ABSTRACT
The edition has a double aim: to present a readable text, and to give an impression of the physical appearance of each individual document. Thus, we do not give a critical text, either in a philological or an epigraphical sense – we use the often threatening panoply of such an edition as sparingly as possible, and we indicate readings and scholarly conjectures only where absolutely necessary.1 Readers interested in these matters should consult one of the more recent critical editions, preferably Bernabé’s Teubner text. None of these editions preserve the Greek in the form it appears on the tablets, instead translating it into uniform Attic spelling and sometimes reconstructing words that the writer did not intend to write. One needs to retain the exact spelling of words as they appear on the tablets in order to understand the degree of literacy possessed by these local writers, and to judge the editorial decisions of modern editors.
