In Italy, at the end of the tenth century, a pedant named Regulus (?) who had a copy of the De Verborum Significatu (or had made extracts from one), wishing to read Plautus (so often quoted by Festus), took the opportunity of an illness to appeal to certain prelates whose church-library contained a MS. of the comedian. Through their stupidity he received not Plautus, but Plato, i.e. Chalcidius' translation of the Timaeus. Disappointed, but not deterred, he wrote the following letter (...) (in a sort of rhyming prose, affected by the litterati of that time) on the fly-leaf and returned the MS. (now Bamberg. Class. 18), hoping that by much repetition he might hammer into their dull heads the difference between PL-AU-TUS and PL-A-TO and yet save them from chagrin and resentment (the material for the letter was supplied by Festus, although the opening illustration comes from Chalcidius). (shrink)

Since Teuffel's Römische Literatur mentions s.v. Varius the famous entry in the Monte Cassino MS. incipit thvestes varii, but ignores its occurrence in a Benevento MS. , it may be well to give some account of the latter codex. For I read with amusement a recent article in this journal in which the writer severely censured Mr. Garrod's ignorance of the entry in Paris 7530, but revealed his own ignorance by assuming that it was the scribe of the Paris MS. (...) who had the lost tragedy of Varius before him. (shrink)

Lvcilivs 11191 is preserved for us in Isid. Etym. XIX, iv, 10, where, amongst the articles of a ship's equipment, the plummet of Herodotus is mentioned, with this illustration from Lucilius:Hunc catapiratem puer eodem deforet unctum,plumbi paucillum rudus linique mataxam.

The abbreviation-symbols of the Romans, found in ancient uncial MSS., may be roughly divided into three classes: Those peculiar to juristic writing, e.g. R.P. ‘res priuata’ , Q.D.R.A. ‘qua de re agitur.’ They are properly called ‘notae iuris.’ They abound in the famous Verona MS. of Gaius. A few used in histories, etc., e.g. R.P. 'respublica' , Q. ‘Quintus’ . Valerius Probus, who compiled a manual of ancient Notae, calls this class ‘notae publicae’. They appear in such MSS. as the (...) codex Puteanus of Livy ; and since they have been transferred into modern editions of the Latin historians, etc., no one is at a loss to interpret them nowadays, although they puzzled mediaeval scribes. Symbols of ordinary words of frequent occurrence in any type of literature, e.g. Q. ‘que.’ It is this class which is the subject of this article. (shrink)

Amph. prol. 90–91. In the Amphitruo Plautus runs great risk of giving oflence by bringing Jupiter on the stage. In the prologue he conciliates the audience by saying that this Jupiter is no god but a mere actor. : 26 sqq. Etenim ille quois hue iussu uenio Iuppiter Non minu' quam uostrum quiuis formidat malum: Humana matre natus, humano patre, Mirari non est aequom sibi si praetimet.

In the 'nineties the Celtic philologist, Whitley Stokes, told us in Common-room, that he once awoke muttering an incomplete stanza: Like an ogress making progress Through the spare-ribs of a child. Could anyone complete it for him ? A former Newdigate prizeman, after reflexion, produced this: Stern endeavour will be ever By some welcome find beguiled, Like an ogress making progress Through the spare-ribs of a child.

Mrs. Dall, in her article A Seventh-Century English Edition of Virgil , shows that Virgil glosses taken from marginalia in the same MS. of the poems often preserve something of their original coherence in the two kindred glossaries, Affatim and the Second Amplonian, in spite of all the reshuffling of these two collections. Thus a small group of Virgil items appears in Affatim on p. 491 of Goetz's apograph : Carecta, Crateras, etc. The second last of this ‘Virgil cluster’ is (...) Cada: vasa vinaria. It appears also in Ampl. II. Ca[t]da: vas vinaria, and in Ampl. I. Cada: vasa vinaria, and is apparently taken , ultimately or immediately, from a marginal annotation on Aen. 1, 195 ‘uina bonus quae deinde cadis onerarat Acestes’ for in the Virgil Glossary printed by Goetz in C.G.L. IV. 427–470 we find Cadis: vasis vinariis. (shrink)

The line is preserved in a passage of Consentius ‘De Barbarismis et Metaplasmis’ : sicut Lucilius ‘ore corupto’; dempsit enim unam litteram per metaplasmum, r; et Ennius ‘huic statuam,’ etc.

Charisivs, in his chapter on Adverbs, cites for Hispane a line of Ennius' Annals : Hispane, non Romane memoretis loqui me. Professor Norden , the apostle of Combinations-forschung, combines this fact with another fact mentioned by Livy , the celebre per Hispaniam responsum of a Spanish town to a Roman embassy. But why does he ignore a third fact which must be brought into any combination that can be convincing—the quotation of this line of Ennius by Festus in a paragraph (...) which apparently deals with Graeco-Roman affinities ? (shrink)

Caper in his section on the preposition ex cited Ennius, Ann. 309: nauibus explebant sese terrasque replebant, and declared that Virgil used the verb with this antique sense in Aen. 6, 545: discedam; explebo numerum reddarque tenebris, i.e. ‘minuam vestrum numerum.’ This we are told in Servius' note, which begins: Ut diximus supra, explebo est minuam. Thilo gives no reference to any such previous words of Servius, and I have failed to find them. Can it be that Servius has carelessly (...) transcribed a note of Donatus, and that Donatus had discussed ex minuens at Geo. 2, 65, or 4, 145 ? Donatus' note on Terence, Hec. 755, is Explere exinanire Terentianum est; the passage of Terence is: eas ad mulieres huc intro atque istuc iusiurandum idem polliceare illis: exple animum îs teque hoc crimine expedi, i.e., relieve their mind of suspicion against Pamphilus and free yourself from this charge. The phrase recurs in the next Scene : illis modo explete animum. i atque exple animum îs, coge ut credant. (shrink)

In the Glossary-codex, Vat. Lat. 1469, written in the year 908 , fol. 83 has been assigned to ‘glossae collectae.’ They begin : In Passione Apostolorum. Iussit eum inaumachia cathomis consumi. Cathomis: uirgis nodosis. Hie naumachia forum signat Romanorum quod Prorostris dicitur eo quod rostra, etc. . In Sancto Sebastiano. Saturnus apocatasticus : id est dispositor et destructor fatorum. Annus tuus ex diametro susceptus est. Diametrum est, etc. ‘Glossae collectae’ from the Bible and from Jerome's prefaces come next.

Everyone interested in Latin Etymology knows the last word on mehercle, that the old vocative of meus is prefixed to the old Second Declension form Herclus, Voc. -lě. Without discussing whether this explanation is wholly true or partly wrong, I wish here to disqualify two pieces of evidence. Both originate from a marginal annotation on Rufinus' translation of Eusebius' Church History in, I think, a seventh-century English MS. These marginalia were used for the Leyden Glossary and for the common source (...) of the E E and Corpus Glossaries. The compiler of Leid. transferred them unaltered to his pages; and in the section devoted to Rufinus glosses we find Mehercule: mi fortis. The other compiler often recasts them for dictionary purposes. He gave this item the form Herculus: fortis . But of course the original annotation mi fortis was a mere lucky guess, and the substitution of ‘Herculus’ for Hercules was sheer ignorance. (shrink)