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GRONINGEN, B.A. van, Traité d'histoire et de critique des textes Grecs. Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers Maatschappij, Amsterdam, 1963. 126p. Sewn. Series: Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, afd. Letterkunde, Nieuwe Reeks, deel LXX, no.2. 'So far as I know, this is the first book confined to Greek authors which covers both the history and the criticism of texts, and those 'jeunes philologues' for whom it is intended will find it a valuable handbook, a companion volume to its author's Short Manual of Greek Paleography. (...) Apart from the slight awkwardness in presentation (which no writer on the subject could hope to avoid entirely) the book is very attractive. It covers a wide field of study in a succinct and readable way; its examples are well-chosen and illuminating, and it is full of good sense in tis treatment of the basic problems. Professor van Groningen is refreshingly free from dogmatism in his approach to the transmission of texts: he rightly stresses the uniqueness of each manuscript, the impossibility of imposing 'scientific' rules on man-made material and the importance of acknowledging the fluidity of texts in antiquity itself. He uses the evidence of papyri to illustrate the variety of readings current in the ancient world, and plausibly argues against the sort of doctrinaire interpretation which lays too much emphasis on 'official' copies and tries to standardize the process by which a text survived into the Middle Ages.(...) The book is full of instructive illustration and contains many useful references. (...) Professor van Groningen has provided students of the Classics with a clear and useful book of reference; it is to be hoped that it will become as widely known in this country as his 'Short Manual of Greek Palaeography'. It offers much that is lacking in Hall's 'Companion to Classical Texts' (useful as that old handbook still is (...)), and its general approach to the subject is sane and balanced. (P.E. EASTERLING in The Classical Review (New Series), 1965, pp.75-77). € 18.00 (Antiquarian)