m
II'. I ''.:<■■
J.A-9c^(^ fl(.rf.M.A«.4.
Ex Libris PERCY STAFFORD ALLEN
huius Collegii Praesidis 19Z4-1533
n.K.iy
'■■ '■• lilALKUK...
"M.i,,,,
T. LUCEETI CAEI
DE EEEUM NATUEA LIBRI SEX
VOLUME I
T. LUCRETI CAEI j
DE EERUM NATUEA LIBEI SEX
WITH NOTES AND A TRANSLATION
BY
H. A. J. MUNRO
FORMEBLY FELLOW OF TRIXITY COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE
1
FOURTH EDITION FINALLV REVISED
VOLUME I : TEXT
LOXDON
OEORGE BELL AND SONS
CAMBIUDGE: DEIGHTON BELL AND CO.
1900
T. LUCEETI OAEI
DE EBEUM NATUEA
LIBEI SEX
EDITED BY
H. A. J. MUNRO
FORjrERLT FELLOW OF TRINrrY COLLEGE CAllBBIDG:
FOUUTH EDITION
LONDON
GEOKG?: HELL AXD SONS
CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON BELL AND CO.
1900
First Editioir, 1SG4. Second Edition, 1866. Third Edition, 1873.
Fourtk iievised Edition, 1886. Reprinted, 189ii.
1900.
TO BEN.JAMIN HALL KENNEDY D.D,
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN CAMBRTDGE
AND LATE HEADMASTER OF SHREWSBURY SCHOOL
THESE VOLUMES ARE DEDICATED
BY HIS FORMER PUPIL THE EDITOR
M.
My dear Dr Kennedy,
On the , completion of a work ^vhich has cost both thought and labour I gladly dedicate it to you, to whom indii"ectly it owes so much. Many years have passed since the days when I was among your earliest pupils at Shrewsbury ; but the memory of the benefits then received from your instructions is as fresh as ever. A succession of scholars year after year from that time to this -svill bear testimony to the advantages which they have derived from your zeal skill and varied knowledge ; and over and above all from that something higher which gave to what was taught life and meaning and interest : denn es musz von Herzen gehen, was auf Herzen wirken will.
The present edition claims as you will see to do something both for the criticism and for the explanation of the poem. After the masterly work of Lachmann you will think perhaps that too much space has been allotted to the former; but that portion of the book is intended partly to give the reader in a condensed shape the results of his labours, partly to add to and correct them where circumstances or design rendered them incomplete. The scandalous negligence with which Havercamp and Wakefieki exe- cuted what they professed to undertake has made their editions worse than useless, as the reader who trusts to them is only be- trayed and led into error. What Lachmann perforined is known to all who take an interest in such studies : from my first intro- duction rcaders will leam what opinion I entertain of his merits ; they will also find that all which I have added to what he has done is with one insignificant exception derived from the original sources to which they refer. The manuscripts which I have citcd were examined by myself ; the editions and manuscript notes were open before me all the time I was at work. The large amount of critical material thus amassed I have endeavoured to put into as
Vlll
concise and compressed a form as possible ; tliough much of this material needs perhaps to be recorded only once and might be greatly abridged if it has ever to appear again in a new shape.
The length of the explanatory notes calls I fancy for less ex- cuse. This very year three centuries have elapsed since Lambinus published the first edition of his Lucretius ; and from that day to this nothing new and systematical, nothing that displays pains and research has been done for the elucidation of our author. Transcendant as are the merits of that illustrious scholar, what was suited to 1564 can hardly satisfy the wants of 1864. No defence then is needed for the extent of this division of my commentary : if it were done over again, more would probably have to be added than taken away. It will not be so easy perhaps to excuse the translation. This however is really a part of the explanatory notes ; and if it had been left undone, they must have been enlarged in many directions. Our author too unless I am mistaken will admit of being thus treated better than most ; and the fashion of literal translations seems to be gaining ground in this country as well as in Germany and France.
To the advice and friendly assistance of my brother fellow Mr King, our highest authority in that branch of art, is due the Hkeness of the poet which appears on the titlepage. With K. O. Mueller, Emil Braun and other judges he is convinced that the original on a black agate represents our Lucretius. The style ol art and the finely formed letters of the name point to the late republic. Almost unknown then in other respects, in this he has been more fortunate even than Virgil, whose so-called portraits are all I am told late conventional and unreal.
Sincerely yoms
THE EDITOK.
TbINITY CoiiLEGE, OCTOBEB 1864
PEEFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
Although in outward shape this third edition exactly resembles the second, it will prove I trust in essential points to be more in advance of the second, than the second was of the first edition. Partly for other obvious reasons, and partly because the second impression was larger than the first and has now been exhausted for nearly a year, the interval given me for reflexion has been much longer ; and as the author is now so familiar to me, I have been able to bring all my reading to bear upon the improvement of the text and the commentary. The critical notes are I believe improved in many important points, though their bulk of course has not been increased : compression was needed here rather than expansion. The explanatory notes however have been enlarged by the substance of at least fifty pages, chiefly through a somewhat closer printing. JS"or does this at all represent the real amount of change, as many of the longer notes have been entirely rewritten and much that was superfluous or erroneous has been cut out. Many thousand fresh illustrations have been added.
For more precise conceptions on some points of the poefs philo- sophy, especially the motion of his atoms, I have been greatly indebted to the works of Professor Clerk Maxwell and Professor Tyndall, and to a thorough and excellent article in the 48th volume of the North British Review on 'the atomic theory of Lucretius' : of Martha's brilliant work I have spoken elsewhere. For the general criticism
of my author I owe much to the well-pondered remarks of Mr N. P. Howard, whose letter to me I have printed in the first number of the new Journal of Philology; and, especially in the third and fourth books, to the communications of my friend Professor J. E. B. Mayor, to whose notes I have appended his initials.
In the 25th and 26th volumes of the Philologus there is a long
« Jahresbericht ' by Mr Fried. Polle on the Lucretius literature after
Lachmann and Bernays ; and some remarks of his occur in Jahn's
Jahrbuecher. He hardly touches on the interpretation or philosophy
of the poet nor have I been able to adopt any of his own conjectures
which are not very numerous. The most valuable hint I have got
from him is on v 312, though my own correction is very different
from his. In several volumes of the same Philologus appear very
prolix notes on the earlier books by Mr Susemihl and Mr Brieger.
The former confines himself chiefly to rearranging paragraphs and to
proposing numerous transpositions of verses, in neither I think with
much success. Many of his new arrangements of paragraphs are I
assert demonstrably wrong ; and his violent transpositions would lead
to the wildest confusion. Once however I have obeyed him in not
making a new paragraph of iv 168 — 175 : it was an accident that
this was not done before, as my attention was absorbed in refuting
Lachmann's errors there. Mr Brieger, wlio is the more combative
of the two, indulges mainly in conjectural alterations of the text.
Once or twice I liave referred to Mr Holtze's 'Syntaxis Lucretianae
lineamenta.'
On the whole my criticism is now I believe more conservative than it was. Again and again I have found that, seduced by the learning of Lachmaun, I have followed him in changes which really corrupt the author. This must hold then in many other cases as well. If the text of Virgil rested, like that of Lucretius, on a single manuscript, how much there is in him we should ref use to accept as Latin ! This ' must give
XI
us pause.' Yet I have not sinnecl I think in defending the indefensible. It is probable however that, if I should ever issue another edition, I should leave as manifestly corrupt some passages which defy anything like certain or even very specious correction.
My lamented friend Professor Conington published a lecture on the style of Lucretius and Catullus which has been reprinted among his Miscellaneous works. This lecture, written in a tone of the kindest courtesy, is for the most part a criticism of a single paragraph in the introduction to my explanatory notes ; and, so far as Catullus is concerned, almost of a single sentence. This paragraph I have now omitted : justice could be done neither to hiui nor to myself within the limits that could be permitted here. If I should over venture on any reply, some other place and opportunity must be found for it,
Trinity College, Apkil 1873.
PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION.
The present edition is divided into three volumes, the first con- taining the text and critical notes, the second the commentary and general index, the third the translation.
The text is practically the same as in the last edition : in one place only (i 442) a new reading is printed, and that was only omitted before through accident as was explained at the end of the index. There are a few additions, not more than half-a-dozen, to the critical notes ; these have been inserted in square brackets. The translation too has undergone no change.
In the commentary there are few alterations but considerable additions amounting in all to more than twenty pages. These supple- mentary notes and illustrations have been taken from an interleaved copy of the last edition which was f ound among Mr Munro's books af ter his death in the spring of last year. Also on p. 333 of the commentary will be found some extracts from letters addressed by him to Professor Palmer of Trinity College, Dublin, discussing the reading of v 1010 ; Professor Palmer was kind enough to send me these letters. As the extracts deal with the criticism rather than the explanation of the passage, they should have been inserted in the first volume ; but by an accident they were delayed until after that volume was printed. Nothing has been inserted from any other source whatever. Here too all that is new has been inclosed in square brackets. In the new examples the references have been verified. To the index large additions have been made by myself.
It remains to express my thanks to Dr Forbes, the relative and executor of Mr Munro, for the kindly feeling which led him to entrust me with the preparation of this edition, and also for the generous consideration he has shown throughout.
J. D. DUFF.
Tbinity College, Cambeidge, Feb. 18, 1886.
LUCRETIUS.
NOTES I
ON THE FORMATIOISr OF THE TEXT
If Lucretius had come down to us with a text as uniiijured as that of Virgil and a few other ancient writers, he could scarcely have been reckoned among the most difficult Latin poets. Certainly he would have been more easy to explain than Virgil for instance or Horace j for he tells what he has to tell simply and directly, and among his poetical merits is not included that of leaving his reader to guess which of many possible meanings was the one he intended to convey. Fortune however has not dealt so kindly with him. Not that the great mass of his poem is not in a sound and satisfactory state : in this respect he is better off than many others ; but owing to the way in which it has been handed down, his text lias suffered in some portions irreparable loss. It is now universally admitted that every existing copy of the poem has come from one original, which has itself long disappeared.
Of existing manuscripts a fuller account will presently be given : let it suffice for the moment to say that the two which Lachmann has mainly followed and which every future editor must follow, are now in the library of Leyden. One is a folio written in the ninth century, the other a quarto certainly not later than the tenth. Large fragments of one, if not of two others, of the sanie age as the quarto and very closely resembling it are also still preserved, partly in Copenhagen, partly in Vienna. These rnanuscripts and at least one more must have lain for centuries in the monasteries of France or Germany, where they found at different periods several correctors, more or less competent. It is to be presumed then that they had some readers, though few if any traces of them are to be met with iii the voluminous literature of the middle ages. In my previous editions I said that my friend Professor Mayor had given me a reference to Honorius of Autun in the bibliotheca raaxima patrum xx p. 1001, who is there made to quote il 888 in this way, Ex insensilibus me credas sensile gigni, the context proving that he meant to say ne, not me; and asked whether this writer who flourished in the
i'' M. 1
2 INTRODUCTION
tirst half of tho twelfth century had taken the line from the poem itself ; or had borrowed it from Priscian inst. iv 27 who cites it with nasci instead of gigni, the editor of the bibliotlieca having thought fit tacitly to substitute gigni from Lucretius. The latter is proved to be the fact by Mr Julius Jessen in the philologus, vol. 30 pp. 236 — 238: he quotes what follows from Barthius' very learned note on Stat. silv. ii 7 76 : * nec vero cadentibus aut collapsis iam rebus Romanis auctoritatem suam amisit Lucretius noster, ut videre potes apud Magnentium Rhabanum praefatione Laudum Daedalariun Crucis, Guliehnum Hirsaugiensem in Institutionibus Philosophicis et Astrologicis, Honorium Augustodunen- sem in Historia Mundi, Ven. Bedam Libro de Metris'. Eeferring to the only printed edition of this work of William of Hirschau, who lived from 1026 to 1091, he shews that Honorius copied from him the passage in question, and that William cites it thus : ' Ex insensili credas sensile nasci ', getting it clearly then from Priscian. Hrabanus Maurus and Beda seem just as little to have known Lucretius at first hand. [Hermes vol. 8 p. 332, it is said that in Bi'it. Mus. ms. 377 (13th century) of Daniel de Merlai's Philosophia, in p. 90 a, Lucretius is quoted.]
In Italy he was even more completely unknown. A catalogue which Muratori antiq. iii p. 820 assigns to the tenth century, proves that the famous hbrary of Bobbio contained at that time librum Lucretii i ; but before the fifteenth no Italian poet or writer shews any knowledge of him whatever. In the year 1414 the celebrated Poggio Bracciolini went as apostolic secretary to the council of Constance and remained on this side the Alps in different countries, Switzerland Germany France and England, until 1420, with one short interval passed in Milan and Mantua. During these years he procui-ed from various monasteries many most important Latin works hitherto totally unknown in Italy : see Mehus' preface to his life of Ambrosius Traversarius p. xxxiii foll. Among these was a manuscript of Lucretius, obtained apparently from some German monastery either by him or his companion Bartholomew of Montepulciano, about 1417 as his letters seem to indicate, and trans- mitted the same year to his intimate friend the Florentine Nicolb Nic- coli, a most zealous scholar and patron of the revived classical studies. This manuscript, which Poggio wrongly supposed to be only a part of the poem, has itself disappeared, but was the parent of every copy written during the 15th century, that is to say of every one now extant with the exception of those specified above : it must have very closely resembled the Leyden folio. ' Et te, Lucreti, longo post tempore tandem Civibus et patriae reddit habere suae' says Landinus in his poem in praise of Poggio. Niccoli having such a treasure in his hands was in no hurry to part with it. We find Poggio writing to hira in December 1429 to remind him that he had kept his Lucretius twelve years. A few days later it is 'you have had Lucretius now for fourteen years; I want to read
TO NOTES I 3
him, but cannot get him ; do you wish to keep him another ten yearsl' He had already tried in vain what coaxing could do : he promises him at one time to send the book back in fifteen days, at another time in one month, if he will only let him have it for so long ; but feels sure his book will come to him at the Greek calends. Much as Niccoli loved Poggio, he loved still more to have the sole possession of a newly dis- covered Latin poet, and I doubt whether Poggio saw his Lucretius at all events before his return from Rome to Florenco in 1434. Niccoli died in 1437 and left behind him a manuscrijDt written by his own hand and now in the Laurentian library, the truest representative of Poggio's lost original, as is abundantly proved by the critical notes of the present edition. Between this date and that of the earliest printed editions a knowledge of the poem was diffused through Italy by many incorrect copies. Eight of these, including Niccoli's, are preserved in the Lauren- tian library, all of which I have examined, two with care, as being of no small importance for the text; six are in the Vatican, all seen by me as long ago as the autumn of 1849. Of the copies in England I have had in my hands at least seven ; one of these belonging to our Cambridge library has been open before me the whole time I was writing my criti- cal notes. Those manuscripts which have l)een of any importance in forming the text will be more fully spoken of, after the printed editions have been discussed.
The editio princeps, of which only three copies are known, was printed about 1473 by Ferandus of Brescia. It is the only one of the early editions which I do not possess ; I have had to trust therefore to the very unskilful collation of Gerard at the end of the Glasgow edition of Waketield. As it was printed from a manuscript a good deal cor- rected, but yet inferior to such amended copies as the Cambindge ms. for instance or that which I call Flor. 31, it is of little importance in the history of the text : of far less than the two next editions, since they by accident came to be the foundation of the vulgate. The former of these was published by Paulus Fridenperger at Verona in 1486 ' die vigesimo octavo septembris calen. octobris'. It was printed from a ms. closely re- sembling the one written by Niccoli, as may be seen by the most cursory inspection of my critical notes. It is therefore very rude and inaccurate, but being less interpolated than the editio princeps or the majority of existing mss. it represents the archetype more faithfuUy than these do, though there is hardly a line without some monstrous blunder, The next edition was published in Venice 'per theodorum de ragazonibus de asula dictum bresanum ' 4 september 1495. From some elegiac verses at the end one C. Lycinius woukl appear to be its editor, if editor he can be called; for it exactly reproduces for the most part the Verona edition even in the minutest points of its perverse punctuation. There are how- ever throughout the poem not a few differences in the two editions, some
1—2
4 INTRODUCTION
o£ little, others of greater importance ; for example iv 125 — 190 are wanting in the Yerona, but not in the Venice. The reason why I dwell on this fact will appear presently.
In December 1500 Aldus published his first edition of our poem, the first systema,tic endeavour to make it intelligible throughout. The editor was Hieronymus Avancius of Verona, who dates his dedication ' Kalen- dis Martii. m.id', old style I presume, and really therefore 1500 : an interval of twenty-two months between the two dates would not be easy to understand. Avancius is known by other works also, especially the Aldine edition of Catullus. A slight inspection will shew that he took either the Verona or the Venice edition, upon which to form his text; a more careful examination will prove that it must have been the latter. My critical notes will f urnish many other instances ; let me here only mention that in iii 994 he and Ven. have torpedine for cuppedine, while Ver. reads turjndine ; 1011 he takes from Ven. its remarkable reading egenus, which Lachmann adopts and wrongly assigns to Marullus: Ver. follows the Leyden and all other knownmss. in reading egestas; 1015 he and Ven. have the absurd reading numela for luella, where Ver. has the equally unmeaniiig hiela. Ven. therefore is the ' ante impressus ' spoken of by Aldus. Avancius' preface shews that for his day he was a good and well-read Latin scholar, and had studied Priscian Nonius and Ma- crobius for the illustration of his author. Aldus in his prefatory letter to Albertus Pius confirms this, and says that he knew Lucretius by heart, 'ut digitos unguesque suos'. Avancius in his preface asserts much the same ; and the f ew critical remarks he there inserts shew that this was true at least to a certain extent. At the same time he admits with a seeming candour that owing to the immense difiiculty of the work he has ]eft much for others to do. Much indeed he has left un- done; and it would have been a herculean task for one man fully to cor- rect the desperately corrupt Venice edition, especially in those days when there were but few extraneous aids and the art of systematic criti- cism was still in its infancy, two generations having yet to elapse, before it reached its full growth in the hands of the illustrious school of French critics. What he has done however is very great and entitles him to high praise, if it is indeed his own. But this shall be considered pre- sently. The next edition is that of the well-known scholar loannes Bap- tista Pius, published 1511 'kal. Maii' in his native Bologna. Lucretius^ text is embedded in an enormous commentary which displays amid much cumbrous learning no slight acquaintance with the Latin poets, several of which he edited before and after his Lucretius. He thus describes what he has done : ' contuJimus non sine aerumnis vigiliisque diutinis codicem veneti Hermolai : et Pomponi romani : codicemque non omnino malum : qui servatur Mantuae in bibliotheca quadam suburbana : qui fuit viri non indocti gentis clarissimae Strotiorum. non defuit Philippi
TO NOTES I 5
Beroaldi praeceptoris quondam mei : nunc collegae : impressus quidem : sed tamen pei'pense examinatus. Codri quoque grammatici Bononiensis : cuius copia mihi per Bartholomeum Blanchinum virum eloquii excultis- simi facta est : Marullique poetae industria mira castigatum non defuit exemplar Severo Monaco Placentino graece latineque perdocto musarum athleta non gravatim offerente'. He makes no mention at all of the man to whom he was most indebted, Avancius : f or his text is a reprint of the first Aldine, with however not a few changes of words or phrases, often for the better, often for the worse, either inserted in the text or pro- posed in the notes, and derived it may be presumed in many cases from one or other of the sources just mentioned. But strange to say when he makes a change in the text, the lemma of his note nearly always con- tains not this reading, but that of Avancius as if he had meant it to stand : thus l 9 he rightly reads diffuso lumine ; but his lemma has dif- /uso numine with Avancius, which the latter however corrects at the end of his Catullus : and he adds ' sunt qui legunt lumine'. 15 for cajita he wrongly inserts in the text quodque ; but his lemma has capta, and his note rightly explains the construction and makes no mention of quodque. 34 his text properly has Beiicit, his lemma Refficit after Avancius ; 35 his text wrongly gives suspirans, the lemma suspiciens ; and so throughout the poem. This very singular circumstance I explain in this way : he was living at Kome when his edition was printed and seems to have sent the text and commentary separa.tely ; for the book- seller prints at the end a long page of errors with this notice prefixed, *Hieronymus Platonicus Bononiensis bibliopola ad lectorem. contuli Pii exemplar cum edito Lucretio : labeculasque pauculas notavi cet.' Pius' edition was reprinted by Ascensius in 1514 with not a few changes in the text, some of them taken from the notes.
