Both methods have
their advantages . B y having the b o o k in one ' s hands one is b etter
able to appreci ate external features of its format and to distin ­
guish different hands that have made corrections ; at a difficult
place one can vary the angle of illumination as one likes, and
be sure that one has as good a view of what is b e seen as it
is p o ssible to have . But occasionally things become clearer
photographs ; and they have the very important advantage that
one can easily refer to them again when s o me uncertainty arises
after the first collatio n . Going back to the is much more
troublesome . Photographic copies may b e b roadly d i vided into
full-size reproductions of various types , and microfilms . The l atter
are cheaper, and for most purp oses p erfectly adequate, but dif­
ficult to refer back to when one i s away from a reading machine
o r p roj e ctor (though it can b e done with a good magnifying-glass),
and for the same reason difficult to compare with o n e another.
It i s p o s sible, how ever, to inscribe any requisite referen ce numbers
on the margin of the film, using a fine pen and Indian ink .
65
 The manuscript i s compared a p rinted edition word by \X/hen collating 1fl situ a manuscript that may be of some importance,
word, the differences S ome people write them it is a good idea to note the in the text at which each p age
in the margins the edition, but even if the copy i s interleaved begins , for two reas ons : one might then notice e . g. that an o mis­
thi s does not give one room fo r more than a few manus cripts' sion in another manuscript corresponded to an opening
variants, and I u s e a sep arate notebo o k. It is essential in of this one (which might confi rm indications that it w<],s derived
this case to record 1il writing which edition has been used for from it) ; and if i t i s subsequently necessary to check reading
the collation, for if i s not known a collation l o s e s m u c h o f in a certain passage, it is easy t () o rder a photograph the right
i t s value. (One must bear in mind the p ossibility that one' s colla­ page.
tions w ill one day used so meone else, and one must there­ It is useful t o determine the m anuscript ' s affini ties if p ossible
fore sure that it is clear in this and in all other respects how before actually collating it. If are not already known before
they are to be interp reted . ) I t i s best to choose an edition which it is s een, they can often be q uickly discovered with t help of
is light to travel with, will be easily avai lable, and keeps select lis ts of readings p eculiar to the different rnanus cripts and
dose to the p a radosis (to minimize the amount of writing neces­ familie s . One or two such readings will prove nothing , if (say)
sary) ; to use same one for each c ollation. Every effort ten passages from different of the text are looked up and
should be made to p revent confusion between the collations of found to have the variants pecul iar to a knm;vn branch of the tra­
different manuscripts. If they are done into the p rinted copy, the dition, it will b e certain that a s i gnificant affinity has been found ;
best is to use different coloured inks 2) ; in a notebo o k, the further compari s ons will then reveal its nature more p recisely .
manuscript should i dentified at the top of every page. Care If the manuscripT i s closely rdated to another that h a s already
must also be taken to ambiguity about the location of the been collated, its o wn collation can b e done more q uick and also
variant . In prose texts the lines should be numbered down each more accurately b y relatin g it to the other. One can at the
p rinted page and the numbers used for reference. If the variant start "Where the line-number alone is given, the ing is the
is for a word that comes twice in the same line, or might be read same as in Q" , or " Has the same readings as except i n t h e fol­
as being for either of two similar words, it must be made clear lowing places" 3) . But it is wise to ti ck or underli ne the readings
which one is in q ues ti on. in the collation of Q at the same time, as a precauti on later
If it is decided not to certain o rthographical trivialities doubts. This forces one to look specifi cally fo r each variant,
(e. g . , in Gree k , aspiration, or the presence o r absence of , sub­ and it s ometimes arouses susp icions afterward s co nfi rmed
s c ript or movable v), the fact should b e s tated . However, it i s that s omething in Q has b een verlookecl .
advisable to record orthographical variants fairly systematically, Should the manus cript turn out to b e the exemplar from w hi ch
at least for portions of the text, for they can be of use (though not Q is derived, it will only be neces sary (except in isolated p 13,ces)
by themselves) in working out details of a stemma, and they to underline those readings in the collation ch it contains ,
are not uninstructive in themselves . Corrections and marginal o r Conversely, if it turns out to an apograph , it will be
interlinear variant s should carefully recorded, with notes of
whether they are due to the o riginal s crib e or in another hand.
3 ) I f the relation ship is known in a d v a n c e it i s a great convenience t o have th e
,

two collations d rawn up in p arallel c o i u m n s . T h e fir s t w i ll n ee d to h e w i d e r t h an

2) C olla ti o n s should be in ink , I f washable ink i s used, beware of rain. the second.

66 67
necess ary to note its additional errors and corrections . There will
be little p oint in making a co mplete collation of an apograph ;
there is s o me p oint, however, in collating a p o rtion of the text,
to help determine its relationship to any other apographa that may
be dis c overe d . The same applies to manuscripts deemed unworthy
of full c ollation for any other reason. The length of the text may
make it advisable to investigate the whole tradition in the first
instance on the basis sample portions . If s o , the po rtions to be
studied should b e b oth from n ea r the beginning a n d from
near the end, because it is not uncommon for a manus cript's
allegiances to change in the course of a work.
So far I have been speaking only of the direct traditio n. Ancil­
lary s ources too may call for research. An epitome o r a translation
its own manuscript traditi on. the quotations have not b een
systematically collected, that may b e s omethin g else with which
progress can be made, reading through the likely authors
or consulting indexes to the m . If they have been collected , it will
s till be to up in the most up-to-date editions
of the quoting authors, to v erify references and to see exactly
what the textual evidence that source i s . \)(There such editions
are suspected of being unreliable or founded on an inadequate
basis, it may be worth the trouble to consult ma n u scripts of the
authors .
Digestion
The p rocesses analysing relati onships of the various s o u rces
evaluating the variant readings and conj ectures have been
described in earlier The editor is now at the stage when
he can p e rform these operations in a more definitive manner. He
i s by now very familiar with his author, and it is desirable that he
shoul d b e n ot much less familiar with any other authors who are
particularly relevant because they are i mitated by his author, or
i mitate him, or write in the s ame manner o r on the same sub j ects.
He completes , as as p o s sible, his reading of other s cholars'
68
interpretations of the text and discussions of its difficulties . (In the
case of maj or authors this is frankly imp os sible, the quantity of the
secondary literature is too great . But one must do one can,
and try to pick out the grains fro m the chaff. ) then, in days
of unhurried contemplation, p referably assisted a word index
or concordance, he decides what he i s going to print in his text .
This involves more than j u s t deciding which are the true read­
ings and which p robJems must be left unsettl e d . Careful tho ught
should be given to punctuation, which can b e a great help or
hindrance to following the author's train of ideas, and which i s
of course entirely a matter for th e editor's discretion. Then there
is the question of o rthography. As a general rule it w ould seem
most rational to impose consistently the spelling that o riginal
author i s most likely to have used (fo r which manuscript
tradition may not be the best evidence) . It i s tru e that he himself
may have been inconsistent, and it may be argued that the best
manuscript authority s hould followed on each occasion.
this will be no reliable guide to hi s practice ; we shall surely come
nearer the truth regularizing the s pelling than by committing
ourselves to the vagaries of th e tradition.
The general rule, h owever, I S s ub j ect to qualifications . N o one
would welcome an edition of Aeschylus i n which the Choephori
began
H S p [LE Z8 6vts, TC!XTp O l ' E71:071:TSU OV X p ci'Ci:: ,
croTEP ysv 'f) [L O t Z CP) (J_ [L!XZ6 ;:: c' !XlcO IJ. E:'I O l ,
and for early Greek generally o n e will use the standardized I onic
alphabet, although this s ometimes means using different s pelIings
for s ounds that were o riginally written the same, and the s ame
spelling for s ounds that were o riginally written differently . In
Latin there is not the p roblem of different alphabetic systems , but
notions of the correct way to spell things were more fluid until
the first century of the Empire, and here again with less
justification) the conventi on been established of presenting
authors at least the late Republic in the o rthography of a so me-
69
what later peri o d . or vulgar texts raise other difficulties : it that the time not yet come when manuscripts can coll ated
is often i mp o s sible to distinguis h b etween the b arbarisms of automatically ; machines have not yet been devised which can
copyists and those o f the o riginal. this situation, rather than cope with the variations inherent in handwriting. p rovided
impose a consistent system which can only be chosen rather with suitably prepared transcriptions of the manuscripts , purged
arbitrarily, it is b etter to follow the paradosis, not under the of coincidental errors, a computer could draw up a clumsy and
delusion that it i s at all reliable , as the most convenient way unselective critical apparatus ; and it could in p rinciple - where
of exhibiting i t . there was no c ontamination ! - work out an 'unoriented' stemma.
An associated problenl that m a y face t h e editor is that of deciding That means, supposing that six manus cripts were related as shown
what exactly it is that is trying to constitute . book transmitted on p. 32, that it could work out a scheme
to us may represent a re-working or rearrangement of older
material, or the end product of several re-workings, and the
editor must be clear which phase history he i s restoring . A -------7-\----,,-\
Convention is inconsi stent. Editors of Greek tragedies are agreed
in trying to purge the texts of interpolations, whereas F --- - B C
editors H omer do not normally mark as spurious passages of
clearly secondary origin such as the D olonei a . The standard simply by comp aring the variants, without regard to whether they
edition of Stobaeus rightly aims to show each passage not as its were right or wrong ; but this scheme would be capable of suspen­
auth or wrote it but in the in which the anthologist received sion from any p oint, e. g .
it. Editors of the Palatine do not try to restore the
arrangement of the anthologies fro m which it depends . On

;
A B D
the other hand they try to p rint the original text of each epigram, �
not the tenth-century text . choices are s ensible. They may
be said to be based on the two p rinciples of seeking th� useful
��
B C
F
�

c
� F �/r
" �
I
------ C
and not attempting the i mpossible. \
In the case of a survives in more than one recension, I
F
D E J'\,
B
I
the editor must either each recension s eparately or choose D E F
one as a representative. He must not conflate them into a hybrid
vers ion which never (though he may use one to correct F
copyists' errors in another) . I ....-�
-- E C ----�
---
B
A .-o-'______
�
B C �
The use of comp uters B
p o ssibility of using computers to help the editor in some of
� �C
\
F
A
his labours has been Dom J . Froger, L a Critique des /\
textes et son automati s ation (Paris 1 968), chapter S. It app ears D E E F

