The periodical serves as a forum for exchange on different methodological approaches to ancient literature confronting historical-philological method and modern literary theory and investigating the language of culture as well as forms and techniques of literary communication.

MD was founded by a group of scholars around the editor Gian Biagio Conte in Pisa in 1978.

The editor is helped by an international scientific advisory board, to which belong: Alessandro Barchiesi, Maurizio Bettini, Maria Grazia Bonnanno, Mario Citroni, Marco Fantuzzi, R. Elaine Fantham, Rolando Ferri, Philip Hardie, Richard L. Hunter, Mario Labate, Glenn W. Most, Michael D. Reeve, Gianpiero Rosati, Luigi Enrico Rossi, Richard J. Tarrant.

The periodical appears twice a year at Fabrizio Serra editore in Pisa (ISSN 0392-6338).

The periodical is accompanied by a book series Biblioteca di ‘Materiali e discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici’ edited by Maurizio Bettini and Gian Biagio Conte.