The next edition must be ever memorable in the history of Lucre- tius, that published by Philip Giunta 'anno salutis. m.d.xii, mense martio'. Whether this means 1513 new style I cannot tell ; but I know that he dates a Gellius and a Romualdi vita as published in January 1513, * Leone pont. max. christianam R.P. moderante' and 'Leonis X anno primo'. Now Leo X only became pope in March of that year ; so that here he must be speaking of 1514 ; and in Florence at all events this mode of dating seems to have been in common use. The editor was Petrus Candidus who, great and important as the cor- rections are which he has introduced, has yet used a copy of the first Aldine upon which to make them, though he has never mentioned the name of Avancius. It seems to have been the practice of those times to take at least whatever was printed without acknowledgment : thus Giunta regularly made booty of Aldus, Aldus of Giunta in turn. What is said in the present case is grounded on a close inspection of the two volumes. Candidus, where he does not designedly leave him.
6 INTRODUCTION
follows Avancius in the minutest points of spelling and punctuation. The latter for instance says in his preface that he writes 'veteres imitatus repertumst, itemst, necessest^ and the like : Candidus in his preface that 'in tam culto, tam nitido, tam undecunque castigato poeta' he will not admit archaisms like volgum, volnera ; or nullast, haudqua- quamst and the like. And so in his text while rejecting Avancius' patefactast, volnere, etc, he keeps his frugiferenteis, rajmceis and a thousand such forms which have no authority in their favour, while those which he discards have much. Lachmann always so hard upon Avancius says ' huius ineptissimam scribendi rationem Eichstadius studiose imitatus est', but has not a word of blame for Candidus.
But whence has the latter got his many and brilliant corrections *? for few or none appear to come from himself. He says in his address to Thomas Sotherinus that what he did was to collate all the vetusta exemplaria that were in Florence and to expunge what was condemned by the obeli of Pontanus and Marullus, ' praestantissimorum aetate nostra vatum'. He refers of course to John lovianus Pontanus and his friend and pupil Michael Marullus, after Politian two of the first scholars and Latin poets of the most flourishing period of Florentine learning, the latter half of the fifteenth century : ' Marullo ed il Pontan' have the honour to be mentioned together by Ariosto in the Orlando xxxvii 8, But Candidus goes on afterwards to speak only of Marullus * cuius in hoc opere censuram potissimum secuti sumus ' ; and in a note at the end he says that in changing the order of verses here and in most other places he has followed the arrangement of Marullus. To Marullus therefore everything which is peculiar to the Juntine has usually been assigned, whether in the way of praise, or of blame as by Victorius and by Joseph Scaliger who inherited among many other of his fathers antipathies his dislike to Marullus. But Lachmann has gone much farther than this, and has given to him not only by ovei-sight, as will be seen in notes 1, much that belongs to okler authorities ; but everything that first appeared in Avancius' edition as well, calling the latter ' fur improbus ' and other opprobrious names. That he got much assistance from the labours of MaruUus is certain ; but by ascribing to the latter everything that is in the Juntine, in some respects more, in others less credit is given to him than he deserves. As I can throw some light on this interesting question, I will examine it at some length here and in various parts of notes L
The scholar, poet and soldier, Michael Tarchaniota MaruUus Con- stantinopolitanus, as he calls himself in the editions of his poems printed during his life, appears from this title and his epitaph in San Domenico of Ancona, where he and so many of his ancestors are buried, as well as from the epithet Bizantius given to him by his friend Petrus Crinitus, to have been born in Constantinople. As he can hardly
TO NOTES I 7
have passed middle life when he perished in the river Cecina near Vol- fcerra April the lOth 1500, he must have been a mere child when on the capture of his native city he was brought to Italy, probably to Ancona. He received his training however in Florence, and he found a Maecenas in Lorenzo de' Medici. Though he never printed anything on Lucretius, his manuscript emendations appear to have been well known during his life, and a copy of the poet to have been found on him at his death : ' ex miseranda illa in mediis Cecinae undis Latinarum musarum iactura cladeque insigni unus est Lucretius receptus' says Can- didus in his preface ; and his f riend Petrus Crinitus in his de honesta disciplina xv 4, published in 1504, but mostly written it would seera before MaruUus' death, after Avell refuting an alteration of his which shall presently be referred to, adds ' quae ab eius quoque sectatoribus recepta sunt pro verissimis'. This intense love of Lucretius he seems only to have conceived in the latter years of his life. Candidus, whose preface full of feeling shews that he greatly loved Marullus and deeply deplored his untimely end, strives to make the most of what he did : he says 'Lucretianae adeo veneris per omnem aetatem studiosus fuit, ut cet.' But this must be an exaggeration : the first edition of his poems, published without a date, but not later than 1490, containing only two books of epigrams, shews so far as I can see no trace of any acquaintance with Lucretius. Catullus is chiefly imitated even in the elegiacs, and next to him Tibullus and Horace. Six pages from the beginning there is a poor poem of eight lines ' de poetis Latnis ' [sic], in which he says that Tibullus Maro Terence Horace Catullus, each in his kind, are the only good Latin poets : Hos si quis inter caeteros ponet vates, Oneret quam honoret verius. The Roman editions of 1490 and 1493 I have not access to ; but in December 1497, two years and a few months before his death, he published at Florence a much enlarged edition. A third and fourth book of epigrams are added : in these too I find no trace of Lucretius. Then follow four books of hymni naturales. In these, especially such as are written in heroics, the strain is ' of a higher mood', and we meet with frequent imitations of Lucretius, even in the lyrics, as Opihusque late pollens tuis which recalls Ipsa suis pollens opi- hus. But in these heroics it is to be noticed that the rhythm is Yirgi- lian, not in any respect Lucretian even where he closely follows the latter's language, as in the hymn to earth : Ante re^Jentino caeli quam territus haustu Vagiat aetheriam in lucem novus editus infans. Cum j)roiectus humi nudus iacet, indigus, exsors Auxilii, injirmusque pedum injirmusque palati. Then imitating at once and contradicting Lucretius' ut aecumst, Cui tantum in vita restet cet. he goes on Atque uno non tantum infelix, quod sua damna Non capit et qv/intum superat per- ferre lahorum. This the last poem published in his lifetime is full from beginning to end of Lucretian phraseology. In this edition too he
8 INTRODUCTION
inserts two new verses in the poem ' de poetis Latinis ' spoken of above, yatura magni versibus Lucretii Lepore musaeo illitis, the best in the poem and recalling musaeo contingens cuncta lejjore. Crinitus 1.1. xxiii 7 quotes this poem and mentions a conversation he had with Marullus in which ' factum est iudicium nuper a nostro Marullo de poetis Latinis earegie perfectum et prudenter ', and Ovid and other poets are blamed ; and then it is added ' itaque legendi quidem suut omnes inquit [Marul- lus] ; sed hi maxime probandi pro suo quisque genere Tibullus Horatius Catullus et in comoedia Terentius, Vergilium vero et Lucretium edis- cendos asserehat '. Let what has just been said be at once applied to a striking interpolation. After l 15 the Juntine first inserted the v. Illecehrisque tuis omnis natura aniniantum, which long kept its place in the common editions. Lachmann of course attributes it to MaruUus, as do most editors. Lambinus says of it ' neque eum Naugerius neque Pontanus habuerunt. Marullus unus vir doctus ex auctoritate veteris cuiusdam codicis, quemadmodum mihi religiose asseveravit Donatus lanottus, nobis eum restituit. amicus quidam meus ingenio et doctrina praestantissimus putat esse ab ipso Marullo factum cet.' What his authority is for that which he says of Pontanus I do not know, but Nau- gerius editor of the Aldine of 1515 properly omits the line, though he in general minutely copies the Juntine. Xow this line is written by the hand of Angelo Politian in the margin of a manuscript which belonged to him and forms xxxv 29 of the Laurentian library. Politian died in September 1494, when Marullus could hardly yet have done much for Lucretius ; and besides this as he had been long the deadly enemy of Politian, it is not likely the latter would have inserted in his manuscript one of his verses. I infer therefore that it is Politian's own ; and as Candidus says in his preface that he collated all the ' vetusta exemplaria' in Florence, he could not have neglected this manuscript which was then in the famous conventual library of San Marco. I conclude therefore that Candidus' taking it from the margin of Politian's ms. is the right explanation of lanottus' assertion that MaruUus got it from an ancient codex. It is quite possible indeed that Marullus copied it himself from this ms. which passed to San Marco immediately after Politian's decease, and thus robbed him of his verse after death, as he is said to have robbed him of his bride during life. Naugerius has in his first page another variation from the Juntine, but that a perverse one : in i 7 he reads Adventuque tuo and joins it with what follows. This corruption I believe to proceed from Marullus ; for his hymn to the sun contains a passage evidently imitated from Lucretius : Cum primum tepidi suh tempora verna favoni Aura suum terris genitalem exuscitat auctum : Adventuque dei gemmantia prata colorat : At pecudum genus omne viget, genus omne virorum Percidsi teneras anni dulcedine mentes. I can shew in other cases that Marullus corrupted Lucretius, where he has not
TO NOTES I 9
been followed by Avancius or Candidus : vi 650 — 652 are quite correctly given by Avancius, and in his learned preface he says with reference to 652 Nec tota 2mrs cet. ' totus prima brevi, quia quoti redditivus est'. Crinitus 1.1. xv 4 quotes 650 651 rightly, and adds ' qua in re gramma- ticorum nobis authoritas patrociuatur, quando et centesimus et millesi- mus probe dicitur : partem multesimam inquit Nonius nove positum est a Lucretio pro minima, ne quis forte paulo incautius atque audacius a veteribus decedat. quae a me vel ob eam rationem sunt adnotata, quoniam Marullus Bizantius aetate nostra, vir alioqui diligens, paulo improbius delere haec et alia pro ingenio subdere tentavit ; quae ab eius quoque sectatoribus recepta sunt pro verissimis '. Candidus gives these two verses rightly and says in note at end of Junt. ' citatur !Nonio locus' : he has got this clearly from Crinitus, who in the same chapter correctly quotes and illustrates i 640 Quamde yravis cet. which the Italian mss. and editions had corrupted : this too Candidus took f rora him : for Marul- lus appears to have read Quam gravior Graios inter as does Pius in his notes, and Gryphius of Lyons. Again vi 332 Avancius rightly gives per rara viarum, Candidus perversely after Marullus per operta : see his note. But fifty instances like the last might be quoted. Candidus has also missed soine of the best of MaruUus' conjectures : see for instance notes 1 to 1 1013 where I have got from the margin of one of the Floren- tine mss. pei"haps the most brilliant example of his critical acumen. Then again unless I greatly err I have shewn in my notes that Gifanius in preparing his edition had before him a copy of the Venice ed. of 1495, leut to him by the zealous scholar Sambucus, as he testifies both in his preface to Sambucus and in his address to the reader. In the former he says ' exemplum Lucretii ad nos dedisti, non illum quidem calamo exa- ratum, sed ita vetustura et idoneum, ut vicem optimi manuscripti fuerit, siquidem in eo vidi omnium paene mendorum origines, quae magnam partem a Michaele Marullo, cuius immutationes in eo adscriptae erant omnes, primum parta, mox admiserunt Florentini cet.' : in the address he speaks of the ' Sambuci liber quem ipsius Marulli manu adnotatum magno pretio vir ille praestantissimus paravit '. Why then Lachmann p. 6 should write 'neque enim facile Gifanio credere possum Marulli ipsius manu annotatum fuisse illud exemplar impressum quod se ab lohanne Sambuco utendum accepisse scribit' I cannot comprehend. Gifanius was a dishoiiest plagiary, but at the same time a most astute man. Why should he tell a gratuitous falsehood which Sambucus would at once detect ? He was writing only two generations after Marullus' death ; and even if Sambucus gave his money for what was not the handwriting of MaruIIus, it was at least a genuine copy of his notes. But notes 1 furnish abundant proof of what I say : see for instance those to I 806 II 16 V 44 and especially iii 994. It appears then that Avan- cius got from Marullus much which the Juntine does not record, and on
lO INTRODUCTION
the other hand, that Candidus took from Avancius without acknowledg- ment much that Lachmann and others assign to Marullus. Candidus, as I have said above, formed his text on a copy of the first Aldine : in doing this he must have had before him another edition with the ms. notes of Marullus, perhaps the very one which he tells us was found on him at his death. If now all that is common to the first Aldine and the Juntine comes from Marullus, as Lachmann maintains, surely Candidus must have been struck with this coincidence and would have recorded it against Avancius the editor of the great rival publisher. Yet Avan- cius did borrow largely, very largely f rom Marullus, especially in the case of interpolated verses made by the latter. How is this to be explained ? Evidently even before his death Marullus' labours on Lucretius were known ; and probably there were more copies than one of these, the one not always agreeing with the other. On this point compare notes 1 to I 551 — 627, where Candidus makes some perverse transpositions of verses, on the authority of Marullus he says in his note at the end; but the learned annotator of one of the Laurentian mss. states that some put 551 — 564 after 576, and adds 'verum Marullo parum referre videtur quomodo legatur '. This annotator and Avancius Pius Candidus Gifanius can haxxlly all have had the same copy : perhaps all were difierent. Avancius then may have had his notes in the very copy of Ven. on which he formed his text ; and may have looked on them as public property which he might make use of without acknowledgment according to the practice of the time ; for neither Pius nor Candidus acknowledges in his turn what he got from Avancius; nor does Naugerius the editor of Ald. 2 say a syllable of Candidus whose edition he copied with few variations.
But Lachmann to iii 98 cites in proof of his charge that Avancius was a dishonest plagiary three interpolated verses which doubtless were composed by Marullus and are corruptly given in Ald. 1. In notes 1 to III 98 I have attempted to shew from Gifanius that Marullus perhaps wrote jmtarit, and that Avancius intended to read the same : Avancius was probably as good a Latin scholar as Marullus, if less versed in Lucretius. In the line inserted after iv 102 multae for multas may be an error of the printer or an oversight of Avancius. In that inserted after iv 532 there can be little doubt that he purposely wrote suis, imagining that oris was a plural. The correcting of texts was then in its infancy, and Avancius had so grievous a task before him in making sense out of the monstrously corrupted Venice edition, that much must in fairness be excused : we cannot tell what were the exact relations between him and Aldus and his printers. At the end of his CatuUus published two years later he has taken occasion to give four pages of Lucretian criticism, in which he has proposed many excellent altera- tions of his former text, though I do not find that any editor before me
TO NOTES I II
has noticed these which are very important for his reputation : see notes 1 to II 422 and other passages. The inference then I draw from all this is that both Avancius and Marullus did much for Lucretius, Marullus doubtless more than Avancius ; that much which is peculiar to the Juntine is not from Marullus, and much of what Marullus did is not in the Juntine. Between them they vastly improved a grievously corrupt text ; and though they introduced many perversities, we ought in simple justice to take into consideration only what is good. In my notes for obvious reasons, when Ald. 1 and Junt. agree in a reading, I mention both ; when a reading is peculiar to Ald. 1, I assign it to Avancius by name ; when it tirst appears in Junt., I still say Junt., though it is always to be inferred that the best readings are most likely due to Marullus. By assigning to him all alike one would often be doing him less, sometimes more than justice.
[In my second edition however I was able to throw fresh light on the history and criticism of Lucretius' text by the undoubted corrections of Pontanus and Marullus, still existing among the books and manuscripts of Peter Victorius which have formed for centuries so valuable a portion of the Munich library. They were examined by me and copied out in the summer of 1865, my attention having been directed to them by a Goettingen program of Prof. Sauppe. The learned writer informs us that he had examined the Munich ms. of Lucretius and found it cor- rected throughout by some Italian scholar. Where Candidus the editor of the Juntine mentions in his note a reading of Marullus, this reading invariably appeared among these corrections. From this and other indications he coucluded, and the conclusion seemed most reasonable, that these were the very corrections of MaruUus which Candidus had used for his edition. He makes the probable suggestion that the long connexion of Victorius with the Giuntas would readily explain his possession of a manuscript which had belonged to that firm.
At Munich through the courtesy of the librarian I had the fuU use of the following important documents : 1. the manuscript just mentioned: 2. a copy of the Venice edition of 1495 witli corrections by Pontanus in the handwriting of Victorius who describes them in the first page as * emendationes ex Pontani codice testantis ipsum ingenio eas expromp- sisse': 3. another copy of the same edition likewise corrected through- out by the hand of Victorius who says at the end 'contuli cum duobus codicibus, altero loviani Pontani, altero vero Marulli poetae Bizantii, impressis quidem, sed ab ipsis non incuriose, ut patet, emendatis, quos commodum accepi ab Andrea Cambano patritio Florentino m.d.xx. Idibus Martiis. Petrus Victorius'. What the printed edition was from which he copied these emendations of Marullus I do not know : very likely it was this Venice edition itself which must have had a large circulation and was the very edition containing Marullus' notes which
12 INTRODUCTION
Gifanius made use of, as has been already told. Victorius says of grando in V 1192 '■glando in Pont. libro': now since not only the Venice edition, but the Verona and first Aldine have grando, and also the Bres- cian as I learn from Earl Spencer's librarian, Pontanus must have used some printed edition now unknown. The pains which so eminent a scholar as Victorius has taken in copying out twice the emendations of Pontanus and once those of MaruUus would prove the high estimation in which those two learned men must have been held when he was a young man of twenty. As he has also filled a copy of the Juntine with long parallel passages from the Greek, he must himself at one time have contemplated an elaborate edition of the poet and has to be added to the long list of scholars with whom this remained an unaccomplished design.
