Page "Metamorphoses" Paragraph 42

Collaborative editorial effort has been investigating the various manuscripts of Metamorphoses, some forty-five complete texts or substantial fragments, all deriving from a Gallic archetype.

The result of several centuries of critical reading is that the poet's meaning is firmly established on the basis of the manuscript tradition or restored by conjecture where the tradition is deficient.

There are two modern critical editions: William S. Anderson's, first published in 1977 in the Teubner series, and R. J. Tarrant's, published in 2004 by the Oxford Clarendon Press.