70
 The correc t o rient � tion be determined by evaluating If the conclu sions of the discu ssion can be shown in the form
t � e qual1ty ot� t � e v � nants , whIch
. no machine is
capable of doing. a s temm a, a stemm a shoul d be p rinted ; nothin g makes them easier
Sw ce only a mInonty of textual traditions arc closed, and these to locate or to compr ehend . Quota tions may not need to be dis�
. analysed by ordinary� human
cussed in the introd uction , but sectio ns should be devot ed
to
easIly . wit , the v e r y conS1' d era bI e
' . the intro�
trouble In : olved In submitting them to a computer does not app ear sourc es such as s cholia , epitom es, and transl ations .
wor �h wh1le. p resent, 1t seems, computers can serve us best by ductio n is long, a list of conte nts is useful.
makIng concordances and the more unsubtle kinds of metrical If a biblio graph y is p rovid ed, it shoul d aim above to inform
analysis 4) . the reade r about the work those editor s and other s chola rs
them a
whose contr ibutio n is significant enoug h to have earne d
r finds
place in the critical appar atus . I deally , when ever the reade
a s chola r name d in the appar atus as havin g p ropos ed an
emen �
2 . Pres entation
s to
dation or defen ded the parad osis , he shoul d have the mean
con­
Prefato ry material identify the releva nt publi cation , so that if he wishe s he can
sult it and read the s cholar ' s own argum ent. (In practi ce the editor
It is the editor who is mainly responsible for the layout of his editor ,
must s ometi mes cite conj ecture s , menti oned by a previo us
book, and he take p ains to arrange it as conveniently as are
whos e prove nance he is unabl e to dis cover .) Public ations that
? o s slble for the reader not only the reader who works through appar atus
. only occasi onally of impor tance can be specified in
� t from cover to cover, but also the one who only needs to consult
itself ; 1 ) those to which more consta nt refere nce is made are better
listed s eparat ely. Editio ns are usuall y lis ted in chron ologic al order
It bnefly, who is not familiar with the text and its trans­ ,
mlssI on and wants to extract information quickly and easily. of
. : ? to know what construction to put on what he finds but other works shoul d b e arrang ed in alphab etical order
autho rs . If severa l books or article s by the same schola r a re
\Vlshln to be
. the cntIcal apparatus , such a reader is likely to turn to the
In and the refere nce in
record ed, it is a good idea to numb er them,
lntroduction, which should be s o set out, with section� and page� conci se form ' Ivleye r3' or ' lV£eye r3
the appar atus can then take
headlngs , that he finds at once where the s ources for the text
p . 268 ' .
shoul d
I mmed iately befor e the text 2 ) the list o f manu s cript sigla
are discussed. H e may want to see what is said about a p articular
manuscnpt, and he should be guided to the place b y s ome signp ost : other unusu al
be found , toget her with the expla natio n
a s epara � e p aragraph-headlng, b old type in the text, or, best of s . It is
symb ols or abbre viatio ns used in the text o r app aratu
all , � he slglum p rinted in the margin. H e should then find the es- again here
convenienc e if the manu script s' dates are menti oned
sel?tIal l11fo rmation ; i s most likely t o be interested i n the date limits
as well as their ident ities, and also their group ings:,
and general character the manu script, and its affinities . If it is p age-
their conte nt (if they do not conta in the whole text) , and
fo u � d �n:) rc conv enient to discuss affinities after the account of
the IndIvIdual manuscripts, this too should be clearly signposted.
1) The abbrev iations ' I . e.', 'op. cit.' are to be avoide d unless
the work has been
i On th e use of computers i n
,
of style and authorship see K. J . Dover, named immediately before.
heses ,
2) ' The text' here include s ancient prefato ry matter , Hyp ot
,
y s � a s and the Corpus � B e r k ele y & Los Angeles 1 968), chapter VI ;
lists of charact ers
B . PIscher, J ournal of T h e o l o g l. C a l S t u d i e s , n . s . 2 1 , 1 970, 297-304. ete.

73
72
 referen ces to the dis cussion s the introd uction . For an
examp le see B ethe' s edition of Pollux , where howev er two criti­
cis m s can be made : the li s t could be clearer typ ograph ically, and
it should have been p rinted in both volum es o f text.
Choice of sigla
M anuscrip t sighl current use should not be changed unles s
there i s s omethi n g particul arly confusin g about them (for instance ,
i f the s ame manus c ript been given differen t sigla in differen t
works of the s ame author) . Where new sigla are necessar y, the
followin g p rinciple s can b e obs erved with advanta ge .
1 . For individ ual ex tant manus c ripts , and only for these,
use capital
letters o f the Latin alphab e t . If there are not enoug h letters
(thoug h there s hould be, if the traditi on has been analys
ed
proper ly) , one may resort to Greek capital s , o r to e. Aa, Ab,
or ; it i s best to avoid superio r figures (AIA 2 ) , becau s e
they are comm only u s e d for dis tinguis hing hands i n the same
manusc ript. In e ditions of Latin author s it is advisab le to dis tin­
guish the s iglum visuall y fro m the adj acent variant ; this can
b e done by p rinting it in bold type, but a better typogr aphica l
effect i s obtain ed by using italic capital s . In G r e e k apparatuses
either uprigh t or sloping capital s can be used, only not both : to
use and to m ean differe nt thing s would be to guaran tee
confus ion and error. Letters with a mnemo nic value should be
ch o s en where p o s sible, e . g . M M onacen si s ; A the most
=
=
notabl e manus cript ; T = T riclini us' copy. It i s not necess ary to
assign sigh to manus cripts that are only cited in a few places .
2 . Frag ments of ancien t copies , wheth er papyru s ,
p archm ent or
o s tracon , are often given sigla like IT , IT s , IT 2 5 , �4 1 , which
conven iently d raw attenti on t o their antiqui ty. The use of
superi or figure s i s famili ar enoug h to be accept able, in
spite o f what is said ab ove, and aesthe tically it i s prefera ble to
full-siz e figure s . It has the disadv antage , thoug h, that other
74
qualifications such as ' ac' , 'lP' (see below, p 93) cannot
satisfactorily be app ended at the superior level .
3 . For manuscript families or reconstructed hyparchctypes 8) , use
lower-case Greek o r Latin letters . I t is best to use Greek letters
in e ditions of Latin texts and vice versa. If Greek ones are used
in Greek texts , they should b e set fro m a different type fount
in Pfeiffer' s
from that used for the vari ants thems elves
apparatu s to Callimachus ' Hymns) . Latin letters should be in
italic , or, if not, bold.
The s ymbol 0 or w o r n i s often u s e d to rnean the manu­
s cripts' ; this is b etter avoided, however, if other letters of the same
fount are b eing used for oth er purp o s e s . The symbol :::- ( originally
standing for ' Stephanus ' ) i s often used, especially in Latin edi­
tions, to mean ' one or more late manus cripts' .
4. Any sources of a different order should be represented
symbols or abbreviations of a different order. Thus the use
S for the Sucla in the Budt Aristophanes is not very satisfactory
beside R, V, ete . ; Su would have been b etter. I: i s often used for
' s cholia' .
The b ody o f the edition : general layout
The text will occupy the upper p art of the page. Whe re it is recon­
structed fro m excerpts given b y different sources , o r where dif­
ferent recensions o r versions in different languages have to be
presented, they are in most case s most clead y exhibited in parallel
columns or on facing p ages . (Examples : . H . Roscher, Die
Hip p okratische Schrift von der Sie benzahl ; B . Diel s , D oxographi
Graeei ; D amascius , Vha dori, ed. Zintzen . ) this s
conse cutive l y for each in depen­
unsuitable, they should be p rinted
dent block of text, as e. g. in H ausrath ' s edition of the Aesop i c
Fable s , where three recensior s are p rinted, the page i s not divided
3) The editor should make it clear which he means : whether a means ' B, C
and D' or 'the exemplar fro m which AB CD are deri ved' . It makes a difference.
75
 into three c olumns o r layers, b u t each fable is given as a ' shoulder head' at the inner corner. Here is an example fro m
first in one vers ion, then in the second, then in the third . With a the O C T Hesiod, p p . 1 26-7 :
more continu o u s text such as the Life of Aesop, it i s better to (left-hand page) (right-hand p age)
p rint th � recensions as s eparate wholes (as Perry's Aesopica) fYNAI KnN KATAA O f O Z: sive H O I A I
than to 111terlace them chapter by chapter. [28-30 3 0-3 1 ] A E O LIDA E
B elow the text on each p age will follow, in this order : any (section)
registers other than the critical apparatus (testimoni a, etc . , see (title of p o em)
below) ; the criti cal apparatus ; and commentar y or translation if (fragme nt number s)
thes e are to appear on the s ame p age as the text. (The best place for The pages should be numbe red.
a translation , ho wever, i s facing the text. As for a commentar y,
although there is clearly some advantage in having text and note
on the s ame page, there is stilI greater inconveni ence if the effect Text
is to reduce the amount of text on each p age to a few lines . If the Both prose and verse should be printed in nu mbered lines . In
bulk of the edition j ustifies p rinting the commenta ry in a s ep arate verse texts the numbe ring will b e continu ous from beginn ing
volume, that is the handiest arrangem ent.) of the p oem, book or fragme nt ; in prose texts it should start
With editions of fragments an alternative layout i s p o s sible, afresh at the top of each page and run to the b ottom, except where
with apparatu s to each fragment following it immediat ely, the pages and lineatio n of an older edition have become establis hed
before the text of the next fragment . (Example : D . L. Page, Poetae as the means of referen ce (as in Plato and Aristot le) . Experie nce
Melici G raeci . ) This is quite unobj ectionabl e so long as the frag­ has shown that this is the most conven ient way correla ting
4
ments are short, but if they run Over the page, and even more if text and apparat us . The numbering should be by fives ) . In the
they run over two pages, it becomes inconvenien t, and the editor case of verse texts it will be the main means of referenc e,
would be better advised to follow the normal arrangeme nt, al­ it is best p rinted on the outer margin s (i . e. to of the text
though it means a more complicate d j ob for the p rinter. on the left-han d p age and to the right on the or else to the
The margins will be used for numeratio n. S ometimes they are left of the text through out (where there will be no interfer ence
also convenien t for indication s of manus cript attestation (below, from long lines ; the numbt; rs will be a constan t distanc e from
p. 83), or of the s ources of a compilato ry work such as the Suda the verbiag e) . If an alterna tive numera tion is to be printed too
(see Adler's edition) . The heading at the top of the page should - which should only be done j f it enj oys some currenc y - it should
be informat ive. If the volume contains m o re than one author or be in bracket s o r in distinct ly smaller typ e . In prose texts the linea-
w o � k, the reader must be able to see at once from the page-he ading
instead of
wh1c� one he has opened at. If a work i s divided up in units that 4) It i s s ometimes claimed that numberi ng every third or fourth line,
� re lIable to exceed a page in length - books , long chapters or every fifth, makes it easier to find a referenc e. I disagree , believing
70 75 80
that it
than
i s quicker
from the
to find one's way from the simple s take-poi nts 60 65
fragmen ts, grouping s by subj ect or metre, y ears (in annalisti c 6 8 n 76 80. One does not
more complex series 60 63 66 6 9 n 75 78 8 1 o r 6 0 64
hi � torians) - he again needs help from the page-hea ding . The al numbers .
need to think so hard about the individu
l eft- and nght-ha nd pages can be used to give different arad es of For the case where the accepted numerat ion reflects an obsolete colom etry,
see

;
informa tion, and in addition s ecti on-num bers can be resented Barrett, Euripide s : Hippoly tos, p . 9 4 .