We have then an undoubted copy of what Pontanus himself asserted to be his own original emendations ; and as they are accurately repeated by Victorius in his second copy, if we subtract these we have in what remains the undoubted corrections of MaruUus. Now the latter with only a few variations, easily to be accounted for as being earlier thoughts or in other ways, all reappear among the alterations of the Munich ms, which are however much more numerous. When we consider all this, and remember that wherever Candidus in his notes mentions the name of Marullus, the reading which he assigns to him is found here; that he tells us in his preface his text is grounded mainly on the revisions of Pontanus and Marullus, the latter more especially ; that, as the present edition will demonstrate, the numerous readings which first appear in the Juntine, good bad and indifterent, where not taken from what we now know to be those of Pontanus, nearly always agree with the corrections of this manuscript ; and finally that Candidus not unfrequently gives a new reading peculiar to this of all manuscripts known to me, as in his note to V 826 where he mentions pariendo as a variation, we may fairly conclude that Candidus in preparing his text had the use of this corrected manuscript, and that the corrector was Marullus. It would be natural too to conclude that this is his own copy amended by his own hand; and for the most part I do not doubt that this is so. However they cannot all have been written at the same time, as the ink differs in different places; and as so many of the emendations agree with those of Pontanus, it seems not improbable that the ms. was in his possession before it came into the hands of Marullus. As the Italian handwritings of that age re- semble each other so much, at least to our eyes, the writing of the pupil may not have differed much from that of the master. However that may be, we must conclude that the corrections common to both belong to Pontanus, as he was the elder and we saw above that he claims them for his own, and the scholar would naturally borrow from the master. The emendations too of Pontanus, valuable as many of them are, have
TO NOTES I 13
the appearance of being earlier and more rudimentary than those of the other : he not unf requently too sees that something is wanting and says 'fragmentum', where the latter supplies a whole verse with more or less success. The scholar therefore completed what the master commenced; and the emendation of Lucretius links their names together not less honourably than does the verse we quoted f rom Ariosto. Upon the whole this fresh information has greatly raised my estimate of both, especially of Marullus. His industry is at least as conspicuous as his sagacity : he has evidently carefully collated manuscripts and editions and gathered materials from all accessible sources. Throughout the poem the many verses omitted in the Munich manuscript are supplied with unfailing diligence. He evidently was acquainted with several of the existing Florentine manuscripts ; among others that of Niccoli I believe, as well as that of his enemy Politian, and Flor. 31 whose readings Lachmann so strangely assigns to the notary Antonius Marii. Upon the whole he must be placed as an amender of Lucretius immediately after Lambinus and Lachmann, if not indeed in the same front rank, when we consider the circumstances of his age and the imperfection of his materials; and Pontanus perhaps may rank after him. Lambinus, as well as Avancius and Naugerius editor of the second Aldine, must have had access to some copy of Pontanus' corrections.
What r said of Marullus in my first edition with much more imper- fect materials from which to draw conclusions, I find now confirmed in essential points. There were in circulation difterent copies of Marullus' emendations; Gifanius had access to one of these : see notes 1 to i 274 IV 1005, as well as 11 16 125 465 iii 994 v 201 1151 vi 25 : what I in- ferred from his own poems is borne out by 11 719 and 749 and some other passages : the assertion of Crinitus quoted above that MaruUus had corrupted vi 651 652 is fully confirmed here: Marullus for the oorrect multesima most unskilfully proposes multa extima ; and for tota reads sit : the latter Candidus adopts. In other cases his more mature judg- ment as seen in the Munich manuscript doubtless differed f rom his earlier notions. A man who studied Lucretius so long and earnestly cannot fail to have often changed his mind on further reflexion and with new soui'ces of information. Candidus does not by any means follow Ponta- nus or Marullus in his orthography : that is formed as I proved in my first edition mainly on Avancius. In many cases they might have taught him better; to avoid for instance such embellishments as his amneis, virenteis. He rightly however avoids such barbarisms as the hymbres and sylva of MaruUus. From succus littus arctus and the like, which the latter carefully introduces, we may infer that he and Pontanus had some share in bringing such corruptions into common use. The careful collation which I have given in this edition of the emendations of Pontanus and Marullus will prove their importance, and shew how rash
14
INTRODUCTION
and unfounded Lachmann's procedure is in assigning everything that is new in the Juntine to Marullus : even in the many instances where he and I are in agreement, it must be remembered that he speaks without authority, while I possess the testimony of Marullus himself.]
The Juntine closes the first great epoch of improvement in the text of Lucretius : the second Aldine edited by the well-known scholar An- drew Naugerius and dated 'mense ianuario m.d.xv.' is for the most part a mere reprint of it without however one word of acknowledgment ac- cording to the usage of the time. Yet the changes are not few, mostly f or the better, not always : two instances are given above f rom the first page, the one a gross corruption, the other a right rejection of an inter- polation. For the next fifty years Ald. 2 appears to have been the model edition. Gryphius of Lyons published several texts, three of which I have l)efore me : they genei'ally follow Naugerius, but not always, often recurring to Avancius. Those of L534 and L540 have many mar- ginal readings, most of them taken f rom Avancius or the notes of Pius, a few from sources not known to me : see notes 1 to i 977 officiatque. Yet even these two editions do not always agree with each other.
Little advance however was made on the Juntine before Dionysius Lambinus. He dates his address to Charles IX 1 November 1563 and afterwards speaks of his first edition as published in that year ; though the title-page of my copy has L564. Lambinus was among the most illustrious of the great Latin scholars who studied and taught at Paris in the sixteenth century. His knowledge of Cicero and the older Latin writers as well as the Augustan poets has never been surpassed and rarely equalled. Whoever doubts that the nicest critical and gramma- tical questions can be expressed in Ciceronian Latin without efibrt or afiectation, let him study the commentaries of Lambinus. Scaliger says of him 'Latine et Romane loquebatur optimeque scribebat': his ease and readiness are astonishing. He made use he tells us of five mss. : four of these appear to have been Italian mss. of the fifteenth century : the fifth, of wliich he used a collation by Tumebus, and which he calls the Bertinian, was the same as the Leyden quarto. In his preface and throughout the work he acknowledges his obligations to Turnebus and Auratus. His Lucretius is perhaps the greatest of his works : there was more to be doue here, and therefore he has done more. He had more- over a peculiar admiration for this author, of whom in the preface to his third edition he says 'omnium poetarum Latinorum qui hodie exstant et qui ad nostram aetatem pervenerunt elegantissimus et purissimus, idem- que gravissimus atque ornatissimus Lucretius est'. If his boast that he has restored the text in 800 places goes beyond the truth, though I am not sure that it does, yet the superiority of his over all preceding texts can scarcely be exaggerated ; for the quickness of his intellect united with his exquisite knowledge of the language gave him great power in
TO NOTES I 15
the field of conjecture, and for nearly three centuries his remained the standard text. Lachmann says he did much less than Marullus. But so far as there is truth in this, it is merely saying that the one lived before the other : nine tenths of what Marullus eflfected, Lambinus could have done currente calamo; but I doubt whether Marullus could have accoraplished one tenth o£ what Lambinus succeeded in doing. Lach- mann accuses him of strange levity and rashness. But it must be re- membered that in a short life he got through an amazing amount of woi'k in conformity with the wants of his age, He only gave two years and a half to his brilliant edition of the whole of Cicero : and probably did not spend many more months on his Lucretius than Lachmann spent years. Nor was it possible in that age even for a Lambinus to appre- hend the true relation of the mss. of Lucretius to one another. His copious explanatory and illustrative commentary however calls for un- qualified eulogy, and has remained down to the present day the great original storehouse, from which all have borrowed who have done anything of value for the elucidation of their author. Scaliger says 'Lambinus avoit fort peu de livres': if so he made good use of them, as his reading is as vast as it is accurate, and its results are given in a style of unsurpassed clearness and beauty. His notes observe the mean between too much and too little : he himself calls them brief, while his thankless countrymen, thinking however more perhaps of his Horace than his Lucretius, have made lamhin and lambiner classical terms to express what is difiuse and tedious. A second and much smaller edition with only a few pages of notes, but with many variations f rom the first, was published in 1565.
Scarcely could this first edition have issued f rom the press, when the well-known scholar and jurisconsult Obertus Gifanius of Buren began with systematical and unprincipled cunning to pillage it and convert it to his own purposes. His Lucretius was printed by Plantin of Antwerp in 1566 as stated at the end, though of two copies before me the title- page of one has on it 1566, the other 1565, which is the date of his own address to Sambucus, and of the two privilegia, at the end; for the March 1564 of the first must be old style, as it is later than the Febru- ary 1565 of the second. He brought nothing new to his task, except the ms. notes of Marullus in the old Venice ed. fully spoken of above ; for the emendations and readings of Antonius Goldingamus homo Anglus, which he speaks of in his preface, and the veteres libri and the like which occur throughout his book are mere blinds to conceal his thefts from Lambinus. The way in which he contrives at once to bestow empty praise on this scholar and yet to extenuate his merits and put him as a commentator of Lucretius on the same level with other learned men, Turnebus for instance, is a marvel of astuteness. In the preface to his third ed. Lambinus states the truth with great terseness : ' omnia
l6 INTRODUCTION
fere quae in eo Lucretio recta sunt, mea sunt ; quae tamen iste aut si- lentio praetermittit aut maligne laudat aut sibi impudenter arrogat'. Yet so great was the skill with which all this was done that he deceived many and was thought to be a rival worthy of Lambinus. Contrary to what many believe, the age loved brief notes ; and his were brief, the other's copious. Even the great critic of that generation Joseph Scali- ger, who well knew the character of the man and accused him of gross deceit towards himself, says ' Gifanius estoit docte, son Lucrece est tres- bon'. Lambinus however knew the truth, and his wrath was as signal as the provocation. In 1570 he brought out a third edition greatly im- proved and enlarged; much of the additional matter however consists in invectives against the aggressor. In a long preface of great power and beauty of style he states his wrongs. There and throughout his commen- tary the whole Latin language, rich in that department, is ransacked for tenns of scorn and contumely. The same charges are repeated in a hun- dred diflferent shapes with curious copiousness and variety of expression. Gifanius with consistent cunning attempted no public reply to all this. Many years afterwards, when Lambinus had long been dead, a new edi- tion of the other's book was brought out at Leyden in 1595, in which many additions are made to the brief notes, but not a word is said of the charges brought against him by Lambinus. He was rewarded for his reticence, and for a century or more opinion was divided as to whether he or Lambinus did more for Lucretius. In private he corresponded with the caukered and unhappy Muretus : the two exchanged futile charges of dishonesty against the dead critic, who was far too genuine a scholar to be capable of being a plagiary. Lachmann so stern with Avancius has nothing to say of this much more flagitious case: 'qui quo iure' he observes *aut Lambinum aut alios compilasse dictus esset non quaesivi'. Gifanius had no business whatever to edit a poet : he was without poetical taste and grossly ignorant of metre.
For a century after Lambinus nothing was done for Lucretius : the common editions followed either Lambinus or Gifanius. In 1658 the singular labours of Gassendi were given to the world. Deeply versed in the works of the fathers and the philosophy of all ages down to the latest discoveries of Descartes he devoted himself with the zeal of a disciple to the dogmas of Epicurus. The two first of his huge folios are given to this philosophy, and a large portion of them to the exposition of Lucre- tius. Much that is curious may be gathered from them, and I have perused them with attention ; but to say the truth I have not found much to my purpose in them. The author was utterly devoid of the critical faculty, and all that is of value in him on this head is borrowed from Lambinus; as well as the most useful of his illustrations : his cor- rections of the text are almost without exception worthless. In the 17th century several distinguished scholars, Salmasius J. F. Gronovius Nic.
TO NOTES I 17
Heinsius Isaac Vossius, turned their attention to Lucretius ; but their labours were only desultory. Of the ms. notes by the tvvo last which are in my possession T will speak afterwards. In 1662 Tanaquillus Faber or Tanneguy Lefebvre published at Saumur a text of Lucretius followed by emendaliones and notulae. He was a clever but vain man, who seemed to think such work rather beneath him ; he takes care how- ever to iuform his readers tliat he spent but little time or pains on it, and had only Lambinus and Gifanius before him, though he owed nothing to either, The truth is that without Lambinus he could not have ad- vanced a step : clever man that he is, he aiibrds a good proof how much Latin scholarship had deteriorated in France during the century between him anc* Lambinus. Of Pareus, Nardius, Fayus notliing need be said.
Had Bentley in 1689 or 1690 succeeded in his efforts to obtain for the Bodleian Isaac Vossius' fanious library, he might have anticipated what Lachmann did by a century and a half. As Iie was at that very time working hard at Lucretius, if he had once got into his hands the two mss. now at Leyden, he would at a glance have seen their import- ance and would scarcely have failed to complete the edition which he was then meditating. Tlie great lcnowledge of Epicurus' system which he displayed two years later in his Boyle lectures and his zeal for the recently published Principia of Newton would have aided him in ex- pounding the tenets of the poet. This however was not to he ; but his marginal notes published in the Glasgow edition of Wakefield prove what he could have done, if he had gone on with his design. I cannot doubt that Lucretius would have suited him better than Horace, and offered a fairer field for the exercise of his critical divination.
In 169-5 there came from the Oxford press a Lucretius edited not by Bentley, but by Thomas Creech Fellow of All Souls, a man of sound sense and good taste, but to judge from his book of somewhat arrogant and supercilious temper. The text is nearly always a reproduction of one or other of the editions of Laml>inus : such criticism indeed he seems in his preface to look upon as unworthy of him. His notes are in most cases mere abridgements of those of Lambinus or copied from Faber, and his illustrations are usually borro^ved from the former. All this he does as if it were a matter of course, not thinking it necessary eitlier to avow or conceal his obligations. His interp7'etatio is his own : how far it is of assistance to a student must depend upon what he seeks for in it. His Lucretius however owing to the clearness and brevity of the notes has continued to be the popular one from that time to the present.
The worthy London bookseller Jacob Tonson published in 1712 a finely printed text with various readings at the end collected from many quarters with a great deal of trouble, some of value, most quite worth- less. This I chiefly mention on account of what follows. In 1725 Sigebert Havercamp Professor at Leyden gave to the world his variorum
M. 2
l8 INTRODUCTION
edition in two large volunies. Though his reputation has never been great, my readers will hardly perhaps be prepared for what I am going to say. As Professor in Leyden he had the full use of the two Vossian mss. there, the main foundation of a genuine text ; how did he use this advantage, which in profession he makes so much of ? The chief feature of his edition is a vast and cumbrous apparatus of various readings, derived from about thiity-one sources professedly distinct. Of these thirty-one twenty-two are simply the various readings of the London edition just mentioned which Havercamp has taken and tumbled into his own without changing the notation. Most of these are of the most futile nature, taken from worthless editions which reprint or ignorantly depart from those of Giunta, Aldus, Lambinus or Gifanius, such as that of Pareus, Gryphius, Fayus, Nardius and the French translator the Baron de Coutures : the more worthless the authority, the more fully it seems to be given. There are also some collatious of the mss. of Vossius and that in the Bodleian which it did the London bookseller credit to get together. The nine remaining authorities are these : a certain Basil edition of 1531, its marginal readings, a collation of the Verona edition of 1486, also jottings in its margin from three unknown mss., a second collation of the Bodleian, and lastly the two all-important Leyden mss. The two last are the only authorities he has collated himself. How has he performed this task ? he has not noted one reading in three ; the most important variations he usually omits ; and the readings he gives are as often wrong as right. That which he has borrowed from others and thrown in a lump into his edition is for the most part as worthless as the scribblings of a schoolboy. So incredibly careless is he, that the Vossian collations which he borrows f rom Tonson are or should be those of his Leyden mss. : see note 1 to v 471 for a glaring instance of a false reading which he slavishly copies from Tonson and ascribes to his Leyden quarto. Nay more the Bm of the London edition and his own X are one and the same Bodleian ms. so that we have this ludi- crous result, that the same ms. is cited twice over as two independent authorities. His various readings are therefore not only cumbrously inane, but are a snare and delusion, and liave led astray those who like Wakefield have trusted to them. Thus in his hands the two un- rivalled Leyden mss. have been worse than useless. What he does him- self is always worse done than what he borrows from others, poor as that generally is : he has collated none of the old editions except the Verona, and that was done for him, aud better done than he would have done it for himself. Nor are his explanatory notes much better : he has heaped together in a crude mass those of the chief editors ; but except iu the case of Virgil and Horace and one or two others of the best known poets, indexes to which are in everybody's hands, he has not even sup- plied the references to Lambinus' learned notes who from the circum-
TO NOTES I 19
stances of his age could not himself f urnish them ; nay in one case he has given Lambinus' own worcls as those of Cicero. In his two bulky volumes there is not one week's genuine work beyond what scissors and paste could do : seldom has performance fallen so far short of profession and opportunity.
There is nothing to detain us between Havercamp and Wakefield who in 1796 and 1797 gave liis three volumes to the world, rivalling the other's in magnitude. Yet the work, such as it is, is his own, and is not a mere slothful compilation from others. Gilbert Wakefield pos- sessed one quality which a critic can ill dispense with, that of despising any amount of autliority which did not rest on some real foundation, and refusing to admit that, because a reading had appeared in edition after edition for centuries, it might by that alone claim recognition. He therefore set about a new revision which was to be based on manuscript authority alone; but neither his knowledge nor his industry nor his ability nor his taste sufficed for such a work. He professed to collate five English mss., among them our Cambridge one, and niost of the old editions. This task he executed with incredible carelessness. As he had the fuU use of the Cambridge ms., one might have expected that his collation of it would be done with some care ; but it is quite untrust- worthy. From this as well as the evidence of his own notes and the nature of the case I infer that his otlier collations are not more to be depended upon. Had this labour lieen faitlifully performed, it would still have been of little use, as he had no notion of the true relation of these late mss. to one another. He looked on each as an inde- pendent authority and thought he could not do wrong, if the words he put in his text were found in one or other of them. Then he had to take from Havercamp the readings of the Leyden mss., and therefore could gain no true insight into their character. As he had no know- ledge of the language or philosophy of his author, he undertook to explain whatever words he put into his text in long turgid notes of unmeaning verbiage. His work was got through with a strange precipi- tancy : when engaged on the first part, he had never read the other parts of the poem ; when he came to them, he had forgotten what went before. Morbidly vain and utterly unconscious of the immeasureable distance between Lambinus and himself, he assails the most brilliant and certain emendations of the unrivalled scholar in a hideous jargon and with a vehemence of abuse that would be too great even for his own errors. Thus by some fatality or other, by its falling into the hands of a Gifanius Havercamp Wakefield instead of those of a Salmasius Gronovius Hein- sius Bentley, the critieism of Lucretius remained for centuries where it had been left by Lambinus, nay even retrograded. And yet Wakefield did display occasional flashes of native genius, and our notes will shew that not a few certaiii corrections are due to him ; but from the first to
2—2
20 INTEODUCTION
tlie last of his 1200 quarto pages there is not a single explanation of the words or philosophy of his author for which a schoolboy would thank him : so incurably inaccurate and illogical was his ruind. Yet owing to the boldness with which he asserted his pretensions he was thought even by scholars to have done something great for his author : he received complimentary letters f rom Heyne and Jacobs, ' hominibus modestis et ab omni iudicii subtilitate abhorrentibus'; and more than thirty years afterwards Forbiger in preparing his compilation for the use of the general public took him for his supreme authority. Even later than that so great a scholar as Ph. Wagner often appeals to him in his notes to Virgil. But though long in coming the avenger was to be.
