Critical apparatus

Page 1 of the works of Gaius Musonius Rufus, with critical apparatus
Stemma codium constructed by Cesare Questa, representing relationships of textual witnesses (with their sigla; the lost source text is indicated by Ω) to the works of Roman playwright Plautus, with estimated dates from the IVth through Xth centuries.

A critical apparatus (Latin: apparatus criticus) in textual criticism of primary source material, is an organized system of notations to represent, in a single text, the complex history of that text in a concise form useful to diligent readers and scholars. The apparatus typically includes footnotes, standardized abbreviations for the source manuscripts, and symbols for denoting recurring problems (one symbol for each type of scribal error).

As conceived of by one 19th-century editor:

The object of a critical apparatus .. is to enable the earnest student to form his own text. It is therefore an editor's duty to give all the material variants of all the independent manuscripts. It is particularly his duty in a case like the present where there are many passages of which he can give no satisfactory explanation.[1]

  1. ^ Ashburner, Walter, ed. (1909). Rhodian Sea-Law. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. iii.