77
76
 tion will normally n ot be the common means refer e n c e , and it The references c an b e g i v e n i n o n e o f the regis t e r s below the
will go on the inner margins , unless the outer ones are fai rl y free text, or, perh aps more c onveniently if the qu ota t ion s are short
of other numbers . Th e more promi nent p osit i on and type will be and not t o o nume r ous, between brackets in the text i t self. The

reserved for the conventional chapter- and s ection-numbers .
Numbers should not to be sought in the middle of a line ;
even if a new secti on begins t h ere , the number should b e in the
margin. (The exact of transition can be marked with a divider
if there is any ambiguity.) Arabic numeral s should always be p re­
fe rr e d to R oman or Greek, except in t he n u mbe ri ng of books (or
of columns, i n papyrus texts) ; where Greek numerals are trad i ­
tio n al that p u r pose, they should be accompanied by their
same applies to dates given by an ancient author in Olympiads
etc . , which s hould be furnished with the e q uival ent in our reckon­
mg .
Quotations should be p r esen t e d in form in w h i ch the qu o t i ng
author gave th em., so far as this can be determined, not adj u sted
to what we b elieve the q u oted autho r wrote. Verse q u otati ons
should be p rinted as verse, unless the quoting author has destroyed
the metre . O therwis e qu otations should b e distinguished as such,

R oman or Arabic equivalents . Care should be taken that numerals i nsofar as they are verbatim, inverted commas or spaced type.
of different orders s ignifi c an ce a r e w ell dis tingui shed typ o ­ Spaced type is part i cularly suitable for picking out verbatim ele­
graphically. Where it i s necessary to note the p agination of an ments in a loose paraphrase : sec, for an example, Plato Protagoras
older edition as well as chapters and sections, it is helpfu l to add 3 3 9-346 in the OCT edition.

an initial ; e . g . in Nickau's editi on of ' A m monius ' , ' 4 4 Va. ' in Inverted commas (double ones in Greek texts) should als o be
the margin explains itself at once, whereas the figure by itself u s e d for spee c hes , except in tho s e texts which, like drama, consist
would have left one unsure and made one look s omewhere else for wholly of dialogue with no narrative framework . Here their place
c lari fi c ation .
i s taken by abbreviated speakers' names . These are normally put
Establistled numerations should retained as far as p o s s i ble . at th e beg i nning of th e line, but when there is a chan g e of s p e a ke r
If the editor decides that the usual division of paragraphs is within a verse one may adopt either of the follo w i n g arra n gem e nts :
u n s at i s factory , he can change it without mov i ng the numbers . If
(a) 2: w . tp E P E vvv &8p� Ci(') it PW'OV 0" ()P� ,OV,OV L .
his st u d y of the manuscripts has resulted in the discover y of addi­
00,0c;., XOC8EUikLC; ;
tional se c tions or verses, he should give them numbers like ' 53 a'
2.: , .
which do not disturb the rest of the series . Snell' s editions of
2: w . EX.E lC; Tl ;
Pindar' s fragments give an illustration of how an inherited
2.,;,. iJ.tX � [ ' O·�T'
numeration can sometimes be adapted to accommodate new dis­
2: w . O U ()S'V TCcXVU ;
coveries . It must be admitted that new numerations are s ometimes
n e ces s a r y , but all too oft en the y are made for frivolous reas ons . (b) (2:u) . ) tp S p E vvv &8p � CiW npw,ov O,l op� ,Ov,ov [ .
The e di tor s h ould ask hims elf whether a new numeration is really oi'icoc;, xoceEu!kLC; ; (2:,.) fJ.tX ,OV 'An6nu) [LEv
goi ng to con veni ent for u s er, bearing in mind that he will
conti n u e to encounter references to the older s ys tem . If it is, it
should be made as simple as p os sible. The second may lead to lines s o lo n g that the prin ter has to break
Literary quotations and allusions in the text, including s elf­ the m anyway (which should be done at a c h ange spe a k er) , but
q u o t a ti o n s ('as have written elsewhere'), should be identified. it s aves space and makes line-references easy to fi n d .

79
78
 The following critical s ymbols a place the text. (They
can of course also be used in the critical apparatus as convenient. )
( ) Besides being used for o rdinary p arentheses, round
b rackets are used for the expansion of abbreviations, e . g.
M(arcus) Cicero s(alutem) d(ixit) Ser(uio) SulPicio ,
< ) Angle b rackets enclose letters, words or passages added
to the transmitted text by conj ecture or fro m a p arallel source.
They can als o be used with a blank space o r *** or metrical
symbols b etween them, to indicate the editor ' s b elief that s ome­
thing has been o mitted the course of transmission (or the
asterisks can be used alone) . They should not be used to mark
letters which an emender has substituted for s omething els e ; thus
qui <a) should signify that the transmitted reading is qui, and
where quia is an emendation of it should be p rinted without
brackets 5) .
[ Square b rackets have commonly been used for editorial
deletions . But among p apyrologists and epigraphists it is now
firmly established p ractice to use them to mark off p arts of the
text lost through p hysical damage to the extant s ource ; and since
in p ractice no s harp line can be drawn b etween texts edited fro m
papyri a n d other it is highly desirable that s quare brackets
be reserved for that purp o s e . When the number of letters mis sing
can be esti mated, it is indicated by the corresp onding number of
dots below the level of the line, L . . ] 6) , or by a fig u r e , [- 1 6 -] .
When it cannot be esti mated, p rint [- - -] or * *] , or, if the
distance b etween brackets indicates the size of the gap, [ ] .
{ } B races replace square brackets a s the sign o f editorial
deletion. They can be used in combination with angle brackets
to show that a transposition has been made" e, g . ou(x. o"n) TO�C;
mx:plXvo(.LOUCHV snsn (.L � crCX:Ts { on} T�V a[x:fjv, but as this involves
p rinting the transposed element twice it soon becomes cumber-
5) In some editions it would be printed quia . This rather ugly p ractice is now
outmoded.
6) Grouping these d ots in fives makes them easier to count ; see e. g . l'vlerkelbach­
West, Fragmenta I-Iesi o dea. M etrical symbols can b e printed above the dots.
80
some if m o r e than a word or short p hrase is in questi o n . Trans­
p ositions of verses should be shown simply by the line-numbers,
as e . g . in the OCT Hesiod, pp . 5, 1 4, 2 3 , 3 1 . (Transposed lines
should never be renumbered.)
[ ] Double brackets enclose letters or w o r d s that a s cribe has
deleted in the manuscript itself. If such letters can no longer be
read, use dots as above, [. . .]. The symbol I l l , repeated for each
letter, is also u s ed for successful erasures .
, These si gns are used by papyrologists to enclose insertions
by a s cribe after he has made his original line. One could represent
a scribal alteration of as to ,I;: b y [arT'S, but it is more elegant to
p rint simply TS and note in the apparatus ' ;k ante c o n . ' ; if the
reader fails to consult the apparatus, that is his fault.
L
.J Half brackets are a logical modification of full square
bracket s . In p apyrus texts they indicate that papyrus itself i s
b roken or worn away but that the supplement is supp lied by
another source and is not conj ectural . In other texts , extension,
they can b e used to show the absence of a particular s ource,
whether because it is damaged o r because it has a shortened ver­
sion of the text. They might well be used, for instance, in a text of
N onnus' Dionysiaca to show which letters are p reserved in
Berlin papyrus, or in one Athenaeus to show how much is
attested by the epitome. Complications , arise, however, if there is
more than one of these intermittent s ources . 1- I can be used
a second one, and Bethe's Pollux shows how more elabo rate in­
formation can be conveyed ; but it may be wondered whether such
feats of typography are often worth while, especially when they
endanger the legibility of the text.
t t Obeli mark words which the editor j udges to be corrupt.
If only one word i s suspect, only one obelus is needed : JubJidiiJ
m agn iJ tepicuri con.rtabilitas. the editor cannot limi t the corrup­
tion to one word, he places his two obeli so as to define the area
within which it is to be sought : declinare quiJ eJt qui tpo.fJit cenzere
sese t ·
��! Dots under letters indicate that they are uncertain lY deci-
81
phered 7) . They are mainly papyri and inscriptions, but (Pindar, ed. Snell) V , BEFGH =v ; EFGH is, =: =y . Printed
there i s no reason not to use them generally. They are not easily in the critical apparatus at the beginning of ode. The value of
combined with subscript iotas , so adscript i otas should b e used the collective symbols v � y and the separate statu s of V are con­
in texts where clotted letters are needed. veyed to s ave the reader turning to the prefatory page s .
The use of metrical signs to guide the reader where there may (Eur. Hipp . , e d . B arrett) codd. : (446-59 K ) J\1 B O A V (469-74
be ambiguity is not to be scorne d . Snell's editions of Pindar and CD E L. Printed above the apparatus page by page. Hl<� are available
Bacch ylides are a model in this respect. Besides giving the metrical for the pas s ages stated, the rest fo r the whole page. The manuscript
s cheme at the beginning of each song, he helps us to read without groupings are indicated by spacing .
constantly consulting it, b y p rinting e. g . TS�ZEi')V , cS X l AUTrXV , ( Menandri S ententiae, e d . J akel) 864 K 1 1 865 si' 1 1 866 6 1 1 867 e r 1 1
I S:- ' Cl I
7:QVT0 [l.SoOV SUVUV, , \ pC �I yl, 'l.C;, 71:CU'l.V
'l.TCO d r:
�c,a.v 8') . S ome e d Hors
' 0 f ]:>1 autus 868 K 1 1 869-870 U 1 1 871 u 1 1 872 u r 1 1 873-875 r 1 1 876-877 u .
(Ammonius, ed. Nickau) 1-8 o m . p 1 1 9- 1 2 om.
.

