In their mangled versions of this poem Baehrens and Housman have both anticipated the first of these changes whilst lines 19–20 are placed as I suggest by Housman and Postgate and lines 21–4 are placed before line 39 by Scaliger, Housman, Butler, and others. Nevertheless I recall these transpositions here, primarily because my third change is intelligible only through them, but also because their correctness has been generally neglected amid the confusing assortment of wholly unnecessary transpositions that this poem has (...) suffered. My reasons for recommending the above changes are these. (shrink)

Robin George Colling Wood was a Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Pembroke College, Oxford, from 1912 to 1935. During this period he published or prepared his most important philosophical and historical works.