Aristotle discusses intellect in Metaph. 12.9. This chapter, however, seems incomplete, because a question posed in it (1074b36–8) remains unaddressed. Another passage (1072b14–30) in Metaph. 12.7 seems to address a similar topic, yet appears extraneous to its present chapter. This article argues that the placing of the aforementioned passage within Metaph. 12.7 is incorrect, and that its original position is actually at the end of Metaph. 12.9. This alternative reading offers a better understanding of 1072b14–30, and has the potential to finalize the unfinished discussion in Metaph. 12.9.

This article examines the two examples of ‘lengthened name’ (ἐπεκτεταμένον ὄνομα) given by Aristotle in chapter 21 of the Poetics. It argues that the generally printed text is unsatisfactory because it does not serve the purpose of Aristotle’s examples well. In the case of the first example, the article suggests that a branch of the manuscript tradition other than the one privileged by most editors should be followed, while in the case of the second, a conjecture is offered. An appendix is devoted to highlighting a detail of William of Moerbeke’s translation of the first example.

This note proposes a new solution to the crux at Aeschylus, Persians 602.

Fragment 659 Radt of Sophocles’ Tyro contains a number of textual problems, and editors have tended to accept four conjectures made by scholars in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This note argues that the text of the manuscripts should be retained and that it can make perfect sense.

This article aims to elucidate the oblique insight that the Arabic translation can offer on Aristotle. In the case of Poetics 1461a29–30, the Arabic evidence supports a variant rightly disregarded as corrupt by modern editors. The Arabic rendering of the erroneous variant, however, simultaneously misquotes the Homeric verse and syntactically acknowledges its status as a direct quotation, a status neglected by modern critical editions of the Poetics. Surveying the Aristotelian evidence in light of the Arabic translation reveals the need for an analytical approach to Aristotle that fully takes into account the testimonies of the witnesses even when—or rather, especially when—they disagree.

A conjecture in Aristophanes, Peace 246.

This article defends the transmitted text of a passage of Plato’s Gorgias against a suggestion first proposed by L.F. Heindorf in 1805 and adopted by all subsequent editors.

Sultan Bahaʾ al-Din Muhammad-i Walad (623–712 AH/1226–1312 CE), eldest son of Mawlana Jalal al-Din Muhammad-i Balkhi (Rumi), authored mystical poetry that significantly contributes to Persian literature and offers unique insights into the Mevlevi order’s development. Based on comprehensive textual criticism of Sultan Walad’s Divan (approximately 13,000 lines), this article reveals through manuscript analysis the existence of two distinct authentic versions. The discovery of a unique manuscript by Nizam al-Din Katib, Sultan Walad’s brother-in-law, containing both versions with authorial revisions, provides crucial evidence for understanding the poet’s creative process. This finding illuminates Sultan Walad’s methodology in refining his mystical poetry and offers rare insights into Persian mystical literature’s textual dynamics in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.

The European Research Council-funded project “STEMMA: Systems of Transmitting Early Modern Manuscript Verse, 1475 to 1700” computationally models the manuscript circulation of early modern poetry to gain macro-level insights into the overlapping contexts in which it was written, read, and copied. To facilitate STEMMA’s ultimate goal of modeling the circulation of manuscript poetry as a large-scale network, the project began by combining and reconciling five of the most authoritative sources of relevant data using staged large language model (LLM)-assisted pipelines. These pipelines were effective on a large proportion of the data, but they struggled in relation to particular features of early modern poetics, including imitation, translation, and unique works. This article considers how general models’ shortcomings in relation to early modern poetry can be considered a feature rather than a bug, pointing up new insights into poetics by defamiliarizing them. It considers productive intersections between literary theory and criticism and recent scholarship on LLMs and suggests that two seemingly very different fields of study address what are, at core, rather similar fundamental questions.

This article offers an exploration of the transmission of the Pericope Adulterae (PA) in medieval manuscripts through the reports of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Egyptian scholars Abū al-Barakāt ibn Kabar and al-Asʿad ibn al-ʿAssāl. Ibn Kabar’s investigation reveals disparities between Arabic and Coptic sections, prompting a study of the PA’s presence in manuscripts across languages. Ibn al-ʿAssāl’s research involves examining manuscripts in Coptic, Greek, and Syriac, uncovering the PA’s rarity rather than prevalence. Byzantine-text based Arabic translations are found to introduce the PA to Coptic and Syriac circles. In contrast, the Melkite tradition, reliant on Greek manuscripts, often omits the PA. By tracing these scholars’ inquiries, the article provides insights into the PA’s complex journey of presence and absence in medieval Egypt and the Levant.

