Editing Classics (section)

===Philology<!--'Classical philology' redirects here-->===
{{further|Philology}}
{{redirects|Classical philology|the journal|Classical Philology (journal)}}
[[File:Friedrich August Wolf - Imagines philologorum.jpg|thumb|right|alt=Black-and-white image of Friedrich August Wolf in profile|The eighteenth-century classicist [[Friedrich August Wolf]] was the author of ''Prolegomena to Homer'', one of the first great works of classical philology.]]
[[Philology]] is the [[Linguistics|study of language]] preserved in written sources; '''classical philology'''<!--boldface per WP:R#PLA--> is thus concerned with understanding any texts from the classical period written in the classical languages of Latin and Greek.<ref>{{harvnb|Mackay|1997}}</ref>
The roots of classical philology lie in [[the Renaissance]], as [[Renaissance humanism|humanist]] intellectuals attempted to return to the Latin of the classical period, especially of [[Cicero]],<ref>{{harvnb|Shorey|1906|p=179}}</ref> and as scholars attempted to produce more accurate editions of ancient texts.<ref>{{harvnb|Mann|1996|p=172}}</ref> Some of the principles of philology still used today were developed during this period; for instance, the observation that if a manuscript could be shown to be a copy of an earlier extant manuscript, then it provides no further evidence of the original text, was made as early as 1489 by [[Angelo Poliziano]].<ref>{{harvnb|Mann|1996|pp=173–74}}</ref> Other philological tools took longer to be developed: the first statement, for instance, of the principle that a more difficult reading should be preferred over a simpler one, was in 1697 by [[Jean Leclerc (theologian)|Jean Le Clerc]].<ref>{{harvnb|Mann|1996|p=174}}</ref>

The modern discipline of classical philology began in Germany at the turn of the nineteenth century.<ref name="Rommel 2001 169"/> It was during this period that scientific principles of philology began to be put together into a coherent whole,<ref>{{harvnb|Mann|1996|pp=174–175}}</ref> in order to provide a set of rules by which scholars could determine which manuscripts were most accurate.<ref>{{harvnb|Mann|1996|p=173}}</ref> This "new philology", as it was known, centered around the construction of a genealogy of manuscripts, with which a hypothetical common ancestor, closer to the original text than any existing manuscript, could be reconstructed.<ref>{{harvnb|Mann|1996|p=175}}</ref>