ABSTRACT
In more recent times transpositions have not been much in vogue among editors of Vergil. Readers of Mynors' respected Oxford edition (1969) will find very few of them in his text: none in the Bucolics, one in the Georgics (4. 292–3) and two in the Aeneid (10. 663–4; 10. 714–16). But according to Edward Courtney there are good reasons to consider at least nine more for a place in the sun.2 Much information about earlier proposals can be found in Geymonat's Paravia edition (1973). In his critical apparatus Geymonat records 21 transpositions in the Bucolics alone,3 two-thirds of which are from the 20th century (due mostly to the concentrated efforts of Léon Herrmann4); five critics from three centuries are responsible for the rest (six transpositions), the last of which was published in 1897.5 I do not intend here to pass verdicts on these. Most of them belong probably to the spacious dustbin of unsuccessful textual criticism. I will concentrate on a proposal published in 1961, but regrettably passed over in silence by Geymonat and recent commentators.6
