‘Richard, isn't it curious that any damn fool who has edited a text thinks he can write a book on textual criticism?’ (Roger Mynors in conversation, 1975). Roger's words struck me with particular force, partly because of their atypical vehemence and partly because at the time, fresh from editing a text and reviewing a couple of books on textual criticism, I had indeed begun to think that I might write a book on the subject. His remark made me postpone the project for nearly four decades. I must leave it to readers to decide whether I should have put it off still longer.

This set of essays is neither a handbook nor a history of classical textual criticism. Good examples of both genres are available, such as Martin West's Textual Criticism and Editorial Technique and Leighton Reynolds's and Nigel Wilson's Scribes and Scholars. My aim is instead to offer critical assessments of the current state of the field and some thoughts on the challenges and possibilities facing it in the near future. But I hope that the book may also serve as a way into textual criticism for classicists who do not specialize in the subject and for scholars in related disciplines.

Textual criticism affects all students of the classics, whether or not they are aware of its influence. That influence is mainly exerted by the editions that we all depend on, and so one of my goals is to provide guidance for users of critical editions, at a general level by examining the rationales that underlie classical editing and more specifically through sections on apparatus format and terminology.

I have tried to take nothing for granted and to regard no assumption or practice as self-evidently valid, but to subject all of them to scrutiny, which will often result in acknowledging their limitations. A recurring theme is the role played in textual criticism by non-objective factors. Textual criticism deals with relative probability and persuasiveness, not with demonstration, and as a result its conclusions must always be to a degree provisional.

This is a personal book, both in the sense of being written in a first-person style that reflects its origins in lectures and also in being rooted in my own editorial experiences: many of my examples of textual problems are drawn from Ovid's Metamorphoses.