It irks me that medieval scribes may have messed up the texts over centuries of copying. How accurate do textual critics think texts by Virgil and Ovid, Plato and Aristotle, The Iliad and The Odyssey are to their originals? Or at least versions actually read in ancient times.
Follow up question re: Homer.
Gregory Nagy (in a 2001 Classical Philology article) refers to Aristarchus and the "vulgate" Homer which he used for his 2nd century BCE edition based not on a uniform koine text, but multiple koinai from two to three centuries prior. This seems to suggest that even in the 2nd century BCE there was not a uniform "manuscript" or base-text of certain Homeric works. So one: is Aristarchus's edition extant, and two: is it one of the earliest forms that we currently have? If so, is it a common comparison point to various medieval manuscripts that appear?