On Plavtvs, Miles Gloriosvs 18

Extract

These are the facts about the manuscript tradition of this line. The history of the interpretation is as follows. The early editors, knowing that penicillus tectorius in Pliny, N.H. 28. 235, means ‘a plasterer's brush,’ assumed that peniculus tectorius in Plautus meant the same, since there is no ascertainable difference in meaning between penicillus and peniculus. They accordingly translated, ‘as wind scatters the leaves or scatters the hairs of a plasterer's brush.’ About 1560 Turnebus saw that it was not likely that the wind could have much effect upon a brush made, as Pliny tells us, of bristles (saetae), and was the first to darken counsel by emending peniculumt. to paniculam tectoriam, ‘ut paniculae leuissimae arundinis, qua integi uillaticae domus solent, intellegantur.’ He quotes Plin. N.H. 16. 158 for a description of the reed used for thatching, and doubtless has in mind, though he does not quote it, Rudens 122, quin tu in paludem is exicasque hanindinem qui pevtegamus uillam. The difficulty about this interpretation is that the panicles or tufted heads of reeds were no more likely to have been used in the ancient mode of thatching than in the modern. If any were left in the completed thatch it would be by an accident, and they would not be a marked feature of the countryman's roof. Pareus thought that Tumebus had acted ‘too dictatorially’ in departing from the manuscripts. He therefore restored the established text, and took it to mean ‘a brush made of a horse's tail.’ But this did not dispose of the difficulty, and succeeding editors—Lambinus, Dousa, Taubmann—all followed Turnebus.