Monday, April 27, 2026
Five Hurdles
Michael Reeve, "Cuius in Usum? Recent and Future Editing," Journal of Roman Studies 90 (2000) 196-206 (at 201):
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From an edition so conceived I have come to expect five things: a survey of the available witnesses, reasons for using some rather than others, accurate collation, guidance on the difference between the best text that can be extracted from the witnesses and what the author seems likely to have written, and substantial progress in at least one of these four. Ideally, the first two should be combined in a historical account, because the value of a witness depends on the aims, resources, and abilities of whoever produced it; but it would be a luxury to dwell on the ideal when many editions still fall at one or more of the five hurdles.
