That the fourteenth and final volume in Roman Literature and its Contexts, a series that has done so much to show students of Latin literature how developments elsewhere in the humanities may influence their work, should be devoted to textual criticism suggests the waning of the attitude that textual criticism is an unintellectual activity from which Classics should escape. Tarrant's distinction both in editing and as a literary critic makes him an ideal contributor to the series: beginners in textual criticism will find an attractive introduction to the subject, the more experienced plenty to provoke thought. Since I am mentioned in the preface, I should say that I had seen none of this book before publication.

T. presents his book not as a systematic treatment of the subject, but as a series of essays that are personal in tone. In fact, most important aspects of the subject are discussed: how to decide which manuscripts to use in editing; when to replace the paradosis with a conjecture; how to present information in an apparatus criticus; and (especially useful for the beginner) how to read an apparatus criticus. Other chapters deal with the place of textual criticism in classical scholarship in the aftermath of what T. calls the age of heroic editing; the rhetoric used by textual critics; prospects for editing in the future; and (a speciality of T.'s) the motivation for, and detection of, interpolations. I agreed with almost all T.'s methodological pronouncements.

T. is particularly good on the vexed question of when to emend. Proposers of conjectures are often accused of rewriting their texts, conservative critics of undervaluing them by ascribing poor writing to them. T. refutes two extreme and flawed positions: that conjectures should be printed only when sense cannot be extracted from the paradosis, and that textual critics should be ‘free to adopt any conjecture that in their view improves the text’ (77). The varied reception of Heinsius' in humum for the MSS's in me or in se at Amores 2.4.11 provides an excellent illustration (76–7) of the difficulty of deciding whether a clever conjecture represents what the poet actually wrote. That such questions involve a literary judgement on the style and technique of an author becomes very clear from ch. 6, ‘Textual Criticism and Literary Criticism: the Case of Propertius'. How many of the difficult or surprising expressions offered by Propertius' MSS should be regarded as products of his ingenium, how many as instances of scribal corruption? A substantial number of conjectures have always been adopted, but several recent editors (Goold, Heyworth, Giardina) have been much more adventurous than their predecessors. T., it would seem, thinks that radicalism has advanced far enough. His chapter usefully contributes to understanding Propertius' style, and I found convincing his defence of the paradosis in most of the passages that he discusses. That said, since the publication of Goold's Loeb and Heyworth's OCT, I have had more confidence in the texts in my hand.

T. provides an interesting discussion of the rhetorical language used by textual critics, which is often harsher and more aggressive than that found in other branches of Classics, and must seem strange to outsiders. He himself is not immune (as he self-reflexively notes at 36 n. 28): he judges Simone Viarre as ‘not equal to the demands of producing a critical edition’ (108); and he brands those ghastly ‘voting lists’ in critical apparatuses which note editors who have previously adopted a particular reading ‘an abomination’ (161). T. suggests various possible explanations for the phenomenon. I have often wondered whether it is the certainty that there is one right answer that engenders so much passion: whereas almost all would admit that several interpretations of the end of the Aeneid are possible, an author generally wrote only one version of passages whose text is disputed. All the more welcome, therefore, and in contrast with the confidence projected by many textual critics, is T.'s stress throughout that textual criticism deals with probabilities and not certainties.

To this British reviewer, a fascinating aspect of the book is the engagement of a leading American scholar with an important strand of British classical scholarship: it is dedicated to the memory of T.'s Oxford doctoral supervisor (R. G. M. Nisbet), starts with an anecdote about another Oxford teacher (Sir Roger Mynors), and often discusses the work and views of a doctoral examiner (E. J. Kenney, ‘as close to a true moderate in his editorial practice as it is possible to be’ (77)) and such other British scholars as Hall, Heyworth, Housman, Reeve, and his late, great Harvard colleague, Shackleton Bailey. T.'s admiration for the last is obvious, but perhaps out of pietas the book never quite suggests a rounded estimate of his scholarship: if the many convincing conjectures are the main glory of the brilliant obverse, the unwillingness properly to engage with manuscript evidence and the significant proportion of unsatisfying conjectures in many of his articles make a less glittering reverse.

I end with an observation on method. T. remarks (61) that we live in an age of eclectic editing. However, the impossibility in many traditions (for example, those of Lucan, the De raptu Proserpinae, or much of Ovid) of arranging the older witnesses on a stemma in such a way that the evidence of some MSS can be mechanically eliminated does not mean that stemmatics cannot help by making decisive eliminations, or establishing constant groupings, among the younger MSS; and in making such eliminations a contaminated MS. that fuses two streams of text can be a godsend. I should expect such eliminations to be possible even in the traditions that I have mentioned and am accordingly suspicious of a popular doctrine: that in these and some other traditions any MS. may potentially contain inherited truth not found elsewhere.