The statement in the second-and-third edition of Sommer's excellent Handbuch der lateinischen Laut- und Formenlehre, p. 462, that the oldest scansion is diūtius, to say nothing of the unqualified assertion in our current grammars and dictionaries that the u in it and in diutissime is long or the regrettable silence of the principal editors of Plautus upon the subject, is of itself sufficient warrant for a brief discussion. The relevant facts are these:1. Though diu is common enough in verse of (...) all kinds, the comparative is not attested for any but writers in iambics, while the superlative appears to be confined to prose. (shrink)

On November 8, 1894, I read before the Cambridge Philological Society a paper in which the reading and the interpretation of this passage were discussed at length. A brief report of the paper was published in the Proceedings of the Society, Nos. 37–39, p. 16; and the cardinal correction was received into the text of the Fasti which Professor G. A. Davies published in the Corpus Poetarum Latinorum. The Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society are indeed now among the periodical (...) publications of which the Bibliotheca Philologica Classica takes account: but an acquaintance with their earlier numbers is the privilege of the elect, and the sole mention of the correction that I have seen is an entry in the diligent summary of Ovidian literature in the Jahresbericht vol. 109 p. 282 which runs as follows ‘VI 247 ut tangat.’ Whether the correction is ‘needless’ is not for me to say; but there is excuse for thinking that those who wish to form a judgment on its character will not deem it needless to have the evidence before them. (shrink)

Thus reads the ‘optimus Laurentianus,’ and starting hence we shall refuse claudent, the facile but incoherent correction of some MSS., and still more the claudunt which the majority offer. Nor for all that shall we make the ineptitude of these readings a ground for condemning the pentameter, which, save for its lack of grammatical construction, is perfectly faultless in expression. Turning our attention to the hexameter, we observe that Parca, a synonym for fata with trahebat will set everything right. The (...) offending fata is due to a gloss or an unfortunate reminiscence. (shrink)

Mr. Garrod has earned the gratitude of all students of Manilius by his detection of the ratio of the series in iii. 599–615, and he is fully justified in his contention that tricenas in 612 is ‘one of the few emendations which can be proved mathematically.’ I owe him a special acknowledgment, inasmuch as his discovery enables me to add one more to the list and affords me an opportunity of establishing what was correct and correcting what was erroneous in (...) my discussion of the whole passage in Silua Maniliana, pp. 30 sqq. Let me do the last first. My suggestion of uix for bis in 616 of course disappears; bis sex is required by the series: and in 595–6 the number meant is 75, not 76. (shrink)

Since the appearance of Th. Birt's monumental edition of Claudian in 1892, followed in the next year by the Teubner one of Julius Koch, but little has been done for the text of a poet who for more reasons than one deserves something better than neglect. And I shall be glad if the publication of the ensuing notes draws the attention of scholars to the work that has yet to be done. The majority of my corrections were made some sixteen (...) years ago; but only two have seen the light, and these merely in passing mention, Laus Serenae 86 sqq. in my review of the two editions, Classical Review IX p. 167 b, and Panegyricus dictus Probino et Olybrio cons. 48 sqq in my note on Lucan VII 755. (shrink)

Amongst the readings of the Parisian codex collated by Mr. Stuart which he classes as interpolations is one whose singularity at once arrests attention. In the well-known passage, I. 113 sqq., where all known MSS. including P haveetsi, funesta Pecunia, templonondum habitas, nullas nummorum ereximus aras,ut colitur Pax atque Fides Victoria Virtusquaeque salutato crepitat Concordia nido,II presents firma instead of atque.

Among the multitude of commentators by which an Horatian crux is surrounded it is reasonable to suppose that one or two at least have seen some vestiges of the truth, and I will therefore preface my remarks upon the meaning of this ode and its ultimate stanza by quoting first from an annotation by Dean Wickham.

There are two undoubted instances of this use of Neaera in Prudentius which are cited by Mr. Ullman in support of his contention that in Horace another proper name may be similarly employed. I imagine however that to an unprejudiced sense of Latin usage these instances will themselves seem to be strange and in need of explanation.

The following notes are based on the apparatus criticus in the edition of E. T. Merrill : I. 20. 5 ‘uides ut statuas, signa, picturas, hominum denique multorumqne animalium formas, arborum etiam, si modo sint decorae, nihil magis quam amplitudo commendet.’ Why ‘many animals’ and not ‘many men’ and ‘many trees’? Read mutorum; with ‘animalia,’ a standing opposition to ‘homines,’ as in Seneca, Ep. 76. 26 'ea quae tam homini contingunt quam mutis animalibus, 'where also it has been corrupted to (...) multis as in many other places. (shrink)

Dissatisfied with current views upon the exordium of Tibullus II. i., I proposed in Selections from Tibullus to make the occasion of the poem the Sementiuae Feriae instead of the Ambarualia. This proposal, criticised, amongst others, by Mr. Warde Fowler in an interesting article in the Classical Review, I have now abandoned. But the difficulties which led me to break away from previous exegesis still remain, and to them I address myself in the present article.

The germ of the following paper is as old as the previous century, when in the year 1898 my attention was accidentally drawn to one of the passages discussed below. But progress was impossible until the facts of the MS.tradition of the Stromateis were properly presented–a service for which we are indebted to the excellent edition of Clement by Dr. O. Stählin.