and Terence print ictus-mark s , and they might well go further 1 1 1 3- 1 4 om. 1 1
in signalling uncl as sical p rosody 9 ) . 1 5-1 7 om. Mn:.
(Petronius , ecl . Bucheler) LO, etc. , p rinted in the margin of
the text at the top of each page and whenever the attestation
changes. This is a s atisfactory alternative t o the position below
B etween the text the apparatus
There are some kinds information that are best p resented in the text p rovided that only a small number of sources have to
a s eparate register or registers the critical apparatus . named. Drachmann uses it in his edition of the scholia to Pindar ;
S cholia, in those cases where they are sparse enough to be con­ it is more usual in editions of s cholia to specify the manuscripts
veniently printed with the text, should go immediately below it. at the end of each s cholium or alternative version thereof, as in
Then s ources the text should b e specified insofar as they Schwartz's edition of the Euripides s cholia. See p. 9 8.
are variable. If different manuscripts are available for different Quotation s by later writers should be specified, and allusions
p arts of the work, different p oems in a collection, etc . , the details o r imitations at least where they provide evidence the text read.
should be shown on each page in whatever is the most s uitable Allusions ete. should be distinguished b y ' cf. ' or ' respicit' , 'imit . ' .
form for the circumstances . I f one o f the writers mentioned is dependent upon another, this
Here are a few example s . should be remarked (see e. g. Pfeiffer at Callim. Hymn. 3 , 1 80) .
S o me editors give not only the reference but an extract from the
7 ) When the trace cannot be identified a t all and the space above the dot is blan k ,
context in which the q uotation appears (e. g. Rzach in his big
one should i n s i s t on the dot r em ai n i n g below the level of the line, to d i s tingui s h
it fro m a full stop . edition of Hesiod), and this is often a help in assessing its
S) His use in the fragments of the s ymbol ® ( co rre s p o n d ing to the an ci e n t coronis) for the text. But it is als o possible to indicate the reas on for the
to mark the beginning o r en d of a song i s al s o c ommendable. quotation, where it matters , much more briefly . Here, for example,
9) Why should we not, indeed, revi ve fo r clas s i c al Latin texts t h e a p e x ( ) with '
i s a testimonium on Pindar 01. 2,45 (n rH.0 fLSV O C; , ' A 6 pa.rr:-c6 ;Xv
&.pwyov 6O[l.0 cC;) in the full and in a shorter form.
which the R o mans themselves, for about three centuries from the age of S ulla ,

(a) 45 Et. Gen. 47,7 Cal. = M agn . 1 8,48

found it convenient to mark long v o w el s ? We w o uld n o t u s e it fo r every l o n g
' . " A 6 p cxa,Dc
vowel (nor did but it would be very useful for forms l i k e ablative natura,
accusative plural eiHi,:, and for advertizing hidden quantitles in such words as u6x, x() P �OV, AOPCXcrT[6y) C;, ' A0pa.(H�OWV Xa.l 71:ASOVCf.crfJ.(:) ,flU
,
E;

di.xit. crTS �OWV , otov ' " AOP'l.crTSL!)(0v fHAOC;" .

82 83
(b) 45 ' Aopw:vn:: , o0Jv (-s,- disertim) OcX.AOC; Et. Gen. Cal . Magn .
1 8 ,48 .
=
However, as the reader' s attention will have to be drawn to the
unmetrical variant in the apparatus if at all, all that is really neces­
s ary is : 45 ' A O . e . Et. Gen , 47 ,7 Cal . = Magn . 1 8 ,48 . In the appara­
tus he will find something like : 45 cX.OpexuTS'[ O- codd . , Etym . disertim:
corr. Tricl .
It s ometimes happens that a piece of text extending over s everal
pages is copied out by a later writer. It i s helpful to the reader in
such a case to give the appropriate reference on each new page.
The same applies to the converse situation, where the auth o r
b eing edited h a s copi ed o u t a long passage fro m a n earlier writer
(who thereby becomes relevant to the constitution of the text in
the same way as a quoter) ; and similarly where he has reproduced
the substance of such a passage in his own word s , a n d again where
and another writer are evidently following the same lost
source 1 0) . Such parallel texts should be distinguished fro m direct
quotations ' cf. ' , at least if there is any danger ambiguity : i n
s ome authors there will n o t b e . T h e decision whether to p rint
the references to s ources, parallels, imitations and quotations in
separate registers must likewise be governed by the particular case.
Rzach ' s big Hesiod is a successful example of elaboration, with
four separate registe rs below the text : Homeri loci similes,
Poetarum (ceterorum) imitationes et loci similes , Testes (i . e .
(luotations and allusions) , Varia lecti o . B y contrast, Maas s 's
Aratus shows how s ources , parallels and testimonia can all be
noted in the same register without unclarity, with the help of the
sign g and ' cf. ' Some editors go further and incorporate them in
the critical apparatus , t o the detriment o f its perspicuity ; this
p rocedure cannot be recommended.
B efore discussing the particular problems of the critical appara­
tus , I should deal with certain aspects of layout which are common
1 0) F o r an example of the technique see Mras ' s edition of Eusebius, Praep arati o
evangelica.
84
to it and the other registers . Reference to the text is made b y speci­
fying the line of verse, or in prose texts the line of the page (except .
in cases like Plato) 1 1 ) . I f several items refer to the sam e line, the
numeral is not repeated, Sometirnes further p recision is called for .
Suppose a quotation only covers part of a line ; then o n e m u s t put :
636 (-'L XSt,OL) Et. M . s . v . flutiosc; (meaning line 636 as far a s tXSAO,) ;
5 5 4 (rroA.) - 5 5 5 (rr6 0 . ) Et. M . s . v . -:LYY(0 . I n the critical apparatus
the information to b e conveyed will usually be sufficient for the
identification of the word or phrase in question ; where it is not,
brackets may again b e used, e. g . 1 09 6 (os) TS L, or a colon, 1 09 6
os : 1"1:: L . A square bracket h a s most often b e e n u s e d for this pur­
pose, 1 09 6 os] T E L, but as it is s o metimes necessary to use square
brackets for reporting readings fro m papyri and other damaged
manus cripts, it may be b etter to avoid that. If os occurs twice in
the same line, one must be sure to make clear which is meant :
1 096 os p rius : or (oE I) .
S eparate, non-overlapping items are parted from each other by
a broad space (as in the OCT s eries) or by the divider-sign 11 (as
in the Bude s eries ; similarly in modern Teubner editions except
that a single vertical stroke is used b etween entries relating to
the s ame line) . Spaces have the theoretical drawback that they
disappear when the second item b egins at the b eginning of a line
of type, though in practice confusion seldom arises, and can be
avoided by care at the p ro of-reading stage. Overlapping items in
the critical app aratus should b e treated in the same way, where
the p oints at issue are unconnected (e. g . 7 1 7 mxv-;:rxc; -;:rxU -:: 'fiv
codd. : TrxUTYiV ,(V01 fLYi V rrtivmc; Stob . TWlTn Bergk) ; o verlapping
items in the qu otations-register �1te perhaps better linked, e . g.
3 7 1 -2 + 374 sch . Pind. O . 7 , 72 ; (-ydVrxTO) Ammon, s . . 'fi fLsPrx,
Eust. in Hom. 527 ,5 7 ; 3 7 1 -2 (-' H cD 0') s ch . Eur. T1'O. 8 5 5 ;
1 1) The line-number i s often p rinted in b o l d type, b u t it stands out p erfectly well
in ordinary type, as users of the OeT volumes can see. When the numbers run
in more than one series, the s eries-nu m ber mu st be i n bold and t h e line-number
in light face ; see the OeT edition s of Hesiod (fragments ) , Plato , A r i s totle.
85
37 1 + 374 sch. Pin d . . 5,1 ; sch. Eur. Ph . 1 75 ; 3 7 1 sch.
R. 4,54.
Items in th e apparatus that are physically separate in th ei r re­
ference but interdependent s hould normally be brought t o g e th e r ,
e . g . Soph. Tr. 1 02 1 -2 oouv!Xv . . . � [ OTOV Musgrave : oouvav . . . � l6TOU
c o dd . , rather than 1 02 1 oouv!Xv Musgrave : o ouvav c o d d . 1 022
� ,6TO\) Musgrave : codd.
T h e critical apparatus
C ritical apparatuses have more than one u s e . The most essential
one is to inform the reader which p arts of the p rin t ed text d ep e n d
on emendation an d which parts are subj ect to uncertainty. But
apparatuses are al s o what m o s t p e o p l e depend o n for instructio n
about t h e character p articular manus cripts and scri b e s , an d of
manuscripts and scribes generally . Unfortunately, the more fu lly
an apparatus caters for the need, the less handy it is for the
former ; the impor tant variants have to b e discerned amid crowds
of u ni m p o r t a n t ones 1 2 ) . The editor must decide what p rinciple
he i s going to follow, and select his material accordingly.
A few basic rules can b e laid down :
1 . The readings of apo grapha and other manuscripts which seem
to c o n t a i n noth i n g independen t value should be o mitted,
excep t where th e exemplar i s illegible o r where an interesting
emendation is involved .
2 . Variants of a merely o r t h o grap h i cal nature sho uld be omi tted
unle s s they represent real alternatives (otx�acu : olx[aat) , o r
unles s manu s cri p t evidence i s relevant to the choice.
3. Worthless conj ectures shoul d be passed over in silence ; more
p recisely, conj ectures which are not only una c ce p ta b l e but als o
1 2)
A device sometimes employed is to relegate the less lm p o rtant ones to an
appendix ; sec e. g . Ken ney's OCT editi on o f Ovid's Amores ete. One might als o
pick out t h e m a i n one,· in larger or heavier type .
86
fail to suggest a new and plausible line app roach to the
p roblem 1 3) .
4. Anything fro m any s ource (including sch olarly conj ecture)
that may either be or p oint towards the t rue r e a di n g should be
rep o r t e d .
The apparatus should be Latin, which has p r o v ed itsel f the
most convenien t for the purp o s e (except for papyri and inscrip­
tions, see p . 94) . Names of scholars and p eriodical s should not
be latinize d . In editions of Latin authors i talic is used except
for the variants themselves , the line-numbers and the p u n c t u a t i on .
The material i s arranged on the following p rinciples Each entry
begins with a specificat i on of th e place in the text which is 111
question, unle s s it i s the same as for the p receding e n t r y (see above,
p . 85) . The reader is already gi ve n o ne r e ad ing by th e text itself.
If it i s not a conj ecture, he can usually infer whi ch sources attes t it
by elimination of those q uoted for other readi ngs, s o it i s not
necessary to mention it in the apparatus ( s o lo n g as it i�, clear which
word or words the entry refers to) 1 4) . If it is Included , it should
be p u t first, unless it is represented by the formula . Haupt'
(which has its p l a c e after the transmitted r e adi n g ( s ) and before
any further conj ectures that are to be mentioned) . Alternative
readings follow , in this order of p r e c e d e n c e : direct man u s c r i pt
tradition ; indirect traditio n (testimonia e t e . ) ; conj ectures in order
of merit. The editor ought to have a regular o rder to name
manuscripts in 1 5) , but he should depart from it whenever the
1 3) Conj ectures that have been confirmed e .. g . b y a papyrus deserve co be recorded
as such, for the honour of their authors and as evidence that emendati on i s a worth ·
while endeavour.
14) An apparatus which regularly leaves the reading of the text to b e und erstood
i s called 'negative ' . There is no need for the editor to make a firm deci s i o n between
the positive and negative apparatus ; different treatments m a y b e convenient in
different p l ac e s . A negative entry rather s uggests an aberration, and I would
recommend using a p o sitive one where the rej ected vari ant i s well attested Of
j u d ge d worthy of consideration as a serious alternati ve.
1 5) He will naturally group cognate ones together.
87
 logical connexion between I S better b rought out by a
different ordering . S i milarly he may find reason to couple a
quotation-variant with one of the manuscript readings , o r to
pl ac e t w o c on j e ct u res to g e th e r i r r e s p e c t i v e of t h e o rder of meri t .
The variants an d conj ectures p resented ought p r o p e rl y to fit
the same hole in the text. Thus the variants at Ar. Ach. 2 1 men­
tioned o n p . 52 m u s t not be p resented l i k e this :
A transmitted reading should b e quoted i n the fo rm in which
it appears in the s ource, obviously . But this ru le t � o i s subj ect to
qualificatio ns . It is not neces s a ry or custo mary to p rint the � ead l ngs
of p re-minuscule ma n u s c ript s in capital s . (Ziegler's edw on of
Cicero, D e re publica, however, r e p rod uc es uncia1 script
the Vati ca n pal i mp s e s t to plea s in g effect. This kind of fi d e li t y is
p art i cula r ly he l p fu l when corrupt Greek appears in a Latin text,
cf. p. 27) One will write "" 11 Il l S codd . " even though the

