Language creates and controls the world: the act of naming brings concepts into existence and imposes order on chaos. Modern English is an amazing artefact, the product of thousands of years of collaborative human effort, a communication tool that is protean, subtle, sophisticated. Historical circumstances have given it a unique role as a global lingua franca, spoken as a first or second language by two billion people.

English is capable of great precision because its vocabulary is rich in near-synonyms. It also has great flexibility in two dimensions. First, it relies on word order rather than inflections – an upset win is the opposite of a set-up win, and the difference between good-looking and looking good is about twenty years. Second, its parts of speech are largely interchangeable – for instance, out may be an adverb, a preposition, a noun or a verb. English is also succinct, as textbook publishers have found to their cost when trying to fit translations into a tight page grid.

All living languages exist in a state of tension between growth and decay. Languages change because playfulness and the desire to impress are universal human traits; they grow in response to technological innovation, cultural contact and social developments.Working against these impulses to the new are the forces of stability: inertia, the fear of being misunderstood, and the fixative effect of writing.

Angus & robertson, in the glory days when Beatrice Davis was their senior editor, used to consider three typos per book were a reasonable number. Even in these degenerate times fifty in 570 pages are too many, as HarperCollins demonstrated by pulping thousands of copies of Jonathan Franzen's novel Freedom after the wrong files were sent to the printer. Of course, there is huge potential for mistakes in any publication – all those letters, words, names, dates, facts, numbers and typography – and the closer you are to it the harder it is to see them. It's common for experienced editors to glance at a proofread page and immediately spot an error that the proofreader has missed. This is not a sneer at proofreaders; it just demonstrates how hard it is to detect errors in print. It's fatally easy to miss typos in the displayed type of titles and headings.

Some editors claim that the process of reading actually creates typos. The action of passing one's eyes over the text, they say, disarranges or moves the letters; consequently, the more often a page is read, the more errors there are. Despite considerable anecdotal evidence about this effect, rigorous scientific investigation has proved that it is illusory. Editors should, however, understand the operation of Muphry's Law of Proofreading, as stated by John Bangsund:

At the risk of imitating the podiatry textbook which claimed that the foot extends to the armpit, I see the editor as the pivotal figure in the production process, at the centre of a triangle. The points of the triangle are:

• Author: It's my book!

• Publisher: I'm paying the bills!

• Reader: Don't forget me! I'm the purpose of the whole exercise!

For the author you are an assistant; for the publisher you are a quality controller; for the reader you are an advocate. So you're always subject to a three-way stretch, balancing competing demands.

Liaison and negotiation

The aim in liaison is to work out what everyone needs to know and to tell them at the appropriate time. The editor maintains the flow of information between author, publisher, designer and typesetter, but don???t flood people with detail they don???t need.

Before you begin editing, find out whether the publisher or commissioning editor has informed the author of the schedule and told her what she is expected to do in the way of approving changes, obtaining illustrations and permissions, providing material for publicity, preparing the index and so on, and especially the technical requirements for these tasks. You may have to brief the author yourself.

In considering types of publication we begin with the book, since that sets the standard and working editors learned their skills on it.

The book

The printed book is arguably the most successful, durable and significant invention of the last two thousand years. For much of that period it has been the most efficient means for storing and distributing information. Until the advent of electronic communication, there were few alternatives. Broadsheets and songs provided entertainment, public lectures spread knowledge and botanic gardens codified it, but their reach was limited; the book reigned.

The book predates printing. Even if you discount its Chinese antecedents, the Romans were using the codex, or manuscript book, more than fifteen hundred years ago. The church, in the form of monasteries and universities, dominated the early publishing scene; the language was Latin and the content mostly theological. As a literate middle class emerged in the late Middle Ages demand arose for new types of books: popular works for recreation and technical instruction, generally in a vernacular language. Such books were being commercially published by the fourteenth century. Then Gutenberg introduced movable type to Europe in the mid-fifteenth century, and the printed book was launched.

Because editors tend to focus on words, they may fail to appreciate the power of graphics to convey information. Collaboration with designers can provide an education and enlarge your view of what is possible. In heavily illustrated publications – coffee-table books, annual reports, art catalogues and cookbooks – the pix take precedence over the text. Their production requires close liaison between the editor and the designer throughout the project.

