Abstract

Gercke reads with the MSS. Δ and E: ‘haec adhuc Etruscis philosophisque communia sunt: in illo dissentiunt quod fulmina a Ioue dicunt mitti et tres illi manubias dant.’ Mr. Garrod remarks that the soundness of ‘nouem’ is clinched by the passage he cites from Pliny, N.H. II. 138. But the suggestion he bases on this—to alter ‘illi’ to ‘Ioui’—seems unsatisfactory, as ‘mittiy’ in the first clause is left in crying need of a governing agent; ‘Ioui’ comes in too late in the sentence, and the whole is given an awkward turn that Seneca surely could and would have avoided—by writing ‘fulmina >a Ioue< nouem dicunt mitti.’ Even if ‘a Ioue’ is merely a conjecture of the Δ family, as Mr. Garrod seems to hold, it is a conjecture good enough to pass muster. Perhaps copyists then dropped ‘illi’ from a feeling that it was needless after ‘a Ioue.’ But construction practically demands it.