papyrus has no accent or breathing ; if its reading is being gi v e n

R
That i mplies falsely that is o mitted by "·� fLr;\1 '�AeS\I A" by itself, on the other hand, one m i ght as well b e exact and WrIte
"Y) �Y)V Il l S " . Abbreviatio ns in manus cripts need not be reproduced
should have been written. However, strict adherence to this rule
w o u l d s ometimes involve excessive repetition, and I confess that unless they are ambiguous o r help to e x pl ai n the origin of another
I s ometimes break it i f I think there i s n o p o s sibility of confusion,
variant. S ometimes there i s good reason for the editor to make
p articularly when rep o rting conj ectures, as at A r ch i l . 1 22 , 4 . an abbreviatio n of his own : reporting variations of word order,
(AX fLTIov,: O C; !\uYP (Jv) AiXfLTI P O V , ";'oO'OU'TOV Mahly : I)Y P ')V Valckenaer :
aequo animo ferre nemo T : nemo ae. an. f. E : ae. an . n. f. 6 ;
8xpew Bentley, etc . Minor variations o n a r e ad i ng can be g i ven in
in d eali ng with long words,
1.L E E h D,
brackets :
fLE'-:lXcp p ex G o fL s GG IX : -

L)' y) fLW\lIX� 0',) 6f: B e rg k ((Jot W e l c k e r , sI B oisso nade) : a'1J WvVIX�LO �6E
which, besides s av i ng space, focuses attention on the variant
A ete.
element ; and to avoid making a statement about part of a word
i f they are s i m i l ar s tatu s , they can b e separated by a mere
in which unimpo rtant variants exi s t . For example, suppose the
co mma instead colon which n o rmal l y separates alt ernati ve whole truth is
readings and expresses their oppositi o n to each other 1 6) . Thus
affirmas s e adfirmas s e B E : affirmauisse C : adfir-
'T' A, f) ' B : ;) ' C maui s s e D ,
indicates that the choice i s really between two al t e rn atives ( "rE o r one may save space and at the same time clarify the two Is sues
OE) , n ot three. In a negative entry, where the choice i s not really b y p rinting
between the readings in the app aratus at all, it might b e bette r to
aff- A C : adf- B D E -asse A B E : -aui s s e CD ,
avoid colons and to use commas o r s emicolon s .
o r s imply the second diverge nce if the first i s not thought worth
16) The re of u s a g e on this matter. Mo dern Teubner editi o n s do
i s s o me vari e': Y repo rting. But however insignificant the first it shoul d not
not use colons ; the Eude s erie s u s e s them only after the fi rs t reading, th e one in
be disregarde d to the extent of printing
the text ; si m il a rly the C o rpus Paravianum, b u t w i t h co mmas aft e r the s e c o n d
and subsequent readings, thus : affirmas s e A B E : -au i s s e CD ,
me t ani a I G l ,
which i n vo l ve s positive mis-statement. I t would b e better to put
539 Metanira l-leinsiuJ : melanira U, menalia AG, menalca D etc.
a
The question is not important, but the system that I recommend i s the most
flexible and expressive. affirmas se (vel ad f- ) A B E : etc.

88 89
Also to b e avoided i s
affi rmas s e A : adf- B E : -aui s s e CD ,
where it is not clear whether CD have all- o r adf- .
In general, abbreviation of readings should b e kept within modest
bounds . T o o much of it cause the reader b other.
The same applies to abbreviation in the editor' s own Latin,
though familiar abbrevi ations lik e o m . , add. , transp . are p re­
ferable to their full forms . Scholars ' names should b e abbreviated
sparingly ; it is all right when they are long and famous ( Wil. )
or frequent occurrence in the p articular apparatus (that to
Quintus of S myrna, for instance, i s full of Rhodomann and Zimm er­
mann, who hav e a g o o d claim to be shortened) , but the casual
he can transpos e "uinxeru nt Heinsius (or scripsi) : iunxerun t codd."
into "iunxe � unt codd. : corr. l-Ieinsius (or correxi, or emendmJz') " .
'
(The difference of meaning between 'con . ' or ' em . ' and ' ci. ' deserves
more respect than many editors give it.) Omission s, additions ,
ete. are shown thus :
(i) O mi s sion b y a source.
672 om. b (i. e. the whole verse is o mitted) .
672 deest in b (carries less suggestion that b is at fault) .
1 1 ab exitio urbium o m . L (or deest in L) .
(ii) Exp unction by a s cholar .
1 1 qui omnis hominis scit nomen Rumpelstilz chen.

user the editi on does not want to have to turn to the list of sigla If the deletion has been marked in the text b rackets, all that is
for an explanation of Bk . or HU. 1 7) . Especially to be deprecated needed is
is the use of abbreviations which do not suggest a human being 1 1 qui � nomen del. Rumpelstilzchen , o r
at all, for instance c = Cunaeus , g = Graefe . The incautious con­ 1 1 { } Rumpehtilzchen.
sulter of the edition will certainly think that readings s o labelled
' 1 1 del. Rump elstilzchen' , however, may b e misleading, at least in a
have s o me s o rt of manuscript authority, and he may not feel he
verse text, since it gives the impression that a whole line has
has anything to gain by foraging in the introduction for codicolo­
b een condemned.
gical details 1 8) .
The basic informati on t o b e given about each reading is its (iii) Extra w ords in a source.
source. This i s done in the o rdinary case simply by placing the 9post aliquando verba s cilicet p o s t resurrectionem
appropriate s�gla or name after the reading 1 9 ) . the edito r wants mortuorum ha bent M N .
to emphasize hi s confidence in a conj ecture which he has adopted, 0
(iv) W o r d s a d d e d by conj ecture2 ) .
1 7 ) T h e misleading p ractice of omitting a full stop with abbreviated names 2 5 natam post fortunat am add. (or rest. o r supp l. )
or
1 8 ) Scholars' initials can also b e mistaken for manuscript sigla. In my apparatus
('Dalec' = Dalecampius) should be eschewed.
25 fortunat am (natam ) Candalf.
to Theognis I have written ' Otto Schneider' to avoid confusion on the one hand
with G. Schneider and on the other with the manuscript O. I f a lacuna i s marked in text by ( ) , all that i s needed is
1 9) The s tatement of s ources of a transmitted reading should not be augmented 25 ( natam) Candalf.
by names of editors or critics who have approved it. Similarly with conj ectures,
only the original p ropounder should be named, with the place of pubii cation if
necessary (see p. 73) . There is no point in inserting ' d . ' (coniecit) except where
an emendation has to be distinguished from a decipherment of a difficult manu­ 20) Conj ecture by the copyist of a manuscript will be treated in the same way as
script. conj ecture by a modern critic.

90 91
If (natam) i s accepted in the text, all that i s needed is in the text that had been substituted for vuv . ) The system has not
won much a cceptance, and it seems that most people p refer things
25 supp!. Gandalj, o r ( ) Gandalf
to b e a little m o re explicit.
(v) Transpos ition s . The choice of s igla has been discussed o n p . 7 4 . Often a quali­
26-8 illud tibi - non uenerin t post p. 3 1 , 10 n o stra transp . ficati on is needed, such as ' b efore c orrection', ' o ver an erasure ' ,
B artsch 'by a second hand' . Here one may u s e an abbreviated Latin phrase
1 arm a canoque uirum EigenJJJ itz . in o rdinary type on the line : ante c o rr (or a . c. ) , in ra s (ura ) m . se c .
. ,

(or rec.) ; o r m o re c o mp res sed compendia at the superi o r level :

A ac , Air , A 2 . (With a papyrus called lP , however, one will have to
Where the transpos ition is adopted in the text :

