Latin Literature

Abstract

First up, a brace of major Teubner editions. Marcus Deufert's De rerum natura marks a significant moment in Lucretian studies. I suspect that most people, at least in the Anglosphere, are still using Cyril Bailey's venerable Oxford Classical Text (revised in 1922) for everyday reading, if not the equally antique Loeb (W. D. Rouse, 1924). In broadest outline, text-critical views haven't changed much since: a ‘closed’ tradition, in which two Carolingian manuscripts rejoicing in the workaday names Oblongus and Quadratus are prime witnesses, but often problematic ones; a mass of manuscripts from Renaissance Italy, which editors consult primarily for conjectures. But the last century has seen plenty of important work, and Deufert can report more precisely on the various corrections made in O and Q; affirm that all Italian manuscripts descend from O, and give them a stemma; pan many more humanist conjectures; wade in the muddy river (xxi) of modern interventions; and offer his own solutions to, or non liquet on, textual problems small and large. The result is a text with plenty of novelties (and many questions left open), and an edition with a very different look.