Editoren und Edenda in der Klassischen Philologie

Abstract

This article examines how different editors of classical Latin and Greek authors influence the reconstruction of texts. Since the stemmatic method, that bears Karl Lachmann’s name, has proved to be the most suitable approach for classical philology, ‘recensio’ and ‘examinatio’ are the two areas of work in which differences can become apparent. Of these, ‘examinatio’ appears to be most strongly influenced by the editor’s personality. Using two extreme examples – the editions of Virgil by Mynors and Conte, and the editions of Propertius by Fedeli and Heyworth – the differences between editors in their use of conjectures are illustrated. It turns out that the editor’s influence also depends on the quality of the material: Virgil’s text, which has been relatively well preserved, is less frequently called into question than Propertius’s hopelessly corrupted text. Consequently, Virgil needs a critical re-evaluation these days, whilst Propertius needs a conservative one.