1 0- 1 2 illud tibi - non uenerin t ante p. 30,28 q uaedam
haben t codd. : transp . Bartsch.
lis t of sigh. Care must be taken to forestall confusion over the
1 uiru mque cano codd. : transp . Eigenwitz .
Where the fact of transp osition i s shown in the text b y the verse­
numbers o r by the c o mbination of( ) and { } , all that is needed
IS
transp . H ermann
1 6 o 'n transp . Koraes .
If a verse has been transferre d s o m e way fro m its transmitt ed
p o sition, the reader will n otice a gap in the numeratio n without
revert to ' n 9 m. ree . ' o r ' 1[ 9 m 2 ' . ) These must be explained in the
referents of these qualifications ; the co mma is the simplest way
of making clear what is to be taken together. For instance, instead
of yp. D' write ' [ p . D' o r ' ]\ [ p . , D ' , whichever is meant ;
instead of ' A D ac G ' write ' Aac Dac G ' o r ' A G , Dao
Superior type is als o u seful when there i s variati on between
different manus cripts of an indirect source. Theognis
Y[Y 'IE: T!X � for Y [VE T !X ' is gi ven b y p and b y cod . A of Stobaeu s .
' Y [YV E:'!X � p Stob . A ' might well lead to confusi o n , since the most
important manus cript of Theognis is als o known as A . p , co d . A
'

immedia tely being able to see the reas on for it. This calls for a
Stobaei' i s safer but cumbrou s ; 'p Stob 1 S b etter th an either.
note in the apparatus such as ' 1 1 3 6 v . p o s t 1 1 5 8 ' . (A note is also
T o embark on dis cussion of the merits of variants will
called for if the numerati on is d i s continuou s for any other reas on,
enlarge and o b s cure the apparatus . But when a telling point can
e . g. after Catullus 1 7 . )
M ention m a y here be made o f a m o re laconic s tyle o f apparatu s be made with a couple of words or mention of a parallel , there
favoured in particula r by Wilamow itz . Here i s a specimen fro m is every advantage in making it. T o p oint out, for example, that
a certain ornission i s explained by homoeoteleuton may save the
t h e Choep h o ri .
reader from the temptation to attach some greater significance
(Text) (Apparatus) to it, and the editor him�; elf fro m the need to refer to it in his
900 TCOU oy; 3d : Auratus (1 . e . oad c o d . : cOrt. c ommentary. To indicate the reason for a conj ecture may to
Auratus) avoid mystification o r impetuous s c o rn . The apparatus is not
9 0 6-7 bracketed 9 0 6 , 7 del . B e rlage unsuitable for an interp retation of a difficult phrase, either, even
908 ()!J\i os (JUV Auratu s : vuv if there is to be no mention of an alternative reading. T he
,-
915 ,
!X l X u) C; O�1.0)C; : Wil
(He might have written \jUV : Auratus in 9 0 8 , but felt that the 2 1) Commas or spaces can also be used to remind the reader of the manus cript
reader might th en hesitate before deciding that (Juv was the w o rd groupmgs.

92 93
tion of an obs curity i s a to the examination of the
s oundness of the text.
S ome s pecial types of editi o n . Papyri, ins cripti ons
Editions of papyrus texts and inscriptions fall into two classes
which may be described as ' s cientific' and 'literary ' . The first is
particularly ap propriate to the first publication of a new text
(which should be accompanied by a photograph) o r to a revision
carried out on the original . It reproduces the formal layout of the
o riginal and conveys an accurate picture of its whole appearance.
It p reserves its alphabet (without necessaril y imitating its letter
forms) and rec ords its s p elling, its p unctuation and its kction
signs , marginal additions, etc . , the apparatus if not in t he text.
M odern reading signs may be introduced prov ided that they do
not obs cure ancient ones ; eX F p :XT p a TOLC; FaAclo cc; . Tc()(Tp trXV 8 CX P P EV
x a t ysvsrXv T(XlJTO may be p rinted without ris k that anyone will
suppose the inscription to be furnished with accents and long
signs, but with a papyru s that has some accents the simplest way
to communicate the details is to p rint them as they are . Where
there are difficulties of decipherment or interp retation, the method
o f , diplomati c' trans cription may b e recommended 2 2) . complete­
ly o b j e ctive trans cription that adds nothing to what is visible on
the original is p rinted together with an interpretation of it, e. g .
TS I.LSV O C fL [ ] yCXXCX l [
. TS fLSV O C (J.. [s]ycx
"]1;AGcru , rrlcTOVCX71:CXC : [ "]1;
A CXCV , 7T lCTOV a"]1;cxG
, ,/
. . / •
'i o p u ca dk cp p r:: v (,)v\j "]1; [ Lo p u w c 8 r:: cp p r:: v (;) V U lI: [
m : p locxv:" O O ,XCX l(i)V [ 7TS P ,, (}�" aUTO, o'" txalWV [
,
The apparatus i ncludes a careful description o f doubtful letters ,
o r a n indication of the different p o s si bilitie s . This goes beyond
the ordinary range of apparatus Latin, and i t may be better if the
editor uses own language ; compare the English palaeographical
2 2) S ee E. G. Turner, Greek Papyri (Oxford 1 9 68), p . 7 1 . The system might al s o
be used for a text which depends on one fai rl y corrupt medieval manus cript.
94
notes in recent volumes of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri with the Latin
ones in Lobel and Page, Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta .
ference is column and line . I t is customary to u s e Roman
numerals for column-numbers .
In what I call literary edition of a p apyrus text or inscripti on,
less attention is paid to the layout of the original . The text i s p re­
sented more as any other piece of prose or verse would be ; there
is less emphasis on the physical copy and more on the composition
itself. The difference b etween this and the more interpretative
s o rt of ' scientific' edition is illustrated by the text o f the
D elphic Paean as given on p . 1 41 of Powell ' s ColIectanea Alexan­
drina, in compari son with that on pp . 1 42�4. The lines are redivided,
and melodic spellings like TC((X O' OS "]1;r:: T spac; eliminated . This kind of
editi on i s s ui table for a literary work such as Aristotle's Constitu­
tion of Athen s , or a play of Menander, where numeration by
chapter or verses takes the place of column and line 2 3) . The ap­
paratus too will be more like that to an ordinary text. There
be no need to record details like accents a papyru s , except
where they affect the interp retation. Anyone with a special interest
in them will naturally turn to the original, scientific publication,
to photographs , or to the papyrus itself.
The distinction between scientific and literary edition is of
course not abs olute. Their characteristics can be blended in dif­
ferent ways, and something b etween the two may what is most
suitable in a particular case .
. [
Fragment collections
Special p roblems are involved in e diting the fragments of
works gathered fro m references b y other authors. The first ques­
tion is what to include. Some editions include only verbatim g u o -
23)So long as reference is by the lines of the scribe or stonemason, it is better to
reproduce this l1neation than to have to mark it by a system of dividers, as is done
e. g. in Ditten berger's S ylloge Inscriptionum G raecaru m : that makes it a slow
business to find a line-reference.
95
tations, but it is arbitrary to make a p rinciple ; a statement
that the autho r told such-and-such a story, for example, may be
far m o re v aluable than an uninfo rmative verbatim fragment . If the
editor wishes to publish only s elected fragment s , let him make
his s election in s o me s ensible way. I f his collection is meant to
be complete, he must include testimonia -- not biographical
statements about the author or aesthetic j udgments on his work,
but everything that helps to compensate for the loss of the work
b y supplying evidence about its form or contents .
The s ources for each fragment must b e specified, and in many
cases s omething of the context in which a quotation occurs must
b e given o rder for the reader to o rient himself. The m o s t
straightforward form of presentation i s to p rint t h e fragment s ur-­
rounded by its context (but picked out by larger or s paced type
as appropriate) and preceded b y the source-reference. Examples :
Merkelbach-West, Fragmenta Hesiodea ; J acoby, Fragmente der
griechis chen Historiker. I f several s ources give the fragment in
different c ontexts, i t may be abb reviated after its first appearance,
as in H e s . fr. 2 0 5 . D ependence of one s ource on another should
be indicated , as in Hes . frr . 62, 1 26 , 1 70 .
A n alternative format often adopted consists of p rinting the
fragment in is olati on and the sources and contexts somewhere
below . Examples : Diehl, Anthologia Lyrica Graeca ; Pfeiffer,
Callimachus. This g ives the p age a tidier appearance, but makes
it harder t o read the fragment i n its context. It is u seful as a varia­
tion on the first system when the fragment is not given complete
by an y s ource but is a reconstructi on fro m two or more ; see e. g .
A rchilo chus fr . 5 o r 4 3 i n m y Iambi e t Elegi Graeci 1 . The latter
fragment will als o serve to illustrate how different sizes o f type
may be used to distinguish more imp ortant fro m less important
s ources .
Fragment-numbers should be p rinted prominently above the
fragment or in the left-hand margin ; in the apparatus they should
be in bold type to distinguish them fro m line-numbers, in the case
of verse fragments, but in an edition of prose fragments (unle s s ,
96
they are very short) it is better to use the lineation of the page for
reference as in an ordinary prose text . If alternative numerations
are to b e given, they may be added in b rackets after the main
number in the text (as in Page, Poetae Melici Graeci) or in the ap­
p aratus (as in Fragmenta Hesiodea) , or reserved for a separate
table. There must also be a table con verting the old numeration
to the new . People will more often want to trace an old-style
reference in the new edition than vice versa .
For remarks on the p osition the apparatus on the page, see
p. 76. In many cases it will be necessary to cite in the apparatus
manuscripts of numerous different authors . The more often the
reader can be given a b rief note about their relationships , the
more intelligently he can use the apparatus . For examples see my
Iambi et Elegi Graeci 1. ix-xi and the apparatus to Archil. frr. 1 1 5 ,
1 22, 1 2 9 .
S cholia
M o s t b o dies of s cholia exist in different recension s . These should
be edited t ogether,. not in different volumes or parts of volume,
nor o n the o ther hand conflated into a hybrid text , but each
distinct version of each s cholium consecutively . ( Minor variations
of w ording in individual manus cripts do not constitute a 'distinct
