This book is designed for students as an introduction to the history of transmission and editing. It gathers together much information on transmission, and the tradition of Catullus in particular; however, it barely discusses the collection as a whole and its ordering of material, as the title might seem to imply, but concentrates rather, as the subtitle says, on orthography (pp. 45–99) and punctuation (pp. 101–24). The remainder of the book is made up of eight pages of black-and-white illustrations, copious bibliography and indexes. Catullus is, frankly, an odd choice for the focus in such a book: we do not have manuscripts early enough to inform us about the changes in practice over the centuries (n.b. ‘la grafia dei codici non appartiene ai tempi della reppublica e tanto meno a Catullo’, p. 78) and, given the state of the text itself, editors of Catullus have more pressing concerns than orthography.

Chapter 1, ‘Le vicissitudini di un testo classico’, gives a summary account of what is known about transmission in general, from the original composition and publication (on both of which Catullus’ poems provide significant information) to the early printed editions. Much useful material is gathered here, with illuminating citations from ancient and medieval authors as well as from modern scholars. However, there is some lack of coherence, and not everything is as critical as one might wish. For example, footnote 41 cites Quintilian 1.8.6–8 on the undesirability of elegy and hendecasyllables as reading matter for boys; and n. 89 cites Silvio Piccolomini to the same effect, but without noticing that he draws on the Quintilian passage (Elegia … et hendecasyllabi … amoueantur si fieri potest, si minus, certe ad firmius aetatis robur reseruentur becomes Tibullus, Propertius, Catullus …; amoueantur igitur aut ad firmius etatis robur reseruentur). On page 25 B. attributes to the misreading of capitals the corruption of QVAMEALLIVS at 68.41 to QVAMFALLIVS, but does so while discussing the presumed transcription from capital to minuscule in the Carolingian period; if there is a reason why corruption at that point is significantly more likely than in any previous copying of a capital manuscript, it would be good to hear it. Page 46 displays ‘lo sviluppo della scrittura latina’ as a family tree, with Humanistic script derived from Gothic, though page 37 more reasonably describes the script of fifteenth-century Italy as imitating Caroline. Nor is the handling of the Catullian stemma sure-footed: the first mention of V comes in n. 65 in reporting the debate about whether the Thuaneus is independent of V in its text of poem 62, but such a discussion only makes sense once V is defined – and it should be immediately clear that though T shares errors with OGR (notably the lacuna after 62.32) it cannot be dependent on their latest common ancestor, i.e. the manuscript that serves as the archetype for the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century tradition (n.b. 62.14 om. OGR; 62.17 conuertite T: committite OGR; 62.40 conuolsus T: conclusus OGR). This has traditionally been called V. However, D.S. McKie's thesisFootnote ¹ showed that a stage almost certainly intervenes between the MS in Verona consulted by Geremia da Montagnone and other early humanists and the hyparchetype from which all the extant ‘complete’ MSS derive. It would be better to have separate sigla for two different MSS, and call one V and the other A, he suggested: V should only be used where a citation by Geremia confirms the reading of A (e.g. at 64.148 metuere); no edition yet does this.

The sections on orthography show how the editors of Catullus follow neither the oldest MSS (not that that would be wise when they are so late, and demonstrably wrong in so many cases) nor any other consistent logic. At times the inconsistency can be amusing: page 59, for example, sets Eisenhut's 1969 praise of Mynors for printing uester not uoster against his own practice in the Teubner edition of 1983; even Mynors, who generally avoids inconveniencing the modern reader, has his inconsistencies (p. 81). The chapter ends with a useful brief account of the evolution of editors’ orthographical practice (p. 83). No mention is made of Goold's use in his bilingual edition (1983) of j for consonantal i, equivalent to v for u. More troubling are some errors and omissions in reporting the manuscripts: for example (p. 59) O has (apparently) quadriuiis at 58.4, and (certainly) the compendious nr (not noster) at 39.20.

The chapter on punctuation illustrates the oddity of the book with particular clarity. There is no discussion of the separation of the text into poems, an area in which the Catullian tradition is of some interest. Two-thirds of the text is instead given over to an interesting collection of material on ancient (pp. 101–11, including a digression on prose clausulae) and medieval (pp. 112–17) interpunction and reading practices; it draws heavily on M. Parkes’ Pause and Effect (1992), but adds more recent bibliography, including some important Italian research. Discussion of Catullus resumes piecemeal on page 114, and in earnest only at the foot of 117; much of the remaining seven pages is taken up with images of 62.30–48 as they are presented in the four manuscripts of authority (TOGR) and the Aldine edition of 1502: this is based on Manutius’ consideration of the ancient evidence, and yet moves decisively towards modern norms. (Unfortunately there are errors in the report of O at 62.25 [p. 118]: it has him(en) and himenee in the second half of the line with i not u.)

It is a pity that the book was completed too early to record the appearance of a fundamental resource for the study of Catullus, the splendid website http://www.catullusonline.org/ meticulously assembled by D. Kiss: this provides a critical text, a full apparatus and images of key MSS.