Already in 1832 Madvig in a short academical program, afterwards republished among his opuscula, exposed the futility of WakefieWs criticism and gave some intimations of the right course to pursue. Sti- mulated by his example more than one scholar followed up the attack. The most important contribution of this kind was made by Jacob Bernays in an article printed in the Rhenish Museum of 1847. This able paper would have produced a greater effect than it did, if it had not been so soon superseded by Lachmann's more complete and systema- tical work. This illustrious scholar great in so many departments of philology, sacred, classical and Teutonic, seems to have looked upon Latin poetry as his peculiar province. Lucretius his greatest work was the main occupation of the last five years of his life, from the autumn of 1845 to November 1850. Fortunately he had the full use for many months of the two Leyden mss. His native sagacity, guided and sharp- ened by long and varied experience, saw at a glance their relations to each other and to the original from which they were derived, and made clear the arbitrary way in which the common texts had been constructed. His zeal warming as he advanced, one truth after another revealed itself to him, so that at length he obtained by successive steps a clear insight into the condition in which the poem left the hands of its author in the most essential points. Like many other great scholars he seems to have kept few or no common-place books. Resolved to master his subject he perused the grammarians and poets aud nearly the whole of the older writers in order to illustrate Lucretius through them and them by Lucretius, and the Latin language by all. He had an almost unequaUed power of grasping a subject in its widest extent and filKng up the minutest details. One mark of a great original critic, which eminently belongs to Lachmann, is this : even when wrong, he puts into your hands the best weapons for refuting himself, and by going astray makes the right path easier for others to find. Another test is this, when his influence extends far beyond his immediate author. Now hardly any work of merit has appeared in Germany since Lachmann's Lucretius in any branch of Latin literature without bearing on every page the impress
TO NOTES I 21
of his example. When he is better known in England, the same result will follow here. Though his Latin style is eminently clear lively and appropriate, yet frora his aim never to throw away words, as well as f rom a mental pecuharity of his, that lie only cared to be understood by those whom he thouglit worthy to understand him, lie is often obscure and oracular on a first reading. Had his commentary been twice the length it is, it would have been easier to master. But when once fully apprehended his words are not soon forgotten. His love for merit of all kinds incites in him a zeal to do justice to all the old scholars who have done anything for his author ; while his scorn and hatred of boastful ignorance and ignoble sloth compel him to denounce those whom he con- victs of these offences. In one instance, that of Forbiger, this sternness passes into ferocity : most of liis errors that scholar could hardly avoid in the circumstances in which he was placed.
Hermann warns us, when we disagree with Lachmann, to think twice lest we, not he, be in fault. His defects however must not be passed over. Wliile the most essential part of his work, the collation of the two Leyden mss., has been performed with admirable skill and industry, he has not been so happy in the use of secondary evidence, that of the Italian mss. and the older editions. Much he has taken on trust on insufficient evidence, and much that he had before him he has not always accurately used. Some proofs of this have been given, more will be seen below. But a still more serious defect must be told : he meant his book to be a critical revision of the text, and left to others the task of explaining and illustrating the meaning. So far good : but as the text of an author in the condition of that of Lucretius cannot be always rightly constructed without a sufficient knowledge of his system and its literature, he has not unfrequently strangely blundered and grossly coiTupted the poefs words : for examples of this see i 599 — 634 ii 522 — 529 1010 foll. v 513 — 516. His consummate knowledge of the Latin language as well as of the manner of Lucretius in particular enables him often to amend his author with great success. As he wishes too to pro- duce, where it is possible, an intelligible text, many of his corrections he must himself have looked upon as only provisional. Yet his greatest admirers must concede that he has not Madvig's 'curiosa felicitas' in eniendation. He has however achieved a work which will be a land- mark for scholars as long as the Latin language continues to be studied, a work, perjidiae quod j^ost nulla arguet aetas.
Jacob Bernays in 1852 edited a text of Lucretius for the Teubner series. There can be little doubt that carried away by the strength of his admiration for Lachmann he has followed him too faithf ully ; yet he not unfrequently differs from him. Where he recalls the old reading he is generaliy right; where he deserts him for a conjecture of his own, he is often very successful. Had he prepared a more elaborate edition, as
22 INTRODUCTION
he appears to have once had thoughts o£ doing, there is no doubt that Lucretius would have owed him much. The impulse given by Lachmann to the study of our poet has called forth numerous papers either inserted in the German philological reviews or published by themselves. Some are of more, some of less importance: my notes will shew where I have been indebted to them. One English publication of eminent merit, as it criticises not the text of the poem, but its matter and poetical beauties, shall be mentioned elsewhere.
To return now to the manuscripts whose history was sketched above. Though I examined the two at Leyden for some days so long ago as the autumn of 1849, what will now be said of them is borrowed from Lachmann who had them in his hands for six months and during that time applied the whole force of his practised and penetrating intellect to vmravelling all their difficulties and obscurities. Both, as already men- tioned, belonged to the magnificent collection of Isaac Vossius. The older and better of the two is of the ninth century written in a clear and beautiful hand : I call it A. It has been corrected by two scribes at the time that the ms. was written, as Lachmann tells us. One of these is of great importance : in most essential points he agrees minutely with the ms. of ISTiccoli, the oldest of the Italian mss. ; and doubtless therefore gives the reading of the archetype. It will be seen in notes 1 how often I make the united testimony of A and Niccoli to outweigh all the rest. The other Leyden ms. which I call B is of ne^^rly equal importance : it is of quarto size closely written in double columns, apparently in the tenth century. It is probable that it and the ms. next to be mentioned were copied from some copy of tlie archetype, not like A from the arche- type itself. Four portions of the poem are omitted in their place, but come together at the end in this order, ii 757 — 806 v 928 — 979 l 734 — 785 II 253 — 304. Lachmann has demonstrated that these sections formed each an entire leaf of the lost archetype : 16 29 39 115 are the numbers of these leaves. It is manifest then that after A was copied, these leaves of the archetype had fallen out of their places and been put together without order at the end, before B, or the original of B, was copied from it. More will be said on this point presently. B has had several correctors, but all of the 1 5th century ; one a very brilliant critic for his age, to whom are due many of the finest emendations in the poem, as will be seen in notes 1. This ms. was once in the great monastery of St Bertin near St Omer. Turnebus collated it in Paris and his colla- tion as we saw was used with much efFect by Lambinus : it afterwards came into the possession of Gerard John Vossius, Isaac's father. A large fragment of another ms. closely resembling B in everything double columns and all, except that it is said to be a small folio, not quarto in shape, is now at Copenhagen : it contains book i and ii down to 456, omitting however the same sections as B, viz, i 734 — 785 and ii 253 —
TO NOTES I
23
304, and doubtless for the same reasons, because copied from the same ms. from which B was taken. It usually goes by the name of the Gottorpian fragment from the place where it once was. I have three collations of it, one published by Henrichsen in 184G, another in the handwriting of Nic. Heinsius, another in that of Isaac Vossius. For- merly it had a very high reputation : in truth it much resembles, but is more carelessly written than B, and is seldom of much use, except once or twice to confirm A against B. Strangely enough there are in the Vienna library fragments of a precisely similar ms. containing large por- tions of the later books, viz. 11 642 to iii 621 inclusive, omitting how- ever in the proper place 11 757^ — 806 exactly as B does ; then vi 743 to the end ; then follow, precisely as in B, the f our omitted portions given above, proving this to be copied from the ms. from which B was taken. Naturally enough these Vienna f ragments were assunied to belong to one and the same ms. as the Gottorpian ; but Dr Ed. Goebel, from whom I have borrowed this description of them, seems to prove in the Rhenish Mus. n. s. XII p. 449 foll. that the two portions now bound together are of dififerent sizes and belonged to different mss. However that may be, the former part seems to be the same ms. as the Gottorpian, and the other if not the same, is precisely the same in internal character; and in either case is of the same, that is of very little value. Probably there- fore a more accurate collation would hardly repay the labour.
All other mss. known to exist were, as has been already said, copied mediately or immediately from Poggio's lost ms. which must have re- sembled A almost as closely as the Gottorpian resembles B. The most important are among the eight preserved at Florence in the Laurentian library, numbered 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 of desk xxxv. 30 was written by Nicolb Niccoli himself, who had Poggio's ms. so long in his possession: this we are told in the learned Mehus' preface to his life of Traversarius p. L. As he studied so many of Niccoli's manuscript letters, he must have known his writing better than anybody else. There are many cor- rections in a much later hand, but Niccoli himself seems on the whole to have copied Poggio's ms. faithf ully, and not to have made many changes. His ms. theref ore, as will be seen in notes 1 , is of great value in deciding between A and B. It is unfortunate that Lachmann could make no use of it : I collated it with some care in the summer of 1851 : the old Verona and Venice editions have a text closely resembling Niccoli's. 31 is next in importance to 30, but of a widely different character, hav- ing a text much more corrected than Niccoli's or even Ver. and Ven. It is clearly written and in excellent preservation, and much resembles in general character the manuscript in our public library which I had open before me all the time I was composing notes 1, and which is as well preserved and as distinctly written as the other. It excels the Cam- bridge on the whole, though the latter has many good corrections not in
24 INTRODUCTION
the other, These two therefore I have used as good examples of cor- rected codices. From whom come the many excellent emendations con- tained in these mss. is quite unknown. Lachmann used a not very complete collation of Flor. 31, and to it he attributes the corrections which it has for the most part in common with the Cambridge and doubtless some other mss. Having been told too by H. Keil from whom he got the collation that it was written by Antonius Marii filius, he fills his commentary from one end to the other with the name of this worthy Florentine notary. I can only say that I compared it with ten or more voluminous mss. written in magnificent style and signed by this man between 1420 and 1451 all closely resembling each other ; and neither in general appearance nor in the form of particular letters nor in their abbreviations have they any resemblance to the ms. of Lucretius. This scribe's name therefore I have excluded from my notes. Of the other Laurentian mss. 29 is to be noticed for the marginal annotations of Angelo Politian spoken of above and often referred to in notes 1 : it twice over has this note 4iber conventus Sancti Marci de Florentia ordinis Praedicatorum habitus a publicis sectoribus pro libris quos sibi ab eodem conventu commodatos Angelus Politianus amisit seu qui in morte Angeli Politiani amissi sunt'. 32 has some learned marginal remarks on the first book from which I have derived some facts about Marullus. The six mss. of the Yatican I collated as long ago as the autumn of 1849, but not with much care or skill ; yet it will be seen from notes 1 that they have been of considerable service to me: their marks are as follows, 3275 and 3276 Vatic. 640 Urbin. 1136 and 1954 Othobon. and 1706 Regin., at the bottom of the first page of which are the words 'Nicolai Heinsii'. As further helps I have had Gifanius' ed. of 1595 with ms. notes by Nic. Heinsius which I bought f rom H. G. Bohn many years ago : it will be seen that I have derived from it some valuable emendations not in Heinsius' adversaria nor elsewhere so far as I know. It has also a com- plete collation of A all through, of B in the first four books, and of the Gottorpian fragment. It contains too a complete collation of the codex Modii, which Heinsius denotes by s : he says of it ' variantes lectiones excerptae sunt ex libello edito Paris. an. 1565 quem Fr. Modius cum ms. suo contulit, ut ipse testatur fine lib. i inquiens : Collatus cum ms. meo 26 Junii 1579 Coloniae': it was lent to Heinsius by Liraeus; Liraeus had it from Gruter, Gruter from Nansius, Nansius from Modius himself. Heinsius says 'codex Modii non est idem cum B Vossiano, nam pag. 8 [i 227] ubi ex Modiano notatum ad lumina, Vossianus in\ Heinsius speaks I presume of the small 2nd ed. of Lambinus, as the one which Modius used: it has like others in lumina: if then Modius' codex is B, either he or Heinsius has made a gross mistake. I have noticed several other instances, where s is made to difier from B ; but in these cases Lambinus' 2nd ed. has the reading which Heinsius gives to s, so that
TO NOTES I 25
Heinsius may have here been misled by Modius' negligence. It would seem certainly that s and B are the same: if they are two, then their agreement is very extraordinary, mucli closer than that between B and the Gottorpian fragment.
I also possess a copy of Faber's Lucretius with a poor collation of A and B and the Gottorp. as well as many other notes and illustrations in the writing of Tsaac Vossius. Havercamp had a copy of the same notes, but has employed them with his usual carelessness. Notes 1 will shew what impoi'tant use I have made of them : they have enabled me to strip him of several of the most showy feathers with which he had decked himself either from negHgence or worse. Spengel, Christ, Goebel and some others have in vai'ious journals and publications made much ado about a codex Victorianus as they call it, once belonging to P. Victorius, now in the Munich library, as if it were a rival, or nearly so, of A and B. From the readings cited I see clearly that it is a common Itahan fifteenth century ms. neither better nor worse than twenty others, much resembling the Verona and Venice editions and of no importance what- ever, [As the reader has been already told, I examined this manuscript myself at Munich during the summer of 1865 and can confidently affirm that what I said of it is the truth. It is much interpolated: its correc- tions are not so valuable as those of Fh)r. 31 or I think of our Cambridge manuscript. I have recorded some of its readings in my critical notes under the tei'm 'Mon.', and have occasionally spoken of it as the codex Victorii. Strange that learned men should have taken so much trouble about its own readings and said not a word of the much more important emendations of MaruUus which it contains. This is not the case with Prof. Sauppe in the program spoken of above; but I cannot help citing from its first page a few lines which I read with no slight surprise : 'unum addo, quod ab aliis nondum quod sciam animadversum coniectu- ram de victoriani codicis origine propositam valde confirmet, Post 1. 3 enim v. 360 versus novem scripti sunt, quos delendos esse homo quidam doctissimus in margine monuit, qui versus 403 — 411 per errorem hic il- latos esse vidisset. ratione autem subducta inter v. 360 et 403 versus bis vicenos senos interpositos esse invenimus, ut facile intelligamus in singu- lis archetypi paginis versus vicenos senos scriptos fuisse eiusque inter scribendum cum unum vellet scriptorem victoriani duo folia vertisse. in archetypo vero oblongi C. Lachmannus ostendit p. 3. 49, 233. aliis locis eandem versuum rationem fuisse'. Probably before this time the learned writer will have discovered that his arithmetic is at fault and that he has counted forty-two as fifty-two; and that his theory is thus entirely upset. But it is not for such a trifle as that, that I have quoted his words. Does he really mean to assert that this Munich is not like every other fifteenth century ms. a descendant of the one brought into Italy by Poggio 1 that the long lost archetype was preserved by some mysterious
26 INTRODUCTION
intervention for the special use of the copyist of this coclex ? Again I would ask whether he looks upon the laborious and sagacious calcula- tions, by which Lachmann demonstrated the number of pages in the lost archetype and the number of verses in each page, as a mere plaything thus to be trifled with ; and not rather as a key to unlock many secrets of criticism and not to be understood even without some slight effbrt of mind. I beg to tell him that the number of lines in the archetype be- tween iii 360 and 403 was not either 52 or 42, but 44; that is to say 42 verses of the poem + two headings : and that iii 360 did not com- mence, nor iii 402 terminate a leaf ; but that iii 360 was the fifth line of page 108 of the archetype, and iii 402 was the fourth line from the bottom of page 109. Further study too will perhaps make him regret that he has put the unfortunate paragraphs between i 503 and 634 to a fi"esh torture, and permit him to see that in no part of the poem is the argument or text in a sounder state. — But even while revising the 2nd ed. for the press I found in a recent program by Th. Bergk, with the name of Ed. Heine on the title-page, a fresh attempt to magnify this much vexed Yictorian codex : in p. xiv it is said that it 'solus iusto ordine exhibet libro iv locum antiquitus archetypi schedae paginis inversis per- turbatum: nam post v. 298 Atque ea contmuo sequuntur v. 323 Servet. ...347 Ac resilire, tum v. 299 Splendida... 322 Quae sita sunt, denique V. 348 Quod contra. hoc igitur insigne est virtutis documentum, atque possit aliquis inde colligere librum Poggianum ex archetypo descriptum esse, antequam illae paginae inversae sunt' etc. Is it not strange that so definite an assertion should be pi'inted, when in truth this manusciipt has the verses in just the same inverted order, in which they are given by the Leyden and all other known mss. 1 ^^J more the corrector (INIarullus without doubt) arranges the disordered lines, whether after Politian or not, exactly as Candidus does in the Juntine, who beyond any question adopted his arrangement fi^om this manuscript. And yet the main purpose of the program spoken of is to prove MaruUus not to be the corrector of this Victorian codex, and to prove it f rom this very passage!] It will be seen that by the materials which I have collected and just described I have in many important cases got nearer than has been done before to the readings of Poggio's ms. which was a woi*thy rival of the Leyden two.
