I contributi critico-testuali ai classici greci e latini nel “Bollettino” dei Lincei

The first part of this paper outlines the overall approach to the textual criticism of Greek and Latin classical authors as reflected by the Bollettino over the years, and signals a number of articles which stand out for their contribution to the history and to the establishment of a given text. In the second part, nine Greek and Latin case studies (drawn from papers published in the Bollettino throughout its history) are singled out to illustrate a specific methodological issue: how is an editor to proceed when the text is uncertain because of some – real or supposed – anomaly in language or style and no stemmatic arguments are available? More caution in emending away ‘anomalies’, and more courage in vindicating them even when they have always been subject to correction, are ultimately recommended: for such peculiarities often prove to be just infrequent but fully legitimate usages, misunderstood by the editors and therefore wrongly normalised.