Two scholarly texts enhance the study of Plautus

6 February 2003

Perseus is pleased to announce its editions of two texts by the noted early 20th century Latin scholar, W. M. Lindsay: The Syntax of Plautus and An Introduction to Latin Textual Emendation. These two books help explain how Plautus's Latin is different from Cicero's or Virgil's and how editors establish the texts that we read.

The Syntax of Plautus covers constructions like Plautus's free use of the supine for purpose (for example, mater pompam me spectatum duxit, "Mother took me to see the procession," Cistellaria 90) or his colloquial use of neuter pronouns no matter what gender the antecedent might be. It is a useful companion to any early Latin text, including in particular Terence's plays.

An Introduction to Latin Textual Emendation Based on the Text of Plautus shows how textual criticism works, using the manuscript tradition of Plautus as the basis for discussion. Textual criticism is the method of determining what an author actually wrote, given one or more manuscripts, generally much later than the author's original, containing various errors of transcription. For Plautus, our evidence includes one manuscript from the fourth century AD (that is, some 500 years after Plautus lived), one from the tenth century AD, two from the eleventh, and a handful of later manuscripts, many of which are copied from those earlier ones. These manuscripts do not always agree, and it is the job of the textual critic (the editor) to determine which words are right and which words are wrong. Lindsay's book explains the principles for doing so, principles which are applicable to all classical texts, Greek as well as Latin.

Both of these books have been edited for Perseus by Anne Mahoney. References to Plautus and other classical authors are bi-directional links with the text of those authors. That is, references from Lindsay's texts are made available alongside the texts of Plautus, Terence, and the other authors Lindsay quotes. Links go not only from Lindsay to Plautus, but also from Plautus back to Lindsay.

The Perseus classical collection includes the complete plays of Plautus and Terence, in Latin and in English translation.

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