But Lachmann's long experience and disciplined acuteness have en- abled him to go beyond existing mss. and to tell us much of the lost archetype, as I call it after him, of all existing mss. Notes 1 will shew that many difficulties are cleared up by this knowledge. This archetype then, though it is not certain that even A was immediately taken from it, was written in thin capitals, like the medicean of Virgil; the words were not separated, but in the middle of verses points were put at the end of clauses. Ancient mss. as a rule keep with singular care to the
TO NOTES I 27
same number of lines in a page: ours had 26 lines in a page, exceptino- only those which concluded a book. But remember there was a headino- or title at the beginning of each section; and each of these headings oc- cupied a line. Lachmann brings many proofs of this being the number. When this ms. was copied, it was clearly much torn and mutilated. It was stated above that four portions, omitted in their place by B, come together at the end, and that these each formed a leaf of the archetype which had fallen out of its proper place. Each of these alone or with its headings consists of 52 lines. Then turn to note 1 on iv 299 — 347 (323 — 347 299 — 322) where this inversion is explained in the same way, by the accident that is of a loose leaf being turned the wrong way : see also note 1 to i 1068 — 1075 and 1094 — 1101, where the mutilation is accounted for in the same manner. Thus we obtaia six certain land- marks in different parts of the poem. The archetype therefore consisted of 300 pages, or admitting, as seems to be an undoubted fact, that a whole leaf is lost between vi 839 and 840, of 302; of which the first was not written upon, as well as one for some reason or other somewhere between i 785, which ends one of the loose leaves at the end of B, and 1068 which, as shewn in note 1, begins a fresh leaf. Page 190 which followed the end of iv was left blank. I may also note that pp. 137 and 191 contained an index of the headings of iv and v respectively, while the headings of vi are crowded into the lower part of p. 249, the upper part of which contained the last 13 lines of the text of v: see Lach. p, 398 : although the different titles come in their places in these books too, as well as in the first three which have no such index prefixed. Ha^dng made for myself a list of these pages after the rules stated in various places by Lachmann, I have found it of great use; as the ends of lines throughout the poem towards the bottom of the several right-hand pages had been specially exposed to mutilation in the damaged archetype. Verses also omitted in their proper places were apt in this as in other mss. to be put afterwards at the bottom of pages. Besides the injuries which it had received from accident or ill usage, our archetype must have been carelessly enough written, though A and B prove that it re- tained many valuable vestiges of great antiquity, especially in the spell- ing of words, and though there may have been few stages between it and the age of the author. There is one point, the nature of the hiatus after iv 126, as to which it is not easy to accept Lachmann's theory. That there is a hiatus there, is indisputable and the special questions connected with it are fuUy discussed in note 1 to that passage. As the accidental loss of a whole leaf would not suit his system of pages, he boldly declares that twenty-five verses and one heading have perished, that is one single page of our archetype. Now it is easy enough, as we have seen, to explain the accidental loss of a leaf , by which every subse- quent copy must necessarily want the contents of that leaf : it is easy
28 INTRODUCTION
enough to conceive any one ms., A or B or Poggio's, passing over by mistake one whole page. But it is in the highest degree unlikely that different copies, A B and Poggio's, neither of which as Lachmann admits was copied f rom the other, should all pass over a single page of their ori- ginal; or that this single page should be wholly illegible, while that which preceded and the reverse page of the same leaf should be entirely uninjured. It seems to me therefore much more natural to assume that our archetype or one of its predecessors accidentally omitted an uncertain, number of verses; or rather that a whole leaf of the archetype had been lost, as after vi 839. Lachmann's system of pagination would then be set right in this way : only books iv and v have an index capitum pre- fixed fiUing one page ; for that of vi as I have said is crammed into the lower part of the last page of v : bef ore this index in v Lachmann has shewn that the archetype had one blank page. Assume now that one page was similarly lef t blank bef ore the index of iv and all will be right : the pages of the archetype would then be raised to 304. The index capi- tum prefixed to vi I accidentally omitted to notice in former editions, as it had no bearing on the question of pages. The assumption here made which is commended by Mr Polle, but blamed by Mr Susemihl in philo- log. XXIX p. 427 folL, I still think probable. The latter asks what con- ceivable reason there could have been for the two blank pages before v, except to begin the new book with a new leaf, as was done with all the rest. Why, i which had no index prefixed begau on the second page of a leaf; so did iii, which had no such index; so did vi whose index is crowded together in the manner spoken of. Other mss. such as the me- dicean of Virgil, seem to have no preference for beginning a book on a new leaf. Why the two pages were left for the index between iv and v I do not know, any more than why a page was left vacant somewhere be- tween i 785 and 1068: it had something to do perhaps with calculations about the parchment required. I was going to say more, but forbear to enlarge on so fruitless a topic.
But we are able to advance even beyond the archetype: in many parts of the poem there are manifest undoubted interpolations, which must have been inserted by some reader who wished at one time to con- finn what is said, at another to convict it of inconsistency and the like. Generally, not always, these passages are repetitions of genuine passages; sometimes they consist of several, sometimes of a single verse : i 44 — 49 and iii 806 — 818 are good and incontrovertible examples. But enough is said of these throughout our notes. Lachmann however still unsatisfied has not paused even here, but has gone up to the very times of the poet. No careful reader will refuse to admit that he has proved not a few passages, some of them among the finest in the poem, to have been subsequent additions made by the author, which he did not live to embody properly with the rest of his work. Lachmann has gone too f ar ;
TO NOTES I 29
and unless I err, I have shewn that not a few sections thus marked by him are properly connected with what precedes and follows. Yet it is certain that his theory applies to 11 165 — 183, and more than one long paragraph of iv v and vi. It has been shewn sufRciently in the notes to these passages that the most important of them have a close connexion in matter and manner with each other. Like Lachmann, I have marked them off' by [ ]. All through the poem many single verses and passages of some length are designedly repeated by the poet, some of them again and again. It is probable that he would have removed many of them, if he had lived to revise his work : the exordium of iv for instance could hardly have been left.
Some readers may be surprised at the number of verses which have been transposed in the poem ; but they should remember that every ancient writing which depends finally on one ms. is in a similar plight. When a scribe omitted by accident a verse, in order not to spoil the look of his book, he wrote it at once after the next verse, if he imniediately discovered his error ; if not, he omitted it altogether, or added it in some other place, of ten at the bottom of a page ; he would then affix an a, b to mark the right oixler; the next scribe would not notice or woukl purposely omit these and so on : see Bentl. to Hor. ars 46. Every one of these errors has been committed again and again by the copyists of our poem. Most of these transpositions are certain and were made long ago by Lambinus Marullus Avancius and others; many were first made by Lachmann. Some of these I have not foUowed : not a few I have first ventured on myself . But connected with this question I must draw attention to one point which seems of importance. You would expect as a rule single verses to be thus transposed; and this is the case in Lucre- tius' mss. as in those of other writers : sometimes too one or more verses are repeated after the misplaced verse, which ought to follow it in its proper place, as if to shew the reader whither it ought to be transferred : comp. IV 991 i.e. 999 of the mss. followed in them by 1000—1003, which are only the vss. which follow it in its right place repeated after it in its wrong place : see also v 570 (573) and what comes after. But besides such usual instances of transposition there are throughout the poem many small groups of verses, forming generally sentences complete in themselves, which have got quite out of their right place: comp. i 984 —987 (998—1001), 11 652—657 (655—659 680) and iv 1227 1228 (1225 1226), three passages first transposed by me ; also 11 1139 — 1142, 1168—1170, III 686—690, iv 50—52, v 174 175, 1127 1128. Now that a sci^ibe should so often transpose several consecutive verses always forming an entire and independent sentence by mere casual carelessness, is to me in the highest degree improbable. Again most of these passages read to me like possible additions not necessary to the context, though they improve it. I believe them then to be marginal additions by the
30 INTRODUCTION
poet, inserted on the same principle as the longer sections discussed above : these too the first editor, faithfully preserving everything in his copy, but not caring always to find the right place for what the author left ambiguous, has inserted out of their order. Add to these v 437 — 442 which the context could dispense with : these vss. are found out of place in JNIacrobius as in our mss, This increases the probability that they were out of their proper order from the first, two apparently inde- pendent authorities Macrobius and our archetype quoting them in the same way. Perhaps these single vss. might be added to the list, iv 202, 205, VI 957, 1225, 1237, 1270 as they might all be dispensed with. Look too at IV 129 — 142, so strangely disordered in the mss. : 133 — 135 may be all marginal additions by the author afterwards wrongly placed by the editor. The ms. arrangement of iv 299 — 348 has been already accounted for, If all these passages are subtracted, there will then be left a not very unusual number of single verses transposed by the ordi- nary negligence of copyists. The numbers occasionally given on the left hand of the page denote of course the order of the lines in mss. which Lach- mann foUows in his edition : where spurious vss. of the mss. are omitted from the text, he still allows them to count. For obvious reasons I have followed him in this, as he will be the future standard of compari- son, and there is great advantage in a uniform numbering of the verses. Since many special questions of orthography are noticed as they occur in the notes, I should have thought it unnecessary to say more in this place than that in essential points I follow Lachmann, if it were not for the apparent unwilUngness of scholars in this country to accept even the smaUest change in what they look upon as the usual or conventional rules of speUing. The notion of any uniform conventional speUing is quite a chimera: I never find two EngUsh editors foUowing any uniform system ; nay the same editor wiU often differ in different parts of the same book. But whence comes this ' conventional ' system, so far as it does exist? from the meritorious and considering their position most successful endeavours of the ItaUan scholars in the fifteenth century to get rid of the frightful mass of barbarisms which the four or five pre- ceding centuries had accumulated. They sought indeed to introduce rigorous uniformity in cases where variety was the rule of the ancients ; and though these cases embraced only a few general heads, they yet comprised a great multipUcity of particular instances, because involving the terminations of cases, the assimUation of prepositions in compound verbs and the Uke. But where there was only one right course, they generaUy chose it; yet from the utter confusion into which the use of the aspirate had faUen, their own language having entirely lost it in sound, but at this time retained it in spelUng ; from the almost complete iden- tity both in sound and writing of c and t before i, and the Uke, they never could tell whether humor or unwr, humerus or umerus, spatium or
TO NOTES I 31
spacium, species or speties was correct ; and consequently as a rule chose the wrong. Their general principles however were not accepted by the most thoughtful scholars in any age, so far at least as concerned the text of ancient authors, unless it be during a part of the present century ; neither by an Avancius in the 15th nor by a Lambinus or Scaliger in the IGth nor by a Gronovius in the 17th nor by a Bentley in the 18th. Yet this system gradually established itself, because it came to be used by scholars in their own writings, some of the barbarisms being gradu- ally eliminated ; new ones however being introduced, such as coelum coena moereo sylva caetera for caelum cena maereo silva cetera in order to derive them preposterously from Greek words : Marullus, as we said above, writes sylva and hymbres.
Many attempts were made in various directions to change this state of things : the best and most systematic was that of Ph. Wagner in his orthographia Vergiliana published in 1841. With admirable industry he amassed all the evidence aiForded by the medicean and, so far as it was accessible to him, of the other ancient mss. of Virgil. As these, like other old mss. are as a rule very tenacious of the true spelling in those cases where there is only one right method, he performed this part of his work with eminent success, and still remains one of the best authorities on the subject. In those other cases however referred to above, in which variety is the rule of the ancients and which include a great multitude of particular instances, he has chosen to abandon the safe ground of evidence and experience and has made Virgil write what he decided on a priori principles he must have written. This seems to me the reason why his system was not more generally followed. Still less satisfactory was Madvig's spelling in his de finibus published in 1839 : it was utterly unlike that of the mss. and yet in many points it was not what Cicero used ; in still more you could not be sure whether it was what he used or not. Here too Lachmann bringing into play his extraordinary 'power of asking the right question,' and joining with it a minute knowledge of the whole evidence upon the subject, saw at once what could be obtained and what could not, and shaped his course accordingly. The Leyden mss. of Lucretius, imperfect in many respects, are on the whole admira- ble in their orthography, at least equal to any of the mss. of Virgil, con- firming them in what is true and confirmed by them in turn : in some nice points, such as the frequent retention of the enclitic st, they far surpass them. W^ith their aid he was able to confirm those improve- ments in spelling which Wagner had so well established in opposition to the system in common use. But in regard to the other class of words in which the usage of the ancients varied in dilFerent ages or even in the same age, he did not dogmatically determine what his author wrote and thus close the door to all future change; butknowing that certainty was not here attainable, he carefully sifted the evidence ofiered by his mss.
32 INTRODUCTION
and made the best approximation he coukl to what his author mioht have
written, always taking the most ancient form for which his authorities
supplied any testimony direct or indirect. Thus the question was not
foreclosed ; nor were we left to vague generaHties, but a firm historical
groundwork was gained upon which future improvements might be built,
if better evidence hereaf ter oifered itself . Laclimann then in this, as in
so many other departments of philology, seems at once to have produced
conviction in the minds of the majority of the most thoughtful scholars,
in Germany I mean ; for in our own country most seem to scout the
question as unworthy of serious attention : a great mistake ; for Latin
orthography is a most interesting and valuable study to those who care
to examine it, and touches in a thousand points the history grammar and
pronunciation of the language. Let me give two examples of the efFect
at once produced by Lachmann. Otto Jahn in 1843 published his
elaborate edition of Persius in which he adopted throughout the spelHng
then in common use, though he had so many excellent mss. to guide him
to a better course : in 1851, the year after Lachmann's work came out,
he published the text of his Juvenal and followed in it most minutely
the principles of Lachmann ; and fortunately he had a most excellent
authority in the codex Pithoeanus ; so that the spelling is probably not
very far removed from the author's own. In the years just preceding
Lachmann Halm pubHshed several orations of Cicero with elaborate
critical Latin notes : and yet, though his speUing was somewhat better
than that of Jahn's Persius, it is stiH essentially 'conventional' and arbi-
trary : in the years foHowing Lachmann he pubHshed a series of school
editions of Cicero's orations witli brief German notes, and now in these
the speHing was whoHy modeHed on the system pursued by Lachmann.
The same system too he has carried out in those volumes of the elaborate
edition of Cicero edited by him and Baiter, which came out af ter Lach-
mann's Lucretius. Stimuhxted by the examples of Madvig Ritschl and
Lachmann the rising generation of German scholars has pursued the
critical study of Latin with eminent success ; and nearly aH of them fol-
low in orthography the guidance of Lachmann. This system then may
fairly I think be now regarded as the true 'conventional' system ; for
surely the Lachmanns and Ritschls of the nineteenth century have a
better right to dictate to us in the present day what shaH be accepted as
'conventional' than the Poggios and Vallas of the fifteenth. Since my
first edition came out, Madvig has pubHshed the last books of his text of
Livy, of which there exists but a single and very ancient ms. : these he
has edited in a form differing from that of the other books, and has now
given his very weighty authority in favour of adhering to the speHing of
the oldest mss., with some reservations which I do not understand. And
now too in his new edition of the de finibus he has entirely abandoned
the orthography of the other.
TO NOTES 1 33
In following Lachmann then I am sure that I have authority on my side ; I believe that I have reason as well. In those cases indeed to which I have already referred, where the universal testimony of inscrip- tions aiul of rass. beyond a certain age proves that there is only one right way and about which the best scholars are all now agreed, there cannot be any doubt what course should be taken : we must write querella loquella luella sollers sollemnis sollicito lujjpiter littera quattuor stupjm lammina; on the other hand milia conecto conexus coniti conixus coniveo conubium helua baca sucus Jitus and the like ; condicio solacium, setius artus (adj.) autumnus suboles : in many of them an important principle is involved : obeying the almost unanimous testimony of our own and other good mss. we cannot but give tinierus umor and the like : also hiemps. I have heard it asked what then is the genitive of hiemps : to which the best reply perhaps would be what is the perfect of siwio or supine of emo. The Lfitins wrote hienips, as they wrote emptuni sumpsi sumptuni and a hundred such forms, because they disliked m and s or t to come together without the intervention oi a,p sound; and ourmss. all attest this : tempfo likewise is the only true form, which the Italians in the 15th century rejected for tento. Then mss. and inscriptions prove that d took an n before it, tandem quendam eundem and the like, with the exception of circumdo in which the mss. both of Lucr. and VirgU always retain the m : and generally, though not invariably, m on the other hand remained before q : quemquam tamqtiam and so on; though the new corpus inscrip. Lat. has I find nunquam] and so has Augustus in his res gestae, but quotiescumque. Then always quicque quicquam quicquid (indef.), but generally quidquid (relative), though quicquid is found in the lex Rubria and once in our AB : always peremo interemo neglego intellego etc. Above all we uiust scout such barbarisms as coelum moestus sylva caetera nequicquam. In these points Wagner is as good a guide as Lachmann ; but in regard to the cases in which ancient usage varied shall we follow the former who deserts the mss. for preconceived general rules, or Lachmann who here also is content to obey the best evidence he can get ? I have unhesitatingly come over to the views of the latter : 'hypotheses non fingo' should be the rule in this as in other matters. As said above, all these uncertain spellings fall under a very few general heads. One of these is the assimilation or non-assimilation of prepositions : inpero represents the etymology, impero the pronuncia- tion of the word. From the most ancient period of which we have any record, centuries before Cicero or Lucretius, a compromise was made be- tween these opposing interests : words in common use soon began to change the consonant, those in less common use retained it longer. In the first volume of the corpus inscrip. Lat., the most recent of wlaich are as old as the age of Lucretius, most of them much older, im^ye- rator occurs 26 times, and is always spelt with m, proving that in a
M. 3
34 INTRODUCTION
word, which must daily have been in everybody's mouth, etymology in remote times yielded as was natural to sound : imperium again occurs three, inperium six times, being doubtless in somewhat less common use. Now in Lucretius imperium imjjero or imperito occurs six times, and the mss. always spell with m, and so Lucretius spelt I have no doubt : indeed many of these common words the silver age I believe more frequently wrote with n, than did that of Cicero. Then Virgil uses im- perium 40 times ; and Ribbeck's capital mss. have m in every instance, except M which twice has inp., though one of these two cases is at least doubtful: for Aen. viii 381 Fogginius prints imperiis. Yet in defiance of all this evidence Wagner gives us inperitim, surely without reason on any view of the case ; for the foundation on which we must build is thus withdrawn from under our feet. To take another common instance, commtito occurs 9 times in the corpus inscrip. and always with m; 12 times in Lucretius and always with m. Other words are more uncertain : we tind in the mss. impius and inpius, immortalis and inmortalis, conligere and colligere, compleo and conpleo ; and so with other prepositions, ah, ob, sub, ad : all tending to prove that usage was in most words uncertain. Again we have exsto, and exto, exsolvo, exulto expiro expecto cet., s being generally omitted ; and this agrees with Quintilian i 7 4 who implies that it was a learned affectation of some to write exspecto in order to dis- tinguish ex and specto from ex and jyecto ; it agrees too with all other good evidence : the mss. of Virgil furnish precisely the same testimony as those of Lucretius ; yet Wagner in all such cases writes exs : surely we should keep ex where the mss. keep it, exs where they have exs : and so with supter or subter, suptilis or subtilis, ah- or aj)-, ob- or op-, suh- or suj) , succ- or susc-, and the like : ajypareo occurs ten times in Lucr. and is always spelt thus by our mss. : so apparo, appello (both 1 and 3 conj.); but adpetitur and always adpono, adporto or atporto, in which words the separate force of the preposition continued to be felt : in exact conform- ity with this the first volume of the corp. inscr. has twenty times appareo and also apparitor, proving that in the earliest times the prepos. had been assimilated in this common technical word : thus too in the 21 in- stances of apipareo in Virgil all Ribbeck's mss. always have app. except M once, Aen. xi 605, misled by the usage of its age : comp. the sugges- tive remark of Servius to Aen. i 6 1 6 ' ajyplicat : secundum praesentem usum per d prima syllaba scribitur : secundum antiquam orthographiam ...per p' : yet in defiance of all this Wagner makes Virgil always write adpareo and the like. We find haud and haut, and sometimes aliut ali- quit quicquit and the like, sound and etymology carrying on an undecided battle in the mss. of Lucretius, as in inscriptions and elsewhere : adque is sometiraes but rarely found, sound having here as might be expected gained the victory : Wagner cannot be right in always forcing adque on Virgil. Lucretius seems to have recognised only sed : he once has elabsa.
