Introduction: Philologist, Heal Thy Text

Abstract

To the classical scholar, unlike the ancient physician, time is the enemy, for time—far too much of it—has afflicted the documentary record of antiquity with all manner of ills. Indeed, the metaphor of disease pervades the language of textual criticism: one speaks of the “corruption” that texts suffer in the course of their transmission, even as the purity of one textual form is “contaminated” or “infected” by defects from another. In the words of a distinguished guide to classical scholarship.