W. M. Lindsay, An Introduction to Latin Textual Emendation

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Causes of transposition errors

The great frequency of this error is, no doubt, 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 comes to be repeated in B in Bacch. 80, where, instead of ut solet in istis fieri, B has ut solet fieri in istis fieri. This was in fact a besetting sin of the copyist of the Bacchides in B, though the first occurrence of the word has been generally erased by the scribe or the corrector (see Goetz, Preface to the Bacchides p. vii n.） (On wrong insertions of this kind see ch. iv. § 3.)

Leo in his Plautinische Forschungen p. 7 mentions as a common corruption of Latin texts, especially such as are based on a single archetype, a similar error — namely, the repetition of a word immediately before the word it governs, although it has been already written in its proper place. He cites for this latter error Catullus lxxvi. 23, “non jam illud quaero contra me ut [me] diligat illa”.