This note presents a new supplement for Euripides, Protesilaus fr. 646a Kannicht.

This article argues that at Od. 16.305 καί κ’ ἐτεοδμώων is to be preferred to the medieval vulgate καί κέ τεο δμώων. The latter is metrically anomalous and semantically obscure, and its awkwardness prompted secondary variants and conflicting interpretations. By contrast, the reading associated with Ptolemy of Ascalon is metrically sound and semantically apt, meaning ‘true slaves’. The evidence further suggests that ἐτεοδμώων was already regarded in antiquity as an authentic manuscript reading. Since both readings derive from the same unaccented sequence (ΚΕΤΕΟΔΜΩΩΝ), the issue is not one of conjectural intervention but of correct division and interpretation. Future editions should therefore adopt καί κ’ ἐτεοδμώων.

In Paul of Aegina’s Pragmateia, the reading μυωτά for a type of short arrow has attracted scholarly attention. Das argued that an Arabic parallel supports the emendation μύωπα, but this has been questioned by Moseley. By looking at Graeco-Arabic translation technique, this short note shows that Das’s emendation μύωπα is probably right.

Book 2 of Aristotle’s De anima is transmitted in two versions: a vulgate version, attested in the overwhelming majority of extant manuscripts, and a non-standard version, hitherto known primarily by the few subsisting remains of the original recension of manuscript Parisinus graecus 1853, the oldest extant direct witness. After identifying additional witnesses to the non-standard version, the article argues that it derives from the vulgate version and that some of its innovations originate in the ancient commentaries to the treatise.

This article discusses a handful of passages from the sixth book of Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica, proposing some twenty new conjectures, while repeating the claim that the poem is in need of thorough textual reappraisal.

This note addresses a grammatical objection, first raised by Torstrik, to the transmitted text of Aristotle’s De anima 3.7, namely that the text contains at 431a4–7 a μέν without a corresponding δέ (or another adversative particle). Rejecting Corcilius’s suggestion that this is a μέν solitarium, the note shows that modest repunctuation reveals a responding δέ and makes better sense of this part of the text.

Escaping from the sack of Amida in 359, the historian Ammianus Marcellinus encountered a runaway horse pulling behind it the dead body of a groom who had tied himself to the horse and fallen off (19.8.6–7). The article argues that errors in text and punctuation and a lack of equestrian knowledge have led to an illogical interpretation of the passage. Where most translators describe the groom being tied to the reins, we should understand habena as a halter used to guide the animal from on foot. Prose rhythm implies that ne labi possit ex more should be taken as a single clause, meaning ‘in the usual manner to stop [the horse] escaping’. Moreover, attention to prose rhythm and Ammianus’ usage also shows that we should further emend sedens to insidens.

This article explores how the unsettled meaning of the Sabbath in ancient Christian culture shaped the transmission of the Letter of the Hebrews by Christian editors and copyists. The textual variants in question occur toward the end of a complex literary unit (Heb 3.1–4.11) in which the author elaborates on the concept of ‘rest’, culminating in an appeal to the term σαββατισμός (Heb 4.9). After examining how the term σαββατισμός functions in its immediate context, the article turns to textual variants in various Greek and Latin manuscripts (including Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Claromontanus, Codex Vaticanus and several medieval witnesses), situating them within broader late ancient debates about Sabbath meaning and observance, and more specifically within discourse that employs the text of Heb 4.9.

This study explores the integration of Euthalian Apparatus features into catenae in Acts manuscripts, highlighting the resulting textual and visual ambiguities. It examines how traditionally distinct elements, such as prologues, hypotheses and quotation markers, intersect with catenae. Examples include the Euthalian prologues opening or concluding the chain in various catena types and the use of graphical symbols linking Euthalian features, such as quotation markers and brief narrations, as marginal scholia to scripture. The study investigates these intersections to understand paratextual exchanges in New Testament manuscripts and the origins of certain Euthalian features.