Further notes on the apparatus criticus

Abstract

This article is intended to contribute to an emerging debate regarding the proper contents and shape of a digital apparatus criticus. I argue that Keeline (2017) offers what are in fact two very different proposals for such an apparatus, one of which will likely serve our interests as a profession far more effectively than the other. Keeline treats the general contemporary tendency to disregard the critical apparatus in printed texts as a problem that must be corrected. I suggest that it is better understood as a reasonable response to the enormous intellectual expansion of the field of classical studies over the last few generations, and that it is accordingly unlikely to respond to changes in the architecture of the critical apparatus in any format.