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In a paper on the application of thought to textual criticism which I read before the Classical Association at Cambridge in 1921 (Proceedings vol. XVIII pp. 67–84)I made some remarks which I abbreviate as follows: ‘One of the forms assumed by thoughtlessness in textual criticism is the endeavour, now frequent especially among Continental scholars, to break down accepted rules of grammar or metre by the mere enumeration of exceptions found in MSS. That can never break down a rule: number is nothing; what matters is weight, and weight can onlybe ascertained by scrutiny. If I had noted every example I have met, I should now have a large collection of passages where orbis, which our grammars and dictionaries declare tobe masculine, has a feminine adjective attached to it. But I do not therefore propose to revisethat rule of syntax; for scrutiny would show that these examples, though numerous, have no force. In most of them the context proves that orbem, orbis, orbes, etc., are merely corruptions of the corresponding case and number of urbs; and in the rest it is natural to suppose that the scribe has been influenced and confused by the likeness of the one word to the other.’
page 3 note 1 If we are to believe the thes. ling. Lat., there is another in anth. Lat. Ries. 439 1 ‘quid saeuis, Cyparē? domiti modo terga iuuenci’, for Mr Reisch says ‘Cyparus nom. uir. gr.’ But Cypare, as usual, is feminine: the poem is addressed to a woman who has seduced a boy and finds him a backward lover; addressed to a man it would be absurd.
page 4 note 1 I accept, for the sake of argument, the assumption that Dodonawas the place which the author named.
page 4 note 2 The truth is more fully stated in relation to a particular case at Die neuen Responsionsfreiheitan I p. 3.
page 5 note 1 Only Mr Rothstein was likely to adduce IV 344.
page 5 note 2 One, not three; for in 220 the sense as well as the form is plural, and in 669, ‘ut ipsa ponderi deprimatur ad spinam cutes’, cutes is nom. sing., a form which Mr Gudeman neglects to register.
page 6 note 1 The observation which forbids it, though made so long ago as 1861 by Lucian Mueller de r. m. p. 300, is not yet universally known; and just as Schneidewin had conjectured ‘aut aperi faciem aut tu tunicata laua’ at Mart. III 3 4, so did Friedlaender, afterwards conjecture ‘os hominis, mulsum et me rogat Hippocrates’ ib. IX 94 2Google Scholar, and DrPostgate, ‘miramur, facili ut temperat arte manus’ at Prop. II 1 10Google Scholar. All three conjectures have a second vice, in that they end the first half of the pentameter with words which are not allowed to stand there.
page 6 note 2 Lucian Mueller de r. m. ed. 2 p. 390 explains the lengthening as due to the following mute and liquid; and, if Caesarea made sense, it would not be incredible that Martial, who ventures on the lengthening ‘Romanā stringis’ even èν αρσει, V 69 3, should here venture even on the lengthening ‘Caesareā praestitit.’
page 7 note 1 But Ouid. trist. III i 78 should be added to the list in thes. ling. Lat. V p. 1652 20 and deleted at 1655 7–9, where its place may be filled by anth. Lat. Ries. 423 3.
page 8 note 1 Why not faciem coram? Perhaps to avoid rhyming a declinable with an indeclinable word(see Lachmann on Prop. I 5 20); perhaps merely to obtain the regular equipoise of substantive and adjective; or perhaps this poet thought, though Ovid did not, that a preposition and its case cohere so closely when in contact as to interfere with the division ofthe verse, Their separation is often much wider, as in Tib. I 6 30 ‘contra quis ferat arma deos?’
page 8 note 2 At Ouid. art. Ill 216; but he quite mistook the sense and wrote nec for et.
page 12 note 1 17 in Virgil, 12 in Ovid's metamorphoses, 5 in other poets; 22 with a double consonant or a mute and liquid following, 12 without.