version' . ) Each of these items should start on a n e w lin e . Unl e s s
it begins with a linking-formula such as l})), w c , i t should be
p refaced with a lemma indicating whi ch piece of text is the sub­
j ect of the comment. This may o r may not b e transmitted in the
manus cript(s ) . If it is not, it should supplied the editor in
b rackets 4) . A long sup p lied lemma may
2 be abbreviated , e. g .
Iliad 1 , 1 3-1 6 (AucrC)[LEvoc:; - Aa;;)\)) . The lemma should be p rinted
in b old or spaced typ e . It will itsel f be preceded by the reference
o f the chapter, section or verse from which it comes, unless this
24) Round b rackets, as used by D rachmann in the Pindar scholia, are more ap­
propriate than angular ones, since the supplement i s of something understood
rather than o mitted in error.
97
i s the same as for the p receding item . Some editors distinguish by
a series of letters the several scholia included in the same reference,
whether or not they refer to the same lemma, e . g . :
Pin d . 0 1 . 3 , 1 2 a . (TCp:X()()OV'� : ) eXTCcUTOI) ( H . B g 1
b . P) S O' O" WXTOV z p S, O c: : Of).- ,r), -
, --
CX7to \)E (DV f1.E p c c, O f1.E V O V -f) T O
,� \ Q � Y '
f1.svov . A
er) d e; O Wl c: TCETC O lYj f1.E V O V . ASYS ,
e . fJS00f1.CX,OV :
D Q ( ---? 1 7) .
I t i s a good idea. The lines the page will als o b e numbered in
the inner margin, as in a normal prose text, and this numeration
used in apparatus .
The manuscript s ources for each item are best stated a t the end of
it, in the text, as shown in the example j us t given. The p arenthesis
after DQ (which are marked off b y the comma after (C)) informs
the reader that in thos e manuscripts the s cholium is followed by
the one on verse 1 7 , such dislocations are common, and though
they should be corrected, intelligibility s ometimes depends on
their being recorded. The outer margin can be used for indications
of the s cholium's ori gin in cases where it can be inferred. Exam ple :
Erbse, Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem.
Grammatical material in s cholia, especially to Greek p oets , i s
often closely cognate with material i n scholia to other authors or
in etymologica ete. The parallels should as far as possible be s ought
out and cited in a register above the apparatus . Examples : Drach­
mann, Erbse, opp. citt . ; Wendel, Scholia in Apollonium Rhodium.
Indexes
What kinds of index are required will depend on the nature of the
text and the degree to which s atisfactory indexes have already
been published. The most usual sorts are the index of proper
names, the index of authors quoted or alluded to, the index of
subj ects (in a work of a didactic nature), and the general index of
words. In an edition of fragments , besides the numeration-con-
98
cordance mentioned above, a n index of the sources i s useful
papyri, quoting authors ete. I n d i c e s n o n s u n p r a e t e r n e c e s­
�
s i t a t e m m u l i p l i c a n d i. There is seldom any advantage and
often s ome disadvantage in separating the proper names from the
.\ , index of words, for instance ; and while D r a ch man n deserves
benevolence for his anxiety to help the user Pindar scholia,
os T�'I (:j O-�v . B g1 (C), the user for his p art needs some persistence if he is to find what he
wants amid the fifty-two alph abetical sequences at the end of the
edition. Page-headings should be used to make clear which index
each page-opening belongs to .
In an index of p roper names, the entries are best given in
s ame language as the text, and in the nominative case, unles s some
special interest attaches to the case-forms . Different bearers of the
same name must be distinguished, and some closer id entificatio n
is always useful, e . g .
' Ap x.SAaOe; (tCiTo p �x6e;) L Arruntius (h1storicus,
cos . 22 a. Ch. )
' A px,EACWe; ( R E 34) 2 5) Asellius( Sabinus ; cf.
PIR 2, i'l. 2 1 3)
' A pX,SACW C, ( M axd)ov [ cx e; , RE 7) (T . Pomponius) Atticu s .
I f there are rnany reference s , i t is a great help to the user to
classify them and give an indication of what each passage is about.
In the case of a prose work the editor should consider whether
references by page and line of the edition are not more c o nvenient
for the reader than references by book, chapter and section.
should be s aid in favour of the latter that they can be used in con­
j unction with a different edition, to save turning pages back\vards
and forwards while looking up a series of references .) If the re­
ferences consist of more than one numeral, it will make for cl arity
to separate adj acent references by a s emicolon rather than a single
p oint. B ut '36,26 ; 36,29 ; ' should be abbreviated as ' 3 6 , 26 . 29 ; ' not
25) 1 . e. the 34th holder of the name in Pauly-Wissowa. The examples arc from the
OCT editions of D i ogenes Laerti u s and Seneca's Letters .
99
'36.26 ; 29 ; '. ' 1 ,2, 1 ; 1 ; 1 ; 1 ; ' may be abbreviated as
2, 1 ; 3,3 . 5 ; 6,7 ;'.
An index of authors can be combined with an index of names
as in the ocr edition of Gellius . It should list the passages quoted
,
or alluded to in o rder, with a note of the edition used if necessary,
e. g.
Epicurus ecL U sener
fr. 1 3 2 : 57,4
1 3 3 : 6 1 ,5
1 35 : 58,6 .
In an index of su bjects the entries will usually be best left 1n the
language the text. No one will find a Latin index to a Greek
work convenient to use. If there is a word index, the subj ect
index will naturally be incorp orated in it.
word index may be selective or complete. There are limits to
the degree of completeness that is useful : there is no point i n
listing every occurrence of X Q( L , for example, since anyone making
special study of xd would have to work through the whole
text in any case. The sensible p rocedure would be to pick out the
nstances of xd in special uses, in combination with other p articles,
etc. and to indicate that the entry has been limited to these. It is
obviously a great help to the user to distinguish between separate
meanings and constructions to some extent, e. g. b etween fLEecY: +
accusative W:,cY: + genitive, or ut comp arative and ut final.
is very desirable in indexing some texts - those of literary or
linguistic and not merely technical interest - to distinguish the
various forms of nouns, verbs, ete . 2 6 ) . Naturally they should all
A difficulty arises when the index covers a group of authors o r works, lik e
Fatouros ' Index Verbo rum z u r friihgriechischen Lyri k . Someone looking up (say)
the instances of ifp(ut; in Anacreon has to pick out the Anacreon references frorn
those given for each case-form ; s o meone looking up the instances in all the poets
has to keep j umping from edition to edition. The user's convenience is p erhaps
best served in such a situation by abandoning the analysis o f forms except i n
entries where they are particularly significant.
1 00
be grouped together : E�ouAno under �06AO(J.Q(L. The entry might
read simply
3 bis ; 6,7.
� OUkrrxL 29,2. 1 ; E�OUAS'O
B u t suppose the author also u s e d forms of � OUA·ft , The
user of the index would look for forms of
entries . The entry should then take the form
( �OUAOlLoct.) � Ol)AnQ(L 29,2 ete.
Where there is uncertainty about the occurrence of a word or
form because of some textual p roblem, warning must be given by
means of some adj unct to the reference, ' (ci. ) ' , ' (1). I. ) " or a symbol
such as an asterisk.
P rinting
The p rinter should be offered a clear and well-spaced rn anu script
or typescript on paper of uniform size 2 7 ) with the pages numbered
continuousl y throughout . Only one side of the paper should be
used. Any correcti ons that have been made should be very clearly
marked, Instruction s about p age- headings etc. should b e provided.
Footnotes for the introductio n may either be p laced at the foot
of each sheet o r on separate sheets . In either case they should be
numbered serially through the chapter or the whole. Similarly
with the critical apparatus and other registers to go below the
text ; the editor w ill almost certainly find it convenien t to set
them out on separate sheets . starts each item on a new
line, he will have to be careful to indicate the spaces between
them, especially at the end of a lin e .
Making a n e w copy of the text is laborious a n d involves the
danger of error, particularly errors of omission. It i s common
p ractice to send the p rinter instead a copy of an existing edition
with the required changes marke d (in ink) as if on printer's p roofs .
27) Except that for the text itself a corrected copy o f a printed edition can be sub­
mitted (see below), and for the indexes a pack of cards or slips.
101
This too has its dangers . It is a well-documented fact that errors enough to follo w whatever course i s most s uited to the particular
and mis p rints persist fro m edition to edition as a result o f it 28 ) , circumstance s . The advice contained in the foregoing pages
and o ne can only advi s e that the editor takes the greatest care to not meet every p o ssible case, I am sure. But if the editor holds
see that the one he uses c orrectly reproduces the paradosis in the fast to the i deals of accu racy, clarity and elegance, does what the
places where he not choo s e to depart fro m the paradosis . subj ect demands, and treats the reader as a deserving but not
He must als o see it has been b rought into conformity with necess arily p atient friend, there i s a good hope that his edition
his wj shes in matters s uch as punctuation, numeration, the use will b e welcomed j ust as warmly as his s cholarship merits .
o f capitals .
M aking alterations in proof causes extra delay and expense.
The editor should reduce the need for them as far as p o ssible by
verifying references at the manuscript s tage and generally s eeing
that his manuscript c orrect, unambiguous and consistent with
regard to abbreviations etc . , and that it reflects his final and
s ettled opinions . But if he has grown wis e r by the time the proofs
come, the p rinter's interests must yield to the reader' s . The cor­
rection should b e devised in such a way as to cau s e as little disturb­
ance to the type setting as p o ssible, for instance by compensating
for a deletion with an insertion of si milar length nearby . This i s
p articularly kind i f proofs are already arranged in the form
of pages , as opposed to galley-proofs 2 9) .
Page-proofs are nece s s ary, o f course, before page- and line­
references can be adj usted . line-numbers the apparatus to
a prose text must b e inserted o r corrected at this stage, unle s s
t h e p agination a n older edition h a s b e e n reproduced exactly.
Indexes which references are given by p age and line are best
not made till now .

