{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.03754813863928113, 'fraction_numerical': 0.011874197689345315, 'mean_word_length': 4.606115107913669, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
A NEW TEXT OF CHARITON'S CALLIRHOE

Editing Chariton is not a straightforward business. His novel in its entirety (albeit with some significant lacunae) is preserved only in a thirteenth-century codex now in the Laurentian Library in Florence (F = Conv.Soppr.627), which is also the sole witness for Xenophon of Ephesus and the only manuscript of Longus to supply a large chunk of the first book. Our knowledge is supplemented by three papyrus fragments of similar date (midto late-second century CE), not too long after the composition of the novel, and by the bizarre case of the so-called codex Thebanus deperditus (designated W by S.M.), a fragment of a seventh-century parchment palimpsest, provisionally transcribed by U. Wilcken, but destroyed in a fire before it could be properly edited. The papyri present a text not dissimilar to that of F, although there is no way of knowing whether they originally did so over the whole length of the novel or how they are related to one another and F’s earliest ancestors. W, however, differs significantly from F, offering a somewhat fuller version of 8.5.9–7.3, either (as Wilcken argued) because F represents an abbreviated version of Chariton’s original or (as argued by Zimmermann, followed by S.M.) because W’s text has been expanded to make it more attractive to sentimental readers. That expansion presumably occurred after the date of the papyri, but how long after is anyone’s guess. However, the possibility of such manipulation clearly calls into question the stability of the novel’s transmission, and the exact status of its one medieval witness. A parallel case occurs with Achilles Tatius, where papyri offer a reordered version of an important episode. Although not exactly textes fluides, the novels were apparently subjected to more scribal creativity than more canonical texts. The main problem for an editor is the abject quality of F. In Longus, where F can be compared to a better manuscript, the variants are sufficient in quantity and quality to have given rise to a hypothesis of different authorial recensions, though in truth they are due to F’s ineptitude. In the case of Chariton, comparison with the papyri suggests that F commits an error in every other line of the text. Editors, from the editio princeps of J.P. d’Orville (1750) onwards, have exercised their judgement to make sense of F’s offering. The text has been improved by a host of corrections, ranging from the obvious to the brilliant: of particular note is the work of great nineteenth-century philologists such as R. Hercher, S.A. Naber and C.G. Cobet, many of whose conjectures were subsequently confirmed by the papyri, and, in the first half of the twentieth century, J. Jackson. Scholars continue to chip away. One thing is certain: a conservative text of Chariton is a non-starter. The first fully critical edition was that of W.E. Blake (1938). G. Molinié’s Budé of 1979 was deeply flawed (see the devastating review by B.P. Reardon, REG 95 [1982], 157–73). Reardon’s own Teubner (2004) has been the standard text since its publication, while THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 74