The Twelfth Ode of the Third Book of Horace consists of four stanzas in this metre, each stanza consisting of ten feet. How these feet should be distributed into verses is a matter of much dispute; but inasmuch as it does not concern me at the present time I shall avoid it by following certain editors of Horace and printing each stanza continuously.

So in this outburst of Cornelia should line 104 be punctuated. For the poenas crudelis compare VII. 431 ‘quod semper saeuas debet tibi Parthia poenas’ and Verg. A. 6. 501 quis tam crudelis optauit sumere poenas? whence, or from ib. 585, ‘uidi et crudelis dantem Salmonea poenas’ we may suppose Lucan derived it. The feeble vulgate punctuation which puts the comma after crudelis, supposed to be vocative, well exemplifies the mischievous influence of propinquity.—I now find the correct punctuation in W. (...) E. Weber's Corpus, but with the needless alteration of crudel e s. (shrink)

The statement in the second-and-third edition of Sommer's excellent Handbuch der lateinischen Laut- und Formenlehre , p. 462, that the oldest scansion is diūtius, to say nothing of the unqualified assertion in our current grammars and dictionaries that the u in it and in diutissime is long or the regrettable silence of the principal editors of Plautus upon the subject, is of itself sufficient warrant for a brief discussion. The relevant facts are these:1. Though diu is common enough in verse (...) of all kinds, the comparative is not attested for any but writers in iambics, while the superlative appears to be confined to prose. (shrink)

Since the appearance of Th. Birt's monumental edition of Claudian in 1892, followed in the next year by the Teubner one of Julius Koch, but little has been done for the text of a poet who for more reasons than one deserves something better than neglect. And I shall be glad if the publication of the ensuing notes draws the attention of scholars to the work that has yet to be done. The majority of my corrections were made some sixteen (...) years ago; but only two have seen the light, and these merely in passing mention, Laus Serenae 86 sqq. in my review of the two editions, Classical Review IX p. 167 b, and Panegyricus dictus Probino et Olybrio cons. 48 sqq in my note on Lucan VII 755. (shrink)

On November 8, 1894, I read before the Cambridge Philological Society a paper in which the reading and the interpretation of this passage were discussed at length. A brief report of the paper was published in the Proceedings of the Society, Nos. 37–39, p. 16; and the cardinal correction was received into the text of the Fasti which Professor G. A. Davies published in the Corpus Poetarum Latinorum. The Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society are indeed now among the periodical (...) publications of which the Bibliotheca Philologica Classica takes account: but an acquaintance with their earlier numbers is the privilege of the elect, and the sole mention of the correction that I have seen is an entry in the diligent summary of Ovidian literature in the Jahresbericht vol. 109 p. 282 which runs as follows ‘VI 247 ut tangat .’ Whether the correction is ‘needless’ is not for me to say; but there is excuse for thinking that those who wish to form a judgment on its character will not deem it needless to have the evidence before them. (shrink)

The Professor of Latin Poetry in the University of Paris has addressed himself to a piece of work which badly wanted doing, and he has done it, on the whole, very well. His object, as the first words of his preface declare, was not simply to produce a bibliographical repertory, however serviceable this might be, but a study in history and methodology. The labour of giving a summary of the contributions of scholars to the criticism and elucidation of the collection (...) which passes under the name of Tibullus during the nineteenth century is, as he rightly says, ‘enormous,’ and M. Cartault has thrown in besides, to the great advantage of his readers, a chapter of 74 pages upon the century and a quarter preceding, which stretches from Scaliger 1577 to Heyne 1798. (shrink)

In the proper punctuation of this passage I have been in part anticipated by Francken, who saw that the apodosis to the conditional clause was to be sought in 235–7. But, as the second edition of the Teubner text still keeps it in its primitive incoherence, I make no apology for dealing with it here.

Among the multitude of commentators by which an Horatian crux is surrounded it is reasonable to suppose that one or two at least have seen some vestiges of the truth, and I will therefore preface my remarks upon the meaning of this ode and its ultimate stanza by quoting first from an annotation by Dean Wickham.

There are two undoubted instances of this use of Neaera in Prudentius which are cited by Mr. Ullman in support of his contention that in Horace another proper name may be similarly employed. I imagine however that to an unprejudiced sense of Latin usage these instances will themselves seem to be strange and in need of explanation.

Thus reads the ‘optimus Laurentianus,’ and starting hence we shall refuse claudent, the facile but incoherent correction of some MSS., and still more the claudunt which the majority offer. Nor for all that shall we make the ineptitude of these readings a ground for condemning the pentameter, which, save for its lack of grammatical construction, is perfectly faultless in expression. Turning our attention to the hexameter, we observe that Parca, a synonym for fata with trahebat will set everything right. The (...) offending fata is due to a gloss or an unfortunate reminiscence. (shrink)

The following notes are based on the apparatus criticus in the edition of E. T. Merrill : I. 20. 5 ‘uides ut statuas, signa, picturas, hominum denique multorumqne animalium formas, arborum etiam, si modo sint decorae, nihil magis quam amplitudo commendet.’ Why ‘many animals’ and not ‘many men’ and ‘many trees’ ? Read mutorum; with ‘animalia,’ a standing opposition to ‘homines,’ as in Seneca, Ep. 76. 26 'ea quae tam homini contingunt quam mutis animalibus, 'where also it has been corrupted (...) to multis as in many other places. (shrink)