These notes are presented as a contribution to the improvement and understanding of Propertius’ text, a purpose which in my judgment cannot now be much advanced either by collation and recollation of his MSS or by further discussion of their value and affiliations. I have not done the one and, beyond the little that candour requires, shall not attempt the other.

My reports of MS readings, supplied for the reader's convenience and not with any design of constructing a new apparatus criticus, are at second hand except for occasional references to Birt's facsimile of N. They are chiefly derived from Hosius' third edition, but for Vo. I have gone to Richmond, for P to Butler and Barber, and for the corrector's hands in F to Miss A. C. Ferguson's dissertation. I have also made use of Mr Enk's apparatus in Book I, and corrected some errors in the light of Mr Barber's lately published Oxford Text. But many variants which do not affect the points specially at issue have been ignored. My choice of conjectures for record may seem capricious and perhaps is so to some extent. I have tried to omit none which I consider plausible and have noticed many which I do not so consider, partly because others have taken them seriously, partly as the easiest way of indicating a real or imaginary difficulty.

Subsequent criticism has on the whole confirmed the assessment of the MSS as it stands registered in the prefaces of half a century ago, the results of a process in which the editions of Lachmann (1816) and Baehrens, Housman's articles of 1893—4, and Postgate's discovery of L are climacterics. In two particulars of sufficient practical importance for mention here it has been modified. On the one hand P seems now firmly established beside F and L as a substantial witness to the tradition of A.