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Haplography

The commonest kind of omission is that known as Haplography, by which one only of two identical or similar words is written and the other is left out. In Virgil G. iv. 311, for example, “miscentur, tenuemque magis magis aera carpunt,” some MSS. offer tenuemque magis aera, omitting the second magis.

This is an error for which there is great scope in the text of an author like Plautus, who loves to pile up phrases like hic hinc huc transit, and affects assonances like male malus, suavi suavitate. So prone are scribes to this error that I believe that in fifty per cent. of the lines of Plautus, where the same word is repeated or two almost identical words stand side by side, some MS. or other will be found to omit one of the pair. There is therefore every justification for an editor who emends the defective metre of a line by the insertion of a word before or after a word of similar appearance.

An Introduction to Latin Textual Emendation Based on the Text of Plautus. W. M. Lindsay. Anne Mahoney. edited for Perseus. London. Macmillan. 1896.

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