TO NOTES I 35
and once praescrihta : see notes 2 to vi 92 : in such forms sound must liave at an early period prevailed ; and b d ff gave way to p t c before 8 and t : lapsus for lahsus is the same principle as rex (recs), rexi (recsi) written sometimes recxi, rectum from rego : to judge from the best mss. labsiis and the like became again much more common in the silver age. Mommsen has recently publislied an admirable copy and exposition of the res gestae of Augustus from the Ancyra monument. Augustus was somewhat of a purist in spelling and cashiered an officer for using in a dispatch the vulgarism isse (not ixe) instead of ipse. His system quite bears out what has just been said : he always writes imjjerium and impe- rator ; he has immortalis, but inmissus ; impensa, while the heading of the work, not written by him, but perhaps by Tiberius, has inpensa : generally conlega and conlegium, but once collegium and coUaticius ; exili- um, but exstinguere ; on the other hand sexsiens as well as sexiens, prov- ing that x and xs were identical : he writes ajjpellaverimt ; but adque the only time he uses the word.
Another question involving a multitude of details is the use of -is or -es in the accus. plur. of participles and adjectives and substantives whose gen. plur. ends in ium, as well as of some other classes, doloris or dolores, maioris or maiores : here too Wagner involves himself in inex- tricable perplexities by his eclectic system, when his mss. were admirable guides, had he chosen to follow them. The mss. of Lucretius are no less admirable and probably represent very fairly the author's own usage : they offer -is five times out of six ; and -es is aomewhat more common in substantives in very general use, as igms vires aures. Inscriptions quite bear out our mss. ; and the sole relic of Latin yet disinterred from Her- culaneum contains this v. Utraque sollemnis iterum revocaverat orbes. Pertz recently printed in the Berlin transactions the few remaining leaves of a ms. of Virgil, which he assigns to the age of Augustus and which may really be of the second or third century : we there find the acc. plur. of adjectives and participles ending 18 times in -is, 3 times in -es pares felices amantes ; of substantives we find sonoris, but 4 times vires, and artes messes crates classes aves, quite confirming the testimony of our A and B. Varro de ling. Lat. viii 66 writes itejn quod in patrico casu hoc genus dispariliter dicatur civitatum parentum et civitatium pa- rentium : in accusandi hos montes fontes et hos montis fontis ; and in Lucr. II 587 we find jwtestates, v 1239 potestatis: then ib. 67 he says quid potest similius esse quam gens mens dens ? quom horum casus patri- cus et accusativus in multitudine sint disparilis ; nam a primo fit gen- tium et gentis, utrohique ut sit i ; ab secundo mentium et mentes, iit in priore solo sit i ; ab tertio dentum et dentes, ut in neutro sit i ; well our mss. six times have the acc. gentis, never gentes ; dentes four times, never dentis ; mentes five times, once only, ii 620, mentis. As for the nomin. plur. of such words, Varrol. 1. 66 says sine reprehensione vidgo alii
3—2
36 INTRODUCTION
dlcunt in singulari hac ovi et avi, alii hac ove et ave, m multituclinis hae puppis restis et hae puppes restes : the fragment of Virgil just cited has the nomin. plur. putris and inessis, though we saw it had messes in the accus. : in accordance then with these high authorities the mss. of Lucr. not unfrequently retain this nomin. in -is, which it would be monstrous to extirpate : I have always therefore kept it. In precise conformity with Lucr. Augustus has in the accus. agentis and labentes, finis and fines, consules and once consulis : once too the nomin. pluris. On the other hand he always uses the accus. gentes, departing in this word from the rule of Varro and Lucr. "We see from the coi^pus inscr. that -eis -is -es were all in use : it is probable tliat Lucr. occasionally employed the termination -eis, intermediate in sound between -es and -is ; but, if so, his manuscripts have left few or no traces, and it would be most perverse to follow Avancius Wakefield and others in thrusting it into his verses in season and out of season : v 1280 B has mortaleis, perhaps from Lucr. : Augustus more than once has this -eis in the abl. plur., quadri- geis, emeriteis ; and the inscription in his honour still existing on the arch of Rimini erected in 727, midway therefore in time between his res gestae and Lucr., has celeberrimeis, vieis, redditeis. A and B have however not a f ew indications expressed or implied of the ending -ei : see note 2 to iii 97 oculei : these have of course been carefully preserved.
On another question, comprehending a multitude of particular in- stances, I have followed Lachmann and our mss. which here too are on the whole excellent guides : I speak of the vowel or consonant u followed by another u. The old Latins appear to have been unable to pronounce uu ; and therefore the ancient o long kept its place after u ; or for qu c or q was used : quom qum or cum, never quum ; linquont linqunt or lin- cunt; sequontur, sequntur or secuntur; equos (nom.) equs or ecus; volgus divos divom aevom and so on. They appear to have begun soonest to tolerate mi in terminations, when both were vowels, stius tuus and the like. Now the mss. of Lucretius have retained in very many instances divom volnus volgo vivont cet. ; equos (nom.) and ecus, ecum, aecum ; re- linquont relinqunt or relincunt oftener than relinqmtnt, so sequontur secuntur secutus locuntur locutus ; but with Lachmann I retain the uu, w^hen the mss. offer it, in order not to get lost on a sea of conjectural uncertainty like Wagner and some others, who not only desert mss. but in many cases intrude a spelling older than the age of their author: thus Augustus has rivus rivum annuuni (not once -uo or -vo) ; why not then Virgil, or at least Varius and Tucca 1 The mss. of Lucretius are also very pertinacious in retaining the genuine old forms reicit eicit or eiecif cet. and never offering reiicit eiicit and the like : Grai Grais, not Graii Graiis. But further details on the most interesting points of the ancient orthography will be found in various parts of my notes. Again in those many cases where the sound was intermediate between u and i and the
TO NOTES I 37
spelling therefore uncertain, such as the penult of superlatives and cer- tain other adjectives, and words like lubet or libet, dissipat or dissupat, qicadrupes or quadripes and many others, I have of course submitted to the guidance of our mss. which only once for instance have u in the su- perl. and once manu/esta, and twice offer arbita, not arbuta. Augustus, having learnt it probably in boyhood f rom the all-accomplished dictator, for whose apprehension nothing was either too little or too great and who, Gellius tells us, first introduced the i for u in superlatives, invaria- bly w rites /requentissimus septimus vicensimus, as well asji^iitimus ma- nibiae : comp. what Suetonius says of his use of simus for sumus, pro bably from a wish to be consistent. He would scarcely have thanked Varius and Tucca for bringing liim the Aeneid embellished with Wag- ner's maxumus, septumus and the like, introduced so often in spite of his mss. [Both forms are found in the same sentence lex colon. Genetivae c. 66 (Ephem. Epigraph. vol. iii p. 93) optima lege optumo iure.] I have likewise followed AB in the adoption of e or o in vertere or vortere and the like : e is naturally the more common, yet vorti vorsum divorsi voriitur convortere vortex are all f ound : also in reading reddunda gignundis dicundum cernundi /aciundum agundis cet. or the more usual agendum quaerendum cet. Do I then claim in all these doubtful cases to reproduce the spelling of Lucretius or his first editor ] Certainly not ; but still in most of them Lucretius and his contemporaries undoubtedly allowed themselves much latitude ; and I have not intentionally permit- ted anything to remain which might not have been found in one or other ms. before the death of Yirgil. By adhering tenaciously to the niss. where not demonstrably wrong one gains a firm resting place f rom which to make further advances, if better evidence ofFer itself. However that may be, I cannot bring myself to accept the arbitrary and eclectic system of a "Wagner, much less the hideous barbarisms of a Wakefield ; nor on the other hand, after feasting on the generous cereals of a Lachmann and a Ritschl, can I stomach the * conventional ' husks and acoms of the Italians of the 1 5th century. At the same time it will be seen that my spelling differs less from this system, than does that of Wagner in his standard text of 1841, or even his subsequent modification of that text for common use which Prof. Conington has adopted in his Virgil.
Most of the abbreviations and marks used in the notes are suffi- ciently explained above : A and B denote the two Leyden mss., Gott. the Gottorpian fragment, Nicc. the Florentine ms. written by Nicolb Niccoli, Flor. 29, 31, 32 the mss. of the Laurentian library forming nos. 29, 31, 32 of desk xxxv; Camb. our Cambridge ms. ; Vat. or Yatic. the Yatican mss. ; and TJrbin. Othob. or Reg. with the number attached identify more nearly the mss. contained in those several departments of the library : one Yat. 2 Yat. 3 Yat. mean one, two or three of the Yatican mss. where it was not worth while specifying them. In this
38 INTRODUCTION TO NOTES I
new edition Mon. denotes the codex o£ Victorius in the Munich library. Brix. Ver. Ven. Ald. 1 Junt. Ald. 2 are the editions fully described above, where it is explained when and why the names Avancius, Candidus, Marullus, Naugerius are or are not used instead of that of one or other of these editions. The ms. notes of Heinsius and Vossius, which are often cited, indicate the notes by those scholars which are in my private possession and have been described above. Lamb. Wak. Lach. Bern. Bentl. need no explanation after what has been said ; and in this edition Pont. and Mar. designate Pontanus and Marullus, whose read- ings I have got f rom the sources mentioned. The dots . . . imply that one verse, * that more than one or an uncertain number are lost ; such interpolations as it has been deemed advisable to retain in the text, are printed in small capitals ; the letters syllables and words which are omitted in the mss. but can be restored with more or less certainty, are given in Italics. In quoting Ennius the last edition, that of Vahlen, has been used ; for the f ragments of the Roman scenic writers, except Ennius, that o£ Ribbeck : in citing Cicero the smaller sections are referred to as £ar the most convenient for reference : for Terence the several recent editions ; for Plautus Ritschl and Fleckeisen in the plays they have published ; in the others the old variorum ed. has been employed : in Pliny the sections o£ recent editions are cited, as the older divisions are intolerably awkward. Notes 1 have been made as short as is consistent with perspicuity : unless the contrary is expressly stated or implied, the word or words which appear first in the note are those of our text; thus 'genitabilis. genitalis etc' signifies that yenitahilis is the right reading and is found in A and B and the other chief authorities, but genitalis is mentioned for the reasons given. Again ' 281 quam Lach. for quem. quod Junt.' means that Lachmann first gave the correct reading quam instead of quem which is the read- ing of A and B and other mss. as well as editions before the Juntine of L512 which prints quod, the reading generally followed bythe old editors. Of course if any one before Lachmann had read quam, he, not Lachmann, would have been cited for it. ' Ed.' means the present editor. Let it always be remembered that the corrupt reading, cited in a note, is that which appears in A and B, unless the contrary is expressly stated.
The passages which were first added to the second edition have been enclosed within [ ] in cases where ambiguity or awkwardness might be occasioned, if no distinction were made between the old and the new matter j but not otherwise.
T. LUCRETI CARI DE RERUM NATURA
LIBER PRIMUS
Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas,
alma Venus, caeli subter labentia signa
quae mare navigerum, quae terras frugiferentis
concelebras, per te quoniam genus omne animantum
concipitur visitque exortum lumina solis: 5
te, dea, te fugiunt venti, te nubila caeli
adventumque tuum, tibi suavis daedala tellus
summittit flores, tibi rident aequora ponti
placatumque nitet diflfuso lumine caelum.
nam simul ac species patefactast verna diei lO
et reserata viget genitabilis aura favoni,
aeriae primum volucres te, diva, tuvimque
significant initum perculsae corda tua vi. 15 inde ferae pecudes persultant pabula laeta 14 et rapidos tranant amnis: ita capta lepore 15
11 genitabilis. genitaHs has no authority, but it does not appear to be 'typo- graphi Veronensis peccatum', as I found it in Vat. 1136 Othobon. 14 15:
Niccoli followed by all the Flor. mss. Camb. etc. has these verses in the right order. 14 Wak. proi^oses fere which is indeed rather the ms. reading.
After 15 the v. Illecebrisque tuis omnis natura animantum is inserted in the Juntine and in most subsequent editions, not however by Naugerius in Aldine 2, as Lachmann incorrectly states. It has been generally assigned to MaruUus, but as I found it in the margin of Flor. xxxv 29, for reasons given above p. 8 I attribute it to Angelo Politian. Victorius however inserts it among what profess to be solely Poutanus' conjectures ; though he has not written it in the same style, nor appa- rently at the same time, as the rest : it is possible then that Pontanus or he may have got it from Politiau's ms. MaruUus in marg. Mon. for capta proposes
40
te sequitur cupide quo quamque inducere pergis.
denique per maria ac montis fluviosque rapacis
frondiferasque domos avium camposque virentis
omnibus incutiens blandum per pectora amorem
efficis ut cupide generatim saecla propagent. 20
quae quoniam rerum naturam sola gubernas
nec sine te quicquam dias in luminis oras
exoritur neque fit laetum neque amabile quicquam,
te sociam studeo scribendis versibus esse
quos ego de rerum natura pangere conor 25
Memmiadae nostro, quem tu, dea, tempore in omni
omnibus ornatum voluisti excellere rebus.
quo magis aeternum da dictis, diva, leporem.
effice ut interea fera moenera militiai
per maria ac terras omnis sopita quiescant. 30
nam tu sola potes tranquilla pace iuvare
mortalis, quoniam belli fera moenera Mavors
armipotens regit, in gremium qui saepe tuum se
reicit aetemo devictus vulnere amoris,
atque ita suspiciens tereti cervice reposta 35
pascit amore avidos inhians in te, dea, visus,
eque tuo pcndet resupini spiritus ore.
hunc tu, diva, tuo recubantem corpore sancto
circumfusa super, suavis ex ore loquellas
funde petens placidam Romanis, incluta, pacem. 40
nam neque nos agere hoc patriai tempore iniquo
quodque: this Victorius in his copy of MaruUus' corrections first wrote down, and afterwards erased, because I presume the line of the Juntine rendered it unnecessary : a strong indication that he got this v. from Junt. a copy of which now in the Munich library he has filled with elaborate notes of his own : his speUing too of amneis in his second copy of Ven. shews he took it from Junt. ; as Pontanus and Marullus recognise ouly -es or -is. Again Lambinus who evi- dently had access to ms. notes of Pontanus as stated above, says distinctly in a passage already quoted in p. 8 'neque eum Naugerius neque Pontanus habue- runt ' : what he there says of MaruUus is mere report. Nicc. and the ItaUans having changed in 16 quamque into cunque had rendered the sentence unintel- ligible without some addition. 16 pergis Nicc. A corr. etc. for tergis.
27 ornatum A corr. Priscian etc. for oralatum. 32 fera moenera Lamb.
for Jeram onera. moenia schoUast of Statius. 33 regit Nicc. schoUast of
Statius for regium. 34 Reicit B Gottorp. Reficit A Nico. Camb. Pontanus
eto. devictus. devinctus Pont. Lamb. and schoUast of Statius. 35 Nicc. rightly
41
possumus aequo animo nec Memrai clara propago talibns in rebus communi desse saluti.
quod superest, vacuas auris animumque sagacera 50
semotum a curis adhibe veram ad rationem,
ne mea dona tibi studio disposta fideli,
intellecta prius quam sint, contempta relinquas.
nam tibi de surama caeli ratione deumque
disserere incipiara et rerum priraordia pandam, 55
unde oranis natura creet res auctet alatque,
quove eadera rursum natura perempta resolvat,
quae nos materiem et genitalia corpora rebus
reddunda in ratione vocare et semina rerum
appellare suemus et haec eadem usurpare 60
corpora prima, quod ex illis sunt omnia primis.
Humana ante oculos foede cum vita iaceret in terris oppressa gravi sub religione quae caput a caeli regionibus ostendebat horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans, 6$
primum Graius homo mortalis tollere contra est oculos ausus primusque obsistere contra,
gives tereti for teriti. 43 desse A corr. Nicc. for id esse. 44 — -10 = 11 646 — 651. Is. Vossius in his ms. notes in my possession well observes that some one haa inserted them here 'ut ostenderet Lucret. sibi adversari qui, cum Deos mortaha non curare affirmat [sic], Veuerem tamen invocet*. Pont. Mar. Junt. omit them. Avancius in the text of Ald. 1 places them after 61 and has been followed by most editors before Lach. ; hut in his preface he well observes ' unum affirmare ausim Omnis enim cum quinque sequentibus ex prologo, cum abundent, demendos esse : hos aptius legas, cum de magna matre agit '. 50 Quod superest, vacuas
auris animumque sagacem : so Bernays in Bhein. Mus. n. f. v p. 559 from the interpr. Verg. in Maii class. auct. t. vii p. 262. Quod superest ut vacuas auris AB. Nicc. followed by all the Flor. Camb. Mon. and most mss. and all the old editions omitted ut and added mihi, Memmius, et te. Lamb. Memmiada. At the end of Junt. is proposed vacuas mihi quaeso Memmius aures Semotm curis : Pont. gives Quod superest quaeso vacuas mihi Memmius auris. Lach. has rightly seen that our reading impHes the loss of one or more verses in which the poet passed from Venus to Memmius : he suggests animumque, age, Memmi, which would complete the sentence in a way : so would corque, inclute Memmi, or the like. 66 tollere.
tendere Lamb. ed. 3 Lach. from Nonius ' teste nostris antiquiore '. But where our mss. give, as here, a faultless reading, it seems uncritical to prefer that of such a careless writer as Nonius : older and better authorities than he is continually misquote : Seneca in 57 has quoque for quove, Gellius in 304 aut for et, 306 Nonius candenti for dispansae in, u 13 Lactantius stultas for miseras, 1001 ful-
42 I
quem neque fama deum nec fulmina nec minitanti
murmure compressit caelum, sed eo magis acrem
inritat animi vii'tutem, effringere ut arta yo
naturae primus portarum claustra cupiret.
ergo vivida vis animi pervicit, et extra
processit longe flammantia moenia mundi
atque omne immensum peragravit mente animoque,
unde refert nobis victor quid possit oriri, 75
quid nequeat, finita potestas denique cuique
quanam sit ratione atque alte terminus haerens.
quare religio pedibus subiecta vicissim
opteritur, nos exaequat victoria caelo.
Illud in his rebus vereor, ne forte rearis 8o
inpia te rationis inire elementa viamque indugredi sceleris. quod contra saepius illa religio peperit scelerosa atque impia facta. Aulide quo pacto Triviai virginis aram
Iphianassai turparunt sanguine foede 85
ductores Danaum delecti, prima virorum. cui simul infula virgineos circumdata comptus ex utraque pari mahxrum parte profusast, et maestum simul ante aras adstare parentem sensit et hunc propter ferrura celare ministros 90
aspectuque suo lacrimas effundere civis, muta metu terram genibus summissa petebat. nec miserae prodesse in tali tempore quibat quod patrio princeps donarat nomine regem ; nam sublata virum manibus tremibundaque ad aras 95
deductast, non ut sollemni more sacrorum perfecto posset claro comitari Hymenaeo, sed casta inceste nubendi tempore in ipso hostia concideret mactatu maesta parentis,
gentia for rellatum. 6Q fama. fana Bentl. and Lach. who says ' fama non
omnis necessario magna est ' : fana may be right : see v 75 ; but fama deum seems to me more emphatic and the dewn to be equivalent to an epithet.
