Signs for Numerals
The signs for Numerals1 have been productive of many mistakes in MSS. Thus DC “six hundred” has been miscopied de in Livy xxvii. 28. 11, and ad DC has occasionally become ad haec; ad IIII has become adivi in Cicero Att. xv. 11; VII ante has become uti ante in Velleius ii. 10. 2. Conversely, vi has been misinterpreted as sex in Cicero Fam. xv. 4. 9, and ii as duo in Cicero Phil. x. 7. 15. For these and a number of other examples the student may consult Heraeus Quaestiones de vett. codd. Livianis p. 52. A stroke was drawn above a numeral sign to indicate that it was a numeral sign. Thus vi without this stroke will mean “by violence,” but with it “six.” This stroke is often mistaken for the stroke drawn above to indicate thousands, so that in Cicero Legg. ii. 23. 58 we find in duodecim milia instead of in duodecim (sc. tabulis), and in Livy xxii. 60. 19 sescentis written in the original DC with a stroke above has been wrongly expanded to sescenta milia. Bede complains of scribes' mistakes about numeral signs: “numeri . . negligenter describuntur et negligentius emendantur” (Opp. i. 149); and the author of the Flores Temporum (in Pertz xxiv. 231) appeals to the copyists of his work to be careful in this respect: “obsecro . . scriptores ut circa numeros annorum correcte scribendos adhibeant diligentiam propter Deum; alioquin ego in quantum ad homines in vacuum laboravi, et ignaviae meae imputabitur error librarii dormitantis.” The custom of writing the last unit of a number with a taller I than the others, e.g. xxviI, may have had something to do with the frequent omission of the last unit in MSS. Thus the sign for “twenty-seven” is often miscopied as the sign for “twenty-six.” The Merovingian practice of writing vi “six” in ligature, so that it was capable of being mistaken for v, may have led to the same mistake in subsequent copies. But the addition of an extra unit is also a common error in MSS. The Laurentian MS. of Nonius has miscopied the xviii of the Leyden MS. as xviiii (Non. 113 M. 7). (For a list of the more noteworthy contractions which seem to have stood in the archetype of our minuscule MSS. of Plautus, see Appendix A.） The following passages seem to me capable of being emended on the supposition that contractions stood in the archetype for: lenis: Truc. 776 “sim lenis tranquillusque homo” (similes t. h. BCD, sim mitis t. h., edd.) (I prefer lenis to mitis because lenis is the word which Plautus elsewhere uses in combination with tranquillus: Epid. 562 “animum lenem et tranquillum.”） omnis: Aul. 282 “ut dispertirem hos omnis” (u. d. obsonium MSS.) non: Capt. 104 “Non úlla est spes juventútis: ses eomnís amant” (Nulla est MSS.) (For non ulla cf. Merc. 626.) pro. Capital P with loop for ro has, I think, been mistaken for capital D inThe archetype had Promisit, a common corruption of Promsit (cf. v. 829 promisi D1 for prom(p)si, v. 841 promisit BC for prom(p)sit, v. 831 expromisi C, which has become in our MSS. Domi sit. The suppromu's of the following line: “eho tú, sceleste, quí illi suppromú's; eho,
” argues for prompsit. The preposition per seems to have been mistaken for the contraction of pater in the minuscule MSS. in
where for gratiam per of A the minuscule MSS. have gratiam a patre, which is difficult to scan. In Truc. 50 the puzzling iteca of B (changed to ita et in the original of CD) was, I take it, a contraction of intercepta in the archetype: “(res perit) intercepta in aedibus lenonis (lenoniis)
”, just as in v. 583 accepta was represented in the archetype by the contraction aca (so B) or acca.
