A.1. Überlegungen zu den Theognideen

The following remarks concerning textual criticism are not intended to extrapolate from the Byzantine redactions any kind of "Ur-Theognis", i.e. to reconstruct archaic elegies, from which the transmitted verses might have arisen by being repeatedly excerpted. Rather they start from the fact that the individual pieces as presented in West's editions are on the one hand text segments of high and concise stylistic quality, while on the other they have become heavily corrupt. Corrupt pieces of text may be recognized and emended by the process of text-immanent observation. Consequently immanent textual criticism without recurrence to an "Ur-Theognis" seems to be possible.