70 effringere Priscian and also I find Flor. 29 Vat. 1136 Othob. Mon. p. m. for confringere, rightly no doubt. virtutem animi confringere Nicc. 71 cupiret
Prisc. A corr. for cuperet. 74 omjie A corr. Flor. 28 and 32 for omnem.
77 quanam A corr. for quantum. 83 atque. ac B and Gott. 84 Triviai
Prisc. for Triviat. 85 Iphianassai A corr. Avanc. for Iphianassa. Iphianasseo
A 43
exitus ut classi felix faustusque daretur. loo
tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.
Tutemet a nobis iam quovis terapore vatura terriloquis victus dictis desciscere quaeres. quippe etenira quara raulta tibi iara fingere possunt somnia quae vitae rationes vertere possint 105
fortimasque tuas omnis turbare tiraore ! et merito ; nara si certam finem esse viderent aerumnarura horaines, aliqua ratione valerent religionibus atque rainis obsistere vatum, nunc ratio nulla est restandi, nulla facultas, lio
aeternas quoniara poenas in morte timendums^. ignoratur enim quae sit natura animai, nata sit an contra nascentibus insinuetur, et simul intereat nobiscura morte direrapta an tenebras Orci visat vastasque lacunas 115
an pecudes alias divinitus insinuet se, Ennius ut noster cecinit qui priraus araoeno detulit ex Helicone perenni fronde coronara, per gentis Italas horainum quae clara clueret ; etsi praeterea taraen esse Acherusia templa 120
Ennius aeternis exponit versibus edens, quo neque permaneant animae neque corpora nostra, sed quaedara simulacra modis pallentia miris; unde sibi exortam semper florentis Horaeri coramemorat speciem lacrimas effundere salsas 125
eoepisse et rerura naturam expandere dictis. quapropter bene cum superis de rebus habenda nobis est ratio, solis lunaeque meatus qua fiant ratione, et qua vi quaeque gerantur in terris, tum cum primis ratione sagaci 130
unde aniraa atque animi constet natura videndum ; et quae res nobis, vigilantibus obvia, mentes
Nicc. all Flor. Camb. all Vat. etc. 104 possunt Mar. Junt. for possum. As
A and the Italians have iam, B and Gott. me, I once thought the right reading might be a mejingere possuvi : see Cambridge Journal of philology i p. 42 and Lucr. iii 271. 111 timendumst Orelli eclog. in notes, Lach. for timen-
dum. 121 edens. eidem Lach. without cause. 122 permaneant. per-
manent Ang. PoHtian in marg. of Flor. 29, Ver. Ven. Ald. 1 Junt. etc. followed by all before Lach. perveniant Mar. 126 Coepisse et B corr. Flor. 31 for
44 1
terrificet morbo adfectis, somnoque sepultis,
cernere uti videamur eos audireque coram,
morte obita quorum tellus amplectitur ossa. 135
nec me animi fallit Graiorum obscura reperta
difficile inlustrare Latinis versibus esse,
multa novis verbis praesertim cum sit agendum
propter egestatem linguae et rerum novitatem;
sed tua me virtus tamen et sperata voluptas 140
suavis amicitiae quemvis sufFerre laborem
suadet et inducit noctes vigilare serenas
quaerentem dictis quibus et quo carmine demum
clara tuae possim praepandere lumina menti,
res quibus occultas penitus convisere possis. 145
Hunc igitur terrorem auimi tenebrasque necessest
non radii solis neque lucida tela diei
discutiant, sed naturae species ratioque.
principium cuius hinc nobis exordia sumet,
nullam rem e nilo gigni divinitus umquam. 150
quippe ita formido mortalis continet omnis,
quod multa in terris fieri caeloque tuentur
quorum operum causas nulla ratione videre
possunt ac fieri divino numine rentur. 156 quas ob res ubi viderimus nil posse cre^ 155
de nilo, tum quod sequimur iam rectius inde
perspiciemus, et unde queat res quaeque creari 155 et quo quaeque modo fiant opera sine divom. 159 Nam si de nilo fierent, ex omnibu' rebus
omne genus nasci posset, nil semine egeret. 160
e mare primum homines, e terra posset oriri
squamigerum genus et volucres erumpere caelo ;
armenta atque aliae pecudes, genus omne ferarum,
incerto partu culta ac deserta tenerent.
Coepisset. 130 tum Flor. 25 and 31 Camb. p. m. Mar. for tunc. 141 quemvis sufferre Flor. 32 in margin, Heinsius in ms. notes, and Faber for quemvis efferre. [So perhaps Cic. epist. viii 1 2 we should read sermones suppressit : expressit M.] Dion. Cat. distich. m 6 has quemvis sufferre laborem, perhaps taken from this. 155 — 158 Mar. Junt. and margin of Camb. have these vs. in right order, and et for ut in 157. Avanciuset, andatendofhiseditionof Catull. 1502hasrightorder. efPont. also. 161—164 are rightlj' thus punctuated by Lach. I find however from his proof sheets that untU the final revision he had with Wak. put a stop after
I 45
nec fructus idem arboribus constare solerent, 165
sed mutarentur, ferre omnes omnia possent.
quippe, ubi non essent genitalia corpora cuique,
qui posset mater rebus consistere certa ?
at nunc seminibus quia certis quaeque creantur,
inde enascitur atque oras in luminis exit, 170
materies ubi inest cuiusque et corpora prima ;
atque hac re nequeunt ex omnibus omnia gigni,
quod certis in rebus inest secreta facultas.
praeterea cur vere rosam, frumenta calore,
vites autumno fundi suadente videmus, 175
si non, certa suo quia tempore semina rerum
cum confluxerunt, patefit quodcumque creatur,
dum tempestates adsunt et vivida tellus
tuto res teneras efifert in luminis oras ?
quod si de nilo fierent, subito exorerentur 180
incerto spatio atque alienis partibus anni,
quippe ubi nulla forent primordia quae genitali
concilio possent arceri tempore iniquo.
nec porro augendis rebus spatio foret usus
seminis ad coitum, si e nilo crescere possent ; 185
nam fierent iuvenes subito ex infantibu' parvis
e terraque exorta repente arbusta salirent.
quorum nil fieri manifestum est, omnia quando
paulatim crescunt, ut par est,
. semine certo crescentesque genus servant; ut noscere possis 190
quicque sua de materia grandescere alique. huc accedit uti sine certis imbribus anni laetificos nequeat fetus submittere tellus nec porro secreta cibo natura animantum propagare genus possit vitamque tueri; 195
volucres and arvienta, and none after caelo. Lamb. puts a colon after peciides and alters tenerent to teneret. 168 certa A corr. Nicc. for derta. 176 quia
Flor. 31 Camb. superscr. for qiii. 175 Vites. TJvas Pont. 177 creatur
A corr. Nicc. for orcatu. 185 si e nilo. e nihilo si Junt. Lamb. etc. not
Mar. : so 291 ciim flumen. flumen cum Lamb. ; n 36 si in pleheia. si plebeia in Mon. Junt. and Lamb. : in all cases against mss. and the usage of Lucretius. 189 the homoeoteleuton has probably caused a v. of this kind to drop out : tempore certo, Res quoniam crescunt omnes de s. c. Lach. awkwardly ut par est semine certo
46
ut potius multis communia corpora rebus
multa putes esse, ut verbis elementa videmus,
quam sine principiis ullam rem existere posse.
denique cur homines tantos natura parare
uon potuit, pedibus qui pontum per vada possent 200
transii'e et magnos manibus divellere montis
multaque vivendo vitalia vincere saecla,
si non, materies quia rebus reddita certast
gignundis e qua constat quid possit oriri ?
nil igitur fieri de nilo posse fatendumst, 205
semine quando opus est rebus quo quaeque creatae
aeris in teneras possint proferrier auras.
postremo quoniam incultis praestare videmus
culta loca et manibus melioris reddere fetus,
esse videlicet in terris primordia rerum 210
quae nos fecundas vertentes vomere glebas
terraique solum subigentes cimus ad ortus.
quod si nulla forent, nostro sine quaeque labore
sponte sua multo fieri meliora videres.
Huc accedit uti quicque in sua corpora rursum 215
dissoluat natura neque ad nilum interemat res. nam siquid mortale e cunctis partibus esset, ex oculis res quaeque repente erepta periret. nulla vi foret usus enim quae partibus eius discidium parere et nexus exsolvere posset. 220
quod nunc, aeterno quia constant semine quaeque, donec vis obiit quae res diverberet ictu aut intus penetret per inania dissoluatque, nullius exitium patitur natura videri.
praeterea quaecumque vetustate amovet aetas, 225
si penitus peremit consumens materiem omnem, unde animale genus generatim in lumina vitae redducit Venus, aut redductum daedala tellus unde alit atque auget generatim pabula praebens? unde mare ingenuei fontes externaque longe 230
Crescere, resqiie genus. Crescendo Mar. Junt. Lamb. etc. 207 possint
Pont. Ald. 1 Junt. for possent : a chauge which will often have to be made : mss. are more apt to put possent for possint than vice versa. 215 quicque Lamb.
for quicquid. 217 e added by Nicc. 230 I foUow the mss. : mare,
I 47
flumina suppeditant ? unde aether sidera pascit ?
omnia enim debet, mortali corpore quae sunt,
infinita aetas consumpse anteacta diesque.
quod si in eo spatio atque anteacta aetate fuere
e quibus haec rerum consistit summa refecta, 235
inmortali sunt natura praedita certe,
haut igitur possunt ad nihim quaeque reverti.
denique res omnis eadem vis causaque volgo
conficeret, nisi materies aeterna teneret,
inter se nexu minus aut magis indupedita; 240
tactus enim leti satis esset causa profecto,
quippe, ubi nulla forent aeterao corpore, quorura
contextum vis deberet dissolvere quaeque.
at nunc, inter se quia nexus principiorum
dissimiles constant aeteraaque materies est, 245
incolumi remauent res corpore, dum satis acris
vis obeat pro textura cuiusque reperta.
haud igitur redit ad nilum res ulla, sed omnes
discidio redeunt in corpora materiai.
postremo pereunt imbres, ubi eos pater aether 250
in gremium matris terrai praecipitavit ;
at nitidae surgunt fruges ramique virescunt
arboribus, crescunt ipsae fetuque gravantur;
hinc alitur porro nostrum genus atque ferarum,
hinc laetas urbes pueris florere videmus 255
frondiferasque novis avibus canere undique silvas ;
hinc fessae pecudes pingui per pabula laeta
corpora deponunt et candens lacteus umor
uberibus manat distentis ; hinc nova proles
artubus infirmis teneras lasciva per herbas 260
ludit lacte mero mentes perculsa novellas.
haud igitur penitus pereunt quaecumque videntur,
quando alid ex alio reficit natura nec ullam
rem gigni patitur nisi morte adiuta aliena.
ingenuei Lach. and Ed. in ed. 1. externaque. extentaque Lach. longe. large Bern. and Ed. in ed. 1. 240 nexu Mon. Junt. for nexus. Lamb. ed. 1 and 2
nexas {nexus ed. 1 is a misprint) and indupedite ; ed. 3 nexus...endopedita. 257 pingui lun. Philargyrius to Virg. geor. iii 12 i for pinguis, as Heyne there notices. 263 alio Nicc. for allo. 264 adiuta A corr. Nicc. for adluta.
48
Nimc age, res quoniam docui non posse creari 265
de nilo neque item genitas ad nil revocari, nequa forte tamen coeptes diffidere dictis, quod nequeunt oculis rerum primordia cerni, accipe praeterea quae corpora tute necessest confiteare esse in rebus nec posse videri 270
principio venti vis verberat incita portus ingeutisque ruit navis et nubila differt, interdum rapido percurrens turbine campos arboribus magnis sternit montisque supreraos silvifragis vexat flabris : ita i^erfurit acri 275
cum fremitu saevitque minaci murmure ventus. sunt igitur venti nimirum corpora caeca quae mare, quae terras, quae denique nubila caeli verrunt ac subito vexantia turbine raptant, nec ratione fluunt alia stragemque propagant 280
et cum mollis aquae fertur natura repente flumine abundanti, quam largis imbribus auget montibus ex altis magnus decursus aquai fragmina coniciens silvarum arbustaque tota, nec validi possunt pontes venientis aquai 285
vim subitam tolerare : ita magno turbidus imbri molibus incurrit validis cum viribus amnis : dat sonitu magno stragem volvitque sub undis grandia saxa : ruit qua quicquid fluctibus obstat. sic igitur debent venti quoque flamina ferri, 290
quae veluti validum cum flumen procubuere quamlibet in partem, trudunt res ante ruuutque impetibus crebris, interdum vertice torto corripiunt rapideque rotanti turbine jDortant. quare etiam atque etiam sunt venti corpora caeca, 295
271 portm all Vat. Flor. 29 and 31 Flor. 30 coi-r. Camb. for cortm. pontum Mar. Politian in marg. of Flor. 29, Junt. and apparently Nicc. caiites Lach. which is very weak. 274 ' saevit, MaruV says Gifanius : and so Mar. corrects in
Mon. ; but Junt. has rightly stemit. 276 veiitus Lach. for pontus. 282
quam Lach. for quem. quod Flor. 30 corr. Pont. Mar. Junt. 286 turbidus
A eorr. Nicc. for turbibus. 289 quicquid Ed. for quidquid: no fui-ther change
is required : see notes 2 : ruitque ita quidquid Lach. ruitque aqua q. Ed. formerly,
294 rapide Lach. for rapidi which Wak. absurdly retains. rapidoque rotantia Lamb. ed. 1 aud 2 rapidoque rotanti ed. 3.
I 49
qnandoquidem factis et moribus aemula magnis
amnibus inveuiuntur, aperto corpore qui sunt.
tum porro varios rerum sentimus odores
nec tamen ad naris venientis cernimus umquam,
nec calidos aestus tuimur nec frigora quimus 300
usurpare oculis nec voces cernere suemus ;
quae tamen omnia corporea constare necessest
natura, quoniam sensus inpellere possunt.
tangere enim et tangi, nisi corpus, nulla potest res.
denique fluctifrago suspensae in litore vestes 305
uveseunt, eaedem dispansae in sole serescunt.
at neque quo pacto persederit umor aquai
visumst nec rursum quo pacto fugerit aestu.
in parvas igitur partis dispergitur umor
quas oculi nulla possunt ratione videre. 310
quin etiam multis solis redeuntibus annis
anulus in digito subter tenuatur habeudo,
stilicidi casus lapidem cavat, uncus aratri
ferreus occulte decrescit vomer in arvis,
strataque iam volgi pedibus detrita viarum 315
saxea conspicimus ; tum portas propter aena
signa manus dextras ostendunt adtenuari
saepe salutantum tactu praeterque meantum.
haec igitur minui, cum sint detrita, videmus.
sed quae corpora decedant in tempore quoque, 320
invida praeclusit speciem natura videndi.
postremo quaecumque dies naturaque rebus
paulatim tribuit, moderatim crescere cogens,
nulla potest oculorum acies contenta tueri ;
nec porro quaecumque aevo macieque senescunt, 325
nec, mare quae iupendent, vesco sale saxa peresa
quid quoque amittant in tempore cernere possis.
corporibus caecis igitur natura gerit res.
Nec tamen undique corporea stipata tenentur omnia natura ; namque est in rebus inane. 330
304 et. aut Gellius v 15 : but all mss. and Seneca Tertull. Nonius have et.
313: Isidor. Orig. xx 14 1 'Vomer ..de quo Lucretius Uncus aratri Ferreus occulto decrescit vomer in arvis Sumitque per detrimenta fulgorem ' (not ' nitorem '). It is odd if the last words are Isidore's own : is a line of this kind lost, Sumitque ipse suum per detrimenta nitorem? 321 speciem. spatium Lach. : hut see
M. 4
50 1
quod tibi cognosse in multis erit utile rebus nec sinet errantem dubitare et quaerere semper de summa rerum et nostris diffidere dictis.
QUAPROPTER LOCUS EST INTACTUS INAXE VACANSQUE
quod si non esset, nulla ratione moveri 335
res possent ; namque officium quod corporis exstat,
officere atque obstare, id in omni tempore adesset
omnibus ; haud igitur quicquam procedere posset,
principium quoniam cedendi nulla daret res.
at nunc per maria ac terras sublimaque caeli 340
multa modis multis varia ratione moveri
cernimus ante oculos, quae, si non esset inane,
non tam sollicito motu privata carerent
quam genita omnino nulla ratione fuissent,
undique materies quoniam stipata quiesset. 345
praeterea quamvis solidae res esse putentur,
hinc tamen esse licet raro cum corpore cernas.
in saxis ac speluncis permanat aquarum
liquidus umor et uberibus flent omnia guttis.
dissipat in corpus sese cibiis omne animantura. 350
crescunt arbusta et fetus in tempore fundunt,
quod cibus in totas usque ab radicibus imis
per truncos ac per ramos diffuuditur oranis.
inter saepta meant voces et clausa domorum
transvolitant, rigidum permanat frigus ad ossa, 355
quod nisi inania sint, qua possint corpora quaeque
notes 2: 'lege videndo' Bentl. 334 Bentl. says ' dele vers.' ; and Lach.
shews that sense and grammar prove him to be ri^ht. Spengel in the Muenchn. Gel. Anz. and others do not mend the matter by placing it after 345.
