Though several leading Greek scholars expressed agreement with my theory (PCPS N.S. XIV (1968), 65–74) that our bifid manuscript tradition of Longus derives from two recensions by Longus himself, I had not expected it to go unchallenged, especially as the lecture in which I set it out necessarily could not explain in detail many passages of which the sense is not immediately apparent. Therefore I welcome Mr M. D. Reeve's detailed criticisms (PCPS N.S. XV (1969), 75–85). I am confident that, given space, I could refute all his objections; but I confine these remarks to a few by way of examples.

In the first passage that Mr Reeve discusses (p. 76), II.19.1, we may examine closely the author's earlier draft, as I think it, reflected in the manuscript A (Laurentianus, Conventi soppressi 627). It runs, with my punctuation:

Yet the affair had not altogether ended. But the men from Methymna, returning with difficulty to their own city, wounded, while the local inhabitants were luxuriating and being at ease, supplicated them to come to their help, and convened an assembly of the citizens, and, proffering suppliants' olive-branches, supplicated to be thought worthy of revenge.