The term ‘illustrations’ covers a wide range of material, defined in Standard D of Australian Standards for Editing Practice as including drawings, cartoons, diagrams, charts, graphs, maps, photographs, computer-generated graphics and moving images. Here we will look at the editor's tasks. For more information, see the Style Manual, Chapter 21.

Appraising pix

Pix appear on your desk in various physical manifestations ??? rough sketches, printouts of scanned photographs, computer-drawn graphs. When working with photographs and drawings, use photocopies or printouts; this saves the originals from harm and also allows you to freely mark crop lines and other instructions for the designer. The edited photocopies are known as artwork roughs. Store original artwork and photographs safely and return them, carefully packaged, with the edited manuscript.

HORACE'S LITERARY CAREER

By the year 23 bce H. had published his first three books of Odes, probably as a single, finished collection – as it was clearly intended to stand, whatever the particulars of publication. Three or four years later he put out the first book of Epistles, whose sphragis helpfully provides the age of H. – 44 years old in 21 bce (Epist. 1.20.26–8) – if not the date of publication. That was a year or two later, as is clear from references to events of 20 (Epist. 1.3.1–2; 1.12.26–7, Tiberius in Armenia; Epist. 1.12.27–8, Parthian standards recovered) and 19 bce (Epist. 1.12.26, Agrippa successful in Spain).

Around this time, it would seem, H. returned to lyric. For all we know he never stopped composing in lyric meters, though the hexameter form was reclaiming his immediate attention in the years following the appearance of C. 1–3. There is no substantial evidence for the view that Odes 1–3 had been poorly received. Fraenkel was a strong advocate of that view, referring to H's ‘annoyance at the cool reception which the three books of his carmina met with after their publication in 23 b.c.’, ‘the anger which he vented in the nineteenth epistle’ (1.19) and his resolve ‘to accept the failure of his proud venture and never to write lyrics again’, ‘as solemnly announced… in the overture of his book of Epistles (1.1.10ff.)’.

The Secular Games, celebrated in 17 bce, came to be perceived as marking the saeculum, approximating to a 100-year period, the longest possible span of a human life (Varro, Ling. 6.11, with the popular etymology from senex: seclum spatium annorum centum uocarunt dictum a sene, quod longissimum spatium senescendorum hominum id putarunt), the idea being that no one who was alive at the opening of the saeculum could still be so at its close (which presumably makes the lack of regularity in intervals ritually acceptable). The association has to do as much with ringing out the old as ringing in the new, though the Augustan reinvention would look very much to the latter. The first celebration for which there is certain evidence was in 249 bce, during the First Punic War, with the next occurring in 146 bce. There were no games in 49 or 46 bce, understandably in view of the turmoil of those years. The games assigned to 349 bce are generally considered fictional (see Pighi 4–7 and esp. 6, n. 2 for the dates; also Davis 2001: 114), in part because the gens Valeria is associated with the founding and the aetiology may be connected with M. Valerius Corvinus, cos. 348. It is also the case that the games of 17 bce were exclusively ludi scaenici, while the oldest Roman ludi were circenses, a fact that has been used to argue for a late origin (Taylor 1934: 107).

METRE

Sapphic stanza (see 4.2). In the CS there is no clausal enjambment from quatrain to quatrain, a feature that is rarer for the Sapphic than the Alcaic stanza, whose fourth line has inherently less of a closural feel to it than does the adonic. The triadic structure of the quatrains doubtless contributes to the need for stanzaic closure. There are a few instances of such enjambment in Sapphic stanzas elsewhere in the Odes (1.2.49; 2.2.21; 2.10.17; 2.16.37; 3.14.9; 3.20.13; 3.27.41, 65; 4.2.31; 4.6.9; 4.11.5). The avoidance of enjambment in the CS would have facilitated memorization for the boys and girls, and allowed a pause in the singing at the end of each verse, an obvious aid to memorization and performance.

INTRODUCTION

The ludi Latini saeculares of 17 BCE

The Acta for the games of 17 bce are at CIL VI 32323 = ILS 5050 = Pighi 1965: 107–19 = Schnegg-Köhler 2002: 24–45, hereafter ‘Acta’ (for relevant parts of the text see Appendix 2); documentation of subsequent Games will be referred to by specific designation, e.g. ‘the Severan Acta’. The inscription was discovered close to the site of the Tarentum (or Terentum) by the pons Aelius on the left bank of the Tiber in 1890.