I was working on Strabo recently (for some reason we never had a complete Strabo text from Perseus here in Chicago; just a few books) and now I’m looking at some Plutarch. I’m struck by the very different approaches by two recent editors.

Radt’s principle is to follow the editions of the source texts quoted as much as possible (of course, he did some of that editing himself); Hunter announces that he is not looking for original classical poetry but for what Plutarch intended to write as he quoted it.

Hunter, p. 26 of his Green & Yellow: “Our aim has been to print the text [of the poetic quotations specifically -HD] which we believe P. wrote, even where that clearly differs from the true text of the relevant poet; the reasons for such differences are explained in the commentary.”

(As it happens, Perseus has done data-entry on the Teubner edition by Bernardakis (1888), and Bernardakis is all-in on the Radt principle. With some regularity the apparatus quotes Homer, tragedy, Plato,.. in the primary source edition, and chooses that version over what the Plutarch mss. (apparently unanimously) show.)

There’s things to be said in favor of each choice, and I imagine that Radt might have chosen differently in editing Plutarch (on how to read poetry) than Strabo, and vice versa. After all, Strabo is presenting evidence from what he would presumably intend to be the literal text he quotes; in the case of Plutarch, evidence is probably the wrong word, and following the quotations as he presents them is probably more important? As usual, I’m glad I’m not having to make the calls:-)

It does make for strange moments: Plutarch quoting fragments of Euripides with unlikely forms for Euripides and Hunter not commenting/marking this (but yes, what does the G&Y audience care about impossible verb forms, I suppose, when there is so much else to discuss). More on this later for the morphology geeks.

Also. I think I already expressed my surprise that Radt’s Strabo edition is not available at the TLG, and now I see that the 2016 Jouanna edition of the Epidemics isn’t there either? Is this normal? Do we conclude that pretty soon all of us, paywall or not, are going to be showing outdated editions? Plus side: Walked to the Regenstein to consult the Hamburg index to Hippocrates and Jouanna this morning, all because of one email about a missing lemma. (I’m going to say, no, not missing. Except I already wrote five over hasty emails. My apologies to my esteemed correspondent for not holding my fire.😂