Dalla stampa al digitale, dal digitale alla stampa. Tradizione indiretta dei classici latini in Rete / From print to digital texts, from digital texts to print. Indirect tradition of latin Classics on the web

This article investigates the quotations of ancient Latin authors on the Web with the methodology developed by classical and medieval philology in the study of indirect tradition. The fi rst part of the paper focuses on the most prominent online collection of quotations, Wikiquote. It analyses the internal structure of Wikiquote’s entries, the ways in which users cite their sources, and the various kinds of errors in the text as well as in the attribution of the quotations. The comparison with ancient and medieval lexica and collections of sayings leads to the identifi cation of the main methodological fl aws of the project. The second part of the article deals with three case-studies of misattributions of Latin extracts, occured in printed publications and amplifi ed by the online circulation. Accordingly, it can be argued that the digital and online indirect tradition of classical works shows the same kinds of textual corruption which the philology has already identified in works transmitted by manuscript and printed witnesses.