The Classical Commentary

This collection explores the issues raised by the writing and reading of commentaries on classical Greek and Latin texts. Written primarily by practising commentators, the papers examine philosophical, narratological, and historiographical commentaries; ancient, Byzantine, and Renaissance commentary practice and theory, with special emphasis on Galen, Tzetzes, and La Cerda; the relationship between the author of the primary text, the commentary writer, and the reader; special problems posed by fragmentary and spurious texts; the role and scope of citation, selectivity, lemmatization, and revision; the practical future of commentary-writing and publication; and the way computers are changing the shape of the classical commentary. With a genesis in discussion panels mounted in the UK in 1996 and the US in 1997, the volume continues recent international dialogue on the genre and future of commentaries.

Christina Shuttleworth Kraus is Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Oriel College, Oxford. She has written a commentary on Livy Ab Vrbe Condita VI (Cambridge 1994) and published on Greek tragic narrative and Roman historiography, including The limits of historiography (Brill, 1999). She is preparing a commentary on Caesar, De bello gallico VII.
Roy K. Gibson is Lecturer in Classics in the Department of Classics & Ancient History, University of Manchester. He has published articles on Augustan poetry, and is the author of a commentary on Ovid, Ars Amatoria 3 (CUP, 2002). He plans to work next on a commentary on the letters of Pliny the Younger.

'This splendid book offers a varied and thoughtful meditation on the role of the commentary in contemporary classical scholarship.'
B.J. Gibson, BCMR, 2005.