Conclusion

The problems which different texts present, to the editor o r to

the textual critic, vary enormously, and one must b e flexible

Sce A . Texte et i\pparat. H i s toire critique d'une tradi t i o n i mpri mee

( B ruxelles 1 9 62) ; Frankel , Einleitung .. . , p. 1 23 .
2 9) This does n o t s e e m the place for an account o f the marks u s e d in c orrecting
p r o o fs . Conv entio n s d i ffer s o mewhat i n different countries .

1 02 103
 in the Tristia. The assump tion i s certainly helpful
militiae turbine
if one regards the lines as an interpolation in the Amores .
8 gentis gloria dicar c
The transposition i s of the common type that brings related
words together : Paelignae gentis, dicar ego . The metre is p reserved ;
scribes could cope with elegiacs as they could not (till the renais­
sance) with Catullus ' glyconics .
9 quam E a Q : quem Y ::'
The antecedent is gentis, but scribes mistakenly took it to be
the more e mp hatic e,go .
12 p arua ::'
Perhaps influenced by 1 4. Pauca is s upported by Fasti 3 , 1 92 .
1 3 dicit, dicat c i s a favourite mannerism of Ovid' s , as e. g . in Fasti
Such variations are common. The subj unctive may have been
introduced in the b elief that dicar in 8 was a subj unctive . It is
better taken as a future (cf. Hot. Car m . 2 , 2 0 , 3 ff. ; 3 , 30 , 6 ff. ) , and
that confirms dice! here .
1 5 amathusia culti Y (O rr . , amat uisia culti (c ex u facto) Y :
:;' :
amathontia culta H : amat hostia cultum F , -us x: mihi tempo re
longo cett.
Venus is clearly being addressed, and A mathusia culti, even if it
is an emendation, is indubitably right . The Greek name, as s o
often, b affled the copyi s t s . FX have dismembered it to form
Latin words , which h owever make nonsense . S omeone else,
desiring sense, substituted mihi temp o re longo . I t is not very g o o d
sense, and if this h a d been the only rea d ing preserved, critics
would certainly have queried it. Others would have defended it
as p erfectly O vidian, pointing irrelevantly to other examples of
tempore longo in Ovi d . But who could have guessed the true
reading ?
1 8 e s t magnis : Haemoniis Merkel : Emathiis Martinon
There has been felt to be s omething flat about magnis, especially
with area maior. Merkel ' s conJ' ecture is based on Prop . 2 , 1 0 , 1 -2 ,
1 44
sed tempus lustrare aliis Helicona cho reis I et campum Haemonio £am
dare tempus equo .The assumed corruption would not be difficult :
a copyist expecting est a fter p ulsa nda might well see it (abbreviated)
in the e of emoniiJ, and the mysterious residue might well be made
into magnis. Martinon' s alternative has similar qualities, without
the advantage of the Propertian parallel. Haemoniis may be right ;
at least it deserves a place in the apparatu s . But magniJ also has
p oint, and it is precisely the j uxtap osition with maior that gives
it point. ' Big horses must have a bigger space to gallop in' ; in
other words, 'I have great powers, I must exercis e them on s o me­
thing more ambitious than elegy' .
1 9 Musa : turba N
The use of turba with an adj ective as an appositional phrase
et ualeant
uigiles, p rouida turba, canes. If it were the only readi ng transmitted
here, it would not b e suspect. Giv en the much better supported
variant Musa, one may hesitate . It is not obvious either
should have been replaced by the other.
post 20 sequitur sine intervallo inX Hic ego qUi iaceo tenerorum
lusor amorum I Ingenio perii Naso p o eta meo ( TriJt. 3, 3, 73 sq . ) ,
in J Hic tua iam Naso deponit castra Cupido, I Hic dat mili tiis
ultima signa tui s .
Clearly neither couplet belongs here . They were added to
embellish the end of the b o o k .
6. Apuleius (?) , de Platone 2 , 20
The somewhat cor rupt tradition of this work rests on six manu­
scripts, B MVPLF . B is the oldest ( 1 1 th century) , and quite often
the only copy to preserve a true reading or a trace of it. The other
five are dated to about the 1 2th century. P L F derive fro m a
hyparchetype 0, which s o metimes has a better text than B M V ; in
certain cases this can be ascribed to emendation, but in others a
1 45
 better tradition must be assumed. F is p articularly glVen to
emendatio n itself, and the cases where it alone gives the right
reading are so to be accounted for . This behaviour by F often
leaves PL on their own ; there are indications , however, that
their s hared readings do not always go back to 3 , but that there
was another intermediary . The two remaining copies MV als o
derive fro m o n e exemplar, whos e text generally resembled that
of B .
These facts can b e accommodate d i n either o f two stemmas :
I
Ma
I
I
I
()
B
~ X�
B artibus uncharacteristic of the style. artcs is corrupted to parte" in
M V F L P M V F L P
Since a generally offers a more intelligible text than MV, It I S
more likely than MV to be the p roduct of selection fro m alter­
native s ources, which is a point in favour of the first stemma.
p erfecte sapientem esse non p o s s e dicit Plato nisi ceteris ingenio
p raestet, tartibus et prudentiae partibust absoIutus atque tenim
iam tum a pueris inbutus , facti s congru entibus et dictis adsuetu s ,
p urgata et efficata animi uoluptate, electis ex animo <de)hinc
5 abstinentia atque patientia omnibusque doctrinis ex rerum s cientia
eloguentiaqu e uenientibus. eum qui per haec profectus fidenti et
s ecuro gradu uirtutis uia graderetur , adeptum solidam uiuendi
rationem trepente fieri perfectum : hunc repente praeteriti futuri­
que aeui ultimas partes adtingere et esse quodammod o intem-
10 p oralem. tum p o s t hoc, uitiis exclusis insertisque et inmissis
<uirtutibus) , o mnia quae ad beatam uitam ferunt non ex al iis
p endere nee ab aliis deferri sibi posse sed in sua manu esse s apic�ns
recte p utat. quare nee in secundis rebus effertur nee contrahitur
in aduersis, cum se o rnamentis suis ita instructum s ciat ut ab his
1 46
15 nulla ui s egregetur. hunc talern non s6lum inferre sed ne referre
quidem oportet iniuriam ; non enim eam contumeliam putat quam
inprobus faciat, sed eam non putat quam patientia firmiter toleret,
gua(ndo)quidem naturae lege in ani mo eius sculptu m sit quo d
nihil horum possit noeere sapienti quae opinantur ceted mala esse.
2 (i) praestet (; : praestat B MV : 'jo rt. p raestet, ( et) ' Tho mas
Grammar calls for the subj unctive ; () may have restored it
conj ecture. The addition of et is of course possible, but there is
nothing particular to be said in its favour.
(ii) artibus et prudentiae partibus : malim p rudentiae artibus vel
artibus et p rudentia a parentibus
p rudentiae partibus is an odd p hrase, and the paronomasia with
2,21 and perhaps 25, so that one pos sibility i s that prudentiae
is the true reading (cf. 2, 1 4 bonis artibus, 2 1 , being
correction of partibus that entered the text and generated a con­
necting et. Or artibuJ may stand unqualified as in 2 , 2 6 easdem
puero rum nutricationeJ, eaJdem eHe artium diJciplinas, followed bv
et p rudentia a p a r <en) tibus , which would balance iam tum a pueri",
though it would clash with the account given later of the com­
munal upbringing of children (2,25-6 , from the Republic) .
(iii) enim iam : iam Scaliger : etiam Sinko .' eximia ( dis ciplina)
(et s tatim pro tum) JVovdk : malim enixim iam
enim is impossible ; there is no reason to suspect iam . For the
sense one might expect something meaning 'conti nuously' fro m
childhood, or ' vigorousl y' . I f enzm is to be changed into an a d verb,
it is reasc)nable to look first for a suitable adverb 1!l -im, and
enixim s uits b oth sense and palaeography. But it cannot be regarded
as more than a guess .
3
(i) puero F
Classical L atin uses a p uero when the subj ect i s singular, Cl
when it is plural , but the plural here seems more lik ely to be
genuine variation of the idiom than the result of corruption .
F's reading will be a conscious or unconscious correction.
1 47
INDEX
Abbreviations 27 f. 89 f. 1 09 .
1 41 . 1 48 . 1 50 f.
accents 54 f. 94 f.
ancient critics 1 8. 1 9
anthologies 1 8
apparatus criticus 76. 85 ff.
apographa 1 2 . 3 3 . 6 8 . 86. 1 1 8 f.
archetype 32 . 3 8 . 41 :f. 53
assimilative corrup tion 23 f.
1 08 f. 1 1 1 . 1 24 . 1 34 . 1 36 . 1 3 8
asyndeton 22
attribution of speakers 5 5 . 79
author's variants 1 5 f.
banalization 22 . 1 1 0 . 1 1 6 . 1 1 8 .
1 21 . 1 28
bibliographies 62 ff. 73
bowdlerization 1 8
brackets 80 f. 85
Christian interference 1 8
closed recension 1 4. 3 1 fr.
collating 63 ff.
commentaries, ancient 1 0. 1 6 ;
modern 76
computers 70 ff.
contamination 1 2 f. 35 ff.
criteria of a true reading 48
defending the transmitted text 59
deletions by scribes 8 1 ; by
editors 80. 91
diagnos tic con j e c t u res 58
dialect forms introduced by
scribes 1 8 :f.
d i alogue texts 5 5 . 79
difficilior lectio . 1 2 6 . 1 48
diplomatic transcript
dittography 24 . 1 33
division of speakers 5 1) , 79
editor's qualifications 62
elimination of man u s crip ts 33 .
43
emendation 53 ff. ; scribes 1 2 .
1 9 f . 22 . 32 . 50. 1 07 ff. 1 34 f.
1 39 . 1 43 ff. 1 50
fragments, ed i tion s of 76. 95 ff.
frequency of error 1 1 9
glosses 22 f. 28. 5 8 . 1 1 3 . 1 2 5 . 1 26
grammatical doctrines affect text
19
haplography 24 . 1
hiatus in prose 21
homoearchon, homoeoteleuton
25
1 53
horizontal transmission 1 42 ; see
contamination
hyparchetype 3 3 . 75
indexes 9 8 f. 1 02
inscriptions 80 fr. 94 f.
interpolation 1 6 . 22 f. 9 1 . 1 1 5 .
1 43 f. 1 45
itacism 1 1 8 . 1 22 . 1 24
lacuna 5 7 . f.
lemma 1 0 . 97
libraries 9 .
locating co rruption 57
manuscripts 9. 30 ; furnished
with variants 1 2 . 36 f. 42
marginalia 1 2 . 22 £. 2 8
mental associations cause
corruption 2 1 . 1 07
metre 6 1 . 82. 1 37 ; scribes '
knowledge of it 20. 2 1 . 1 34 .
1 44
multi-stage corruptions 29 . 5 8
negative apparatus 8714
nomen-sacrum abbreviation
27 f. 1 24. 1 41
numeration 76 fr. 81 . 8 5 . 95 fr
.
99 f.
obeli 8 1
obscure words corrupted 26. 1 44
omlSSlons 42 . 80. 9 1
open recension 1 4. 37 fr.
orthography 1 8. 20 . 54. 66 . 69 f.
86 . 1 33 . 1 37 . 1 40
54
page-headings 76 f. symbols used in editions SO fE 93 variants, ancient 4 1 £. ; author" s
palaeographical errors 25 fr. 58 f. 1 5 f. ; systematic in certain
papyri 1 0 . 50. 5 7 . 5 9 . 64. 74 f. taxonomy 46 f. manuscripts 1 9 . 1 2S
80 fr. 94 f. 1 31 £. testimonia, see quotations vitium Byzantinum 2 1
trans p ositions 28. 42 . SO f. 92 .
vox nihili 5 55
paradosis 53 f.
1 34
phonetic errors 20 f. 1 1 2 . 1 6 .
Triclinius 20. 1 05 . O S . 1 1 4 f. watermarks 30
1 22 £. 1 3 8
118 'weighing' manuscripts 49
Planudes 1 9 . 2015 ' 1 05
word division 26 . 54. 1 49 f.
positive apparatus 8714
'unnecessary' conjectures 5 5 f. word order subj ect to variation
proarchetype 345
unnecessary editions 6 1 21 f. 1 24. 1 29 . 1 44
proper names corrupted 26 ;
interpolated 23 . 5 6
prose rhythm 2 1
punctuation 54 f. 5 7 . 69 ; in the
apparatus 8 8 . 93
quotations 1 0 f. 1 7 f. 7 8 f. 83 f.
9 5 f.
recensions , variant 6 f. 70. 75 f.
97
recentiores 50
reminiscence of another passage
causes corruption 2 1
rubricators 2 0
saut du meme au meme 24
scholia 1 0 . 1 7 . 82 f. 97 f. 1 07
sigla 73 fr. 90
simplification by scribes 22 ; of
consonant clusters 2 1 . 1 5 1 . -­
see banalization
spoonerisms 21
s tatisti cal methods 46 f.
s temma 1 4 ; of variants 52 £. 1 30
1 55