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An introduction to Latin textual emendation
An introduction to Latin textual emendation Author:Wallace Martin Lindsay Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II ERRORS OF TRANSPOSITION 1. Transposition of words is perhaps the commonest Tnmsposi- error of MSS., so that a change in the order of the "ry fre... more »- words is usually the least violent remedy that an editor iuenterror- can apply to an unmetrical line. As an instance from Plautus we may take Stich. 293, a trochaic septenarius, which in all the minuscule MSS. has the impossible ending censeo aequum,)ut in A ends correctly with aequom censeo : lid me adiri et supplicari ogomet mi aequom censeo. The scribe of the original of CD often fell into the same error. For example, Pseud. 322 is given both by B and by A in this, the right, form: no illam vendas neii me perdaa hominem amantcm. Ani- ino bono es ; but in 6' and 7? we have perdas me for me perdas, and bono animo es for animo bono es. Nor is the scribe of A exempt from the same mistake. In Pers. 620 P seems to be right in ending the line with mi homo, and A to be wrong with its homo mi. 2. The great frequency of this error is, no doubt, its cause, due to the readiness of the eye of a copyist to pass on to a word in front of the word that should be written. The error, once made, might be left without indication, through the reluctance of a copyist to spoil the look of the page, or to call down upon himself the censure of his superior by leaving a token that a mistake had been committed. If the copyist discovered his mistake at the moment of making it, he might add in its proper place the transposed word without leaving any sign of correction (see § 3 below). That is how the word fieri A trans- comes to be repeated in K in Baceh. 80, where, instead '"ten1 writ-' of ut solet ii istis fieri, B has ut solel fieri in istis fieri. ?£"pn,i'"r'" This was in fact a besetting sin of the copyist of the riace. Bacc...« less