347 licet Nicc. for liceret. 349 Jlent Nicc. Jient AB : 386 Jiat. Jlat AB :
372 alunt AB : 449 civent AB : 580 civeant AB : this confusion of l and i is perpetual. In the small Eoman capital, of the Medicean of Virgil for instance, in which some ancestor of our mss. must have been written, these letters are often undistinguishable. 356 possint Ed. for possent : by chauging the punc-
tuation of 357 I have made the sentence quite plain. Madvig emend. Livianae p. 302 n, 'possem possim, posset possit perpetuo errore permutantur ', and p. 550 'possent. scribendum possint. non aberratur fere, ut saepe dixi, nisi ubi una littera formae distant ; esset pro sit scriptum non reperias'. See 207; and below 593 597 and 645, in all which places I have written possint for possent. Whether with Pont. Junt. Lamb. Lach. etc. you punctuate Quod n. i. sint, q. possent c. q. Transire h. u.J. r. v., or with Gif. Creech Wak. etc. Quod, n. i. s. q. p. c. q. Trans- ire, h. u. f. r, v., in either case you get hardly grammar or sense : in 357 B and
I 51
transirc ? haud ulla fieri ratione videres.
denicjue cur alias aliis praestare videmus
pondere res rebus nilo maiore figura ?
nam si tantundemst in lanae glomere quantum 360
corporis in plumbo est, tantundem pendere par est,
corporis officiumst quoniam premere omnia deorsum,
contra autem natura manet sine pondere inanis.
ergo quod magnumst aeque leviusque videtur,
nimirum plus esse sibi declarat inanis ; 365
at contra gravius plus in se corporis esse
dedicat et multo vacui minus intus habere.
est igitur nimirum id quod ratione sagaci
quaerimus, admixtum rebus, quod inane vocamus,
Illud in his rebus ne te dcducere vero 370
possit, quod quidani fingunt, praecurrere cogor. cedere squamigeris latices nitentibus aiunt et liquidas aperire vias, quia post loca pisces linquant, quo possint cedentes confluere undae ; sic alias quoque res inter se posse moveri 375
et mutare locum, quamvis sint omnia plena. scilicet id falsa totum ratione receptumst. nam quo squamigeri poterunt procedere tandem, ni spatiura dederint latices ? concedere porro quo poterunt undae, cum pisces ire nequibunt ? 380
aut igitur motu privandumst corpora quaeque aut esse admixtum dicundumst rebus inane unde initum primum capiat res quaeque movendi. postremo duo de concursu corpora lata si cita dissiliant, nempe aer omne necessest, 3S5
inter corpora quod fiat, possidat inane. is porro quamvis circum celerantibus auris confluat, haud poterit tamen uno tempore totum compleri spatium ; nam primum quemque necessest occupet ille locum, deinde omuia possideantur. 390
Gott. ior fieri have valerent which appears to come from ulla twice written and FiEREi: yet Bernays in 356 reads qua corpora quaeque valerent for qua possent c. q. 366 At Flor. 30 corr. (cod. Nicc.) and Flor. 31 for aut. 367 vacui
minus Pont. Junt. Lamb. etc. for vacuim minus B. and Gott. vacuum Wak. Lach. etc. retain with A, the Ital. and Camb. mss. 884 concursu Gott. p. m. Flor.
30 corr. 31, Pont. Mar. Junt. for concurso. 389 quemque. quenque Pont.
4—2
52 1
quod si forte aliquis, cum corpora dissiluere,
tum putat id fieri quia se condenseat aer,
errat ; nam vacuum tum fit quod non fuit ante
et repletur item vacuum quod constitit ante,
nec tali ratione potest denserier aer, 395
nec, si iam posset, sine inani posset, opinor,
ipse in se trahere et partis conducere in unum.
Quapropter, quamvis causando multa moreris, esse in rebus inane tamen fateare necessest. multaque praeterea tibi possum commemorando 40O
argumenta fidem dictis conradere nostris. verum animo satis haec vestigia parva sagaci sunt per quae possis cognoscere cetera tute. namque canes ut montivagae persaepe ferai naribus inveniunt intectas fronde quietes, 405
cum semel institerunt vestigia certa viai, sic alid ex alio per te tute ipse videre talibus in rebus poteris caecasque latebras insinuare omnis et verum protrahere inde. quod si pigraris paulumve recesseris ab re, 410
hoc tibi de plano possum proinittere, Memmi : usque adeo largos haustus e foutibu' magnis lingua meo suavis diti de pectore fundet, ut verear ne tarda prius per membra senectus serpat et in nobis vitai claustra resolvat, 415
quam tibi de quavis una re versibus oranis argumentorum sit copia missa per auris.
Sed nunc ut repetam coeptum pertexere dictis, omnis ut est igitur per se natura duabus constitit in rebus ; nam corpora sunt et inane, 420
haec in quo sita sunt et qua diversa moventur. corpus enim per se communis dedicat esse sensus ; cui nisi prima fides fundata valebit, haut erit occultis de rebus quo referentes
Mar. Ald. 1 Junt. for quisque. 391 Creech supposes sonae vss. to be lost after
this V. 395 denserier A corr. Flor. 31 for condenserier. 404 ferai Nicc.
Flor. 31 Camb. etc. for ferare. ferarum A corr. 411 de plano Flor. 31 Mar.
Junt. for deptano. 412 magnis A corr. Nicc. all the Ital. Camb. etc. for
magnes of A p. m. amnes B and Gott. and also same A corr. ; whence Bentl. and Bern. read largis haustos e. f. amnis, making 3 changes. magneis Heins. in ms.
i 53
confirmare animi quicquam ratione queamus. 425
tum porro locus ac spatium, quod inane vocamus, si nullum foret, haut usquam sita corpora possent esse neque omnino quoquam diversa meare ; id quod iam supera tibi paulo ostendimus antc. praeterea nil est quod possis dicere ab omni 430
corpore seiunctum secretumque esse ab inani, quod quasi tertia sit numero natura reperta. nam quodcumque erit, esse aliquid debebit id ipsum ; 435 cui si tactus erit quamvis levis exiguusque,
434 augmine vel grandi vel parvo denique, dum sit, 435 corporis augebit numerum summamque sequetur.
sin intactile erit, nulla de parte quod ullam
rem prohibere queat per se transire meantem,
scilicet hoc id erit, vacuum quod inane vocamus.
praeterea per se quodcumque erit, aut faciet quid 440
aut aliis fungi debebit agentibus ipsum
aut erit, ut possunt in eo res esse gerique.
at facere et fungi sine corpore nulla potest res
nec praebere locum porro nisi inane vacansque.
ergo praeter inane et corpora tertia per se 445
nulla potest rerum in numero natura relinqui,
nec quae sub sensus cadat ullo tempore nostros
nec ratione animi quam quisquam possit apisci.
Nam quaecumque cluent, aut his coniuncta duabus rebus ea invenies aut horum eventa videbis. 450
coniunctum est id quod nusquam sine permitiali discidio potis est seiungi seque gregari, pondus uti saxist, calor ignis, liquor aquai.
TACTUS CORPORIBUS CUNCTIS INTACTUS INANI
notes. 428 quoquam. quaquam Ven. Ald. 1 Lamb. etc. : but see notes 2.
435 434 rightly transposed by Lach. : centuries before him Flor. 32 in margin had this note, ' videtur proponere tantum de corpore, dicendo A ugmine vel etc. ; non enim conveniunt illa nisi corpori. cum tamen de inani quoque intellexisse appareat, ex illo Sin intactile erit etc. advertendum diligentius'. Then at bottom 'si legatur Navi quodcumque...Cui si tactus...Augmine vel...Corporis...^a.tebii sermo'. 442 possunt. possint Flor. 31 Camb. etc. I now retain the ms. reading : see notes 2 to this V. and II 901 ita ut debent. 451 nusquam. nunquam Ver. Ven. and eds. before Lach. wrongly: comp. Aen. v 852 clavumque...Nusquani amittebat, and Conington there. permitiali AB rightly : see notes 2. perniciali vulg. and Lach. 453 saxist Lach, saxi est Wak. for saxis. 454 Lach. has proved to be spurious, as a nomin. intactus
54
servitium contra paupertas divitiaeque, 455
libertas bellum concordia, cetera quorum adventu manet incolumis natura abituque, haec soliti sumus, ut par est, eventa vocare. tempus item per se non est, sed rebus ab ipsis consequitur sensiis, transactum quid sit in aevo, 460
tum quae res instet, quid porro deinde sequatur. nec per se quemquam tempus sentire fatendumst semotum ab rerum motu placidaque quiete. denique Tyndaridem raptam belloque subactas Troiiugenas gentis cum dicunt esse, videndumst 465
ne forte haec per se cogant nos esse fateri, quando ea saecla hominum, quorum haec eventa fuerunt, inrevocabilis abstulerit iam praeterita aetas ; namque aliut Teucris, aliut regionibus ipsis eventum dici poterit quodcumque erit actum. 470
denique materies si rerum nuUa fuisset nec locus ac spatium, res in quo quaeque geruntur, numquam Tyndaridis formae conflatus amore ignis, Alexandri Phrygio sub pectore gliscens, clara accendisset saevi certamina belli, 475
nec clam durateus Troiianis Pergama partu inflammasset equos nocturno Graiiugenarum ; perspicere ut possis res gestas fuuditus omnis non ita uti corpus per se constare neque esse, nec ratione cluere eadem qua constet inane, 480
sed magis ut merito possis eventa vocare corporis atque loci, res in quo quaeque gerantur. Corpora sunt porro partim primordia rerum,
cannot exist, and the datives are not consistent with the genitives of 4.'3 : Lamb. reads saxis, calor, ignibu\ Uquor aquai : but Lucr. never uses a dat. in ai. 4-55
divitiae A corr. Nicc. for diviae. 458 eventa the same for evento. 465 Troiiu- genas, 476 Troiianis, 477 Graiiugenarum Lach. with A (477 Graliug. A) : see Quintil. I 4 11 'sciat etiam Ciceroni placuisse, aiio Maiiamqne geminata i scribere'; and Priscian inst. vn 19, who rightly says that in the oldest writings you find eiim Pompeiius Vulteiius Gaiius and the like : often so in extant inscriptions : see too Eibbeck prol. Verg. p. 138, Studemund Ehein. mus. xxi p. 588, and Corssen i p. 18. 467 fuerunt Gott. rightly for fuerit of AB. fuere Nicc. Flor. 31 Camb.
etc. 469 Teucris Ed. for terris. per sest Lach. saeclis Bem. rehus Lamb.
terris and legionibus Wak. 480 cluere B corr. Flor. 30 corr. Camb. for luere.
i 55
partim concilio quae constant principiorum.
sed quae sunt rerum primordia, nulla potest vis 485
stinguere ; nam solido vincunt ea corpore demum.
etsi difficile esse videtur credere quicquam
in rebus solido reperiri corpore posse.
transit enim fulmen caeli per saepta domorum,
clamor ut ac vocos ; ferrum candescit in igni 490
disjsiliuntque fero ferveutia saxa vapore ;
tum labefactatus rigor auri solvitur aestu ;
tum glacies aeris fiamma devicta liquescit ;
permanat calor argentum penetraleque frigus,
quando utrumque manu retinentes pocula rito 495
sensimus infuso lympharum rore superne.
usque adeo in rebus solidi nil esse videtur.
sed quia vera tameu ratio naturaque rerum
cogit, ades, paucis dum versibus expediamus
esse ea quae solido atque aeterno corpore constent, 500
semina quae rerum primordiaque esse docemus,
unde omnis rerum nunc constet summa creata.
Principio quoniam duplex natura duarum dissimilis rerum longe coustare repertast, corporis atque loci, res in quo quaeque geruntur, 505
esse utramque sibi per se puramque necessest. nam quacumque vacat spatium, quod inane vocamus, corpus ea non est ; qua porro cumque tenet se corpus, ea vacuum nequaquam constat inane. sunt igitur solida ac sine inani corpora prima. 5 10
praeterea quouiam genitis in rebus inauest, materiem circum solidam constare necessest, nec res ulla potest vera ratione probari coi^pore inane suo celare atque intus habere, si non, quod cohibet, solidum constare relinquas. 5 1 5
id porro nil esse potest nisi materiai
constet A Nicc. constat B Gott. 484 quae B corr. Camb. corr. for qua. 486
Stinguere AB. Stringere A corr. Nicc. and all later mss. and eds. before Lach. : but Flor. 30 has Stinguere in marg. 489 fulmen A corr. B corr. Nicc. corr. for
fiumen. Lach. strangely reads caehim, p. s. domorum Cl. it, as if the air, like a stone wall, were a good instanee of a very solid thing : all mss. have caeli and ut. ac Avanc. fii'st for ad. 491 jerventia Mar. Junt. and Lamb. ed. 1 for fer-
venti. 492 tum Brix. Ver. Ven. for cum. 500 constent B corr. for con-
56
concilium, quod inane queat rerum cohibere.
materies igitur, solido quae corpore constat,
esse aeterna potest, cum cetera dissoluantur.
tum porro si nil esset quod inane vocaret, 520
omne foret solidum ; nisi contra corpora certa
essent quae loca complerent quaecumque tenerent,
omne quod est, spatium vacuum constaret inane.
altemis igitur nimirum corpus inani
distinctums^, quoniam nec plenum naviter extat 525
nec porro vacuum. sunt ergo corpora certa
quae spatium pleno possint distinguere inane.
haec neque dissolui plagis extrinsecus icta
possunt nec porro penitus penetrata retexi
nec ratione queunt alia temptata labare ; 5 30
id quod iam supra tibi paulo ostendimus ante.
nam neque conlidi sine inani posse videtur
quicquam nec frangi nec findi in bina secando
nec capere umorem neque item manabile frigus
nec penetralem ignem, quibus omnia conficiuntur. 535
et quo quaeque magis cohibet res intus inane,
tam magis his rebus peuitus temptata labascit.
ergo si solida ac sine inani corpora prima
sunt ita uti docui, sint haec aeterna necessest.
praeterea nisi materies aeterna fuisset, 540
antehac ad nilum penitus res quaeque redissent
de niloque renata forent quaecumque videmus.
at quouiam supra docui nil posse creari
de nilo neque quod genitum est ad nil revocari,
esse inmortali primordia corpore debent, 545
dissolui quo quaeque supremo tempore possint,
materies ut subpeditet rebus reparandis.
stet. 504 rerum longe. ' leg. longe rerum ' Bentl. 517 inane queat
rerum seems quite right. inane in rebu' queat Lach. tectum Mar. Ald. 1 Junt. Lamb. ed. 1 and 2, verum Bern. for rerum. 520 esset A corr. Avanc. for est.
siquidem nil est 'Sicc. roca ?•«( is the old form : see notes 2. v acaret Ija,ch.. 525
Distinctumst, quoniam Lamb. most rightly for Distiiictum quoniam which Lach. retains beginning the apodosis with sunt ergo in 526. Ald. 1 and Junt. seem to take distinctum for distinctum est and to understand the passage rightly. 527
pleno Mar. Ald. 1 and Junt. for poena, and iiuine for inani. 53d Jindi Flot.
31 Mon. Ver. Ven. ior fundi. 542 que renata Lamb. for quaeranta.
1 57
sunt igitur solida primordia simplicitate
nec ratioue queunt alia servata per aevoni
ex infinito iam tempore res reparare. 550
Deni(jue si nullam finem natura parasset frangendis rebus, iam corpora materiai usque redacta forent aevo frangente priore, ut nil ex illis a certo tempore posset
conceptum summura aetatis pervadere ad auctum. 555
nam quidvis citius dissolvi posse videmus quam rursus refici ; quapropter longa diei infinita aetas anteacti temporis omnis quod fregisset adhuc disturbans dissoluensque, numquam relicuo reparari tempore posset. 560
at nunc nimirum frangendi reddita finis certa manet, quoniam refici rem quamque videmus et finita simul generatim tempora rebus stare, quibus possint aevi contingere florem. huc accedit uti, solidissima materiai 565
eorpora cum constant, possit tamen, omnia, reddi.
551—627 : Jimt. puts 577—583 after 627, and 551—564 after 583. At the end of his edition Candidus says 'Marulli nos hoc loco ordiuem, atque item alibi m plerisque, ubi immutatum quid offenderis, secutos esse'; and so Marullus himself in the cod. Victor. : but he appears from Flor. 30 to have got the suggestion from Niccoli himself. The learned annotator of Flor. 32 says in the margin to .550 that some put 551 — 56-1 after 576, and adds ' verum Marullo parum referre videtur quomodo legatur ', shewing again that there were different traditions about Marullus. Lamb. places only 577 — 583 after 627. All these transpositions are utterly wrong, though Candidus says of Marullus ' quem profecto, si ad amussim rem quanque examinabis, neutiquam (sic opinor) repudiaveris '. Sauppe, Chi-ist and others likewise transpose in various ways these much-tortured vss. : the misapi^rchension of 599 — 634 is at the bottom of such causeless chauges. 553 forent B corr.
Nicc. ioi fovent. 555 ad auctum EJ. These words came at the end of page 23
of the archetyjje from which all mss. are derived, and therefore were at the outside margin and, as lias happened in so many cases, were torn away by some accident. Some one theu filled up the verse with finis which occurs three times at the end of a line in the next thirty verses. Lach. keeps finis and for summum reads summa which he thus awkwardly explains, 'summa, hoc est universo vivendi actu, aetatis pervaderefines, per omne vitae spatium vadere'. summum...florem Mar. Junt. Lamb. ed. 1 and 2, Creech etc. which Lach. proves could only mean 'pass through ' not ' arrive at the flower '. summum...finem Flor. 30 corr. Ver. Ven. Lamb. ed. 3, Wak. etc. This is doubly wrong, as finis in Lucretius is always feminine. 562
quamque videmus B corr. Nicc. for quamque demus. 566 possit Ed. for possint,
a corruption which constant and omnia almost inevitably caused. [Sauppe I am
58 I
mollia quae fiunt, aer aqua terra vapores,
quo pacto fiant et qua vi quaeque gerantur,
admixtum quoniam semel est in rebus inane.
at contra si mollia sint primordia rerum, 5 70
unde queant validi silices ferrumque creari
non poterit ratio reddi ; nam funditus omnis
principio fundamenti natura carebit.
suut igitur solida pollentia simplicitate
quorum condenso magis omnia conciliatu 575
artari possunt validasque ostendere viris.
Porro si nullast frangendis reddita finis corporibus, tamen ex aeterno tempore quaeque nunc etiam superare necessest corpora rebus, quae nondum clueant ullo temptata periclo. 5^^
at quoniam fragili natura praedita constant, diserepat aeternum tempus potuisse manere innumerabilibus plagis vexata per aevom. denique iam quoniam generatim reddita finis crescendi rebus constat vitamque tenendi, 585
et quid quaeque queant per foedera naturai, quid porro nequeant, sancitum quandoquidem extat, nec commutatur quicquam, quin omnia constant usque adeo, variae volucres ut in ordine cunctae ostendant maculas generalis corpore inesse, 590
inmutabili' materiae quoque corpus habere debent nimirum. nam si primordia rerum commutari aliqua possint ratione revicta, incertum quoque iam constet quid possit oriri, quid nequeat, finita potestas denique cuique 595
quanam sit ratione atque alte terminus haerens,
glad to see has fallen on the same conj. independeutly of me, as he makes uo mention even of my ed. of 1860.] Lach. puts 568 after 585, where it is wholly out of place ; Bentl. ejects it ; Mar. and Junt. read Jiimt and geruntur; and Jiant in 567. Lamb. Creech etc. cumque gerantur : all corrupting the text and making Lucretius assert the absurd truism that all things which do become soft can become soft. 578 quaeque. quaedam Lamb. and Lach. 585 crescendi Ver. Ven.
for crescendis. 588 commutatur B corr. Nicc. for comitatur. constant. constent
Lach. 591 inmutabili' Lach. first for inmutahiles. inmutabile Flor. 31 Flor. 30
corr. vulgo absurdly. 593 and 597 possi7it Ed. for possent ; which constet in
594 proves to be necessary : see 356 and note there : here too possint easily becomes possent, though constet does not pass into constaret so readily.
A 59
nec totiens possint generatim saecla referre naturam mores victum motusque parentum.
Tum porro quoniam est extremum quodque cacumen
* corporis illius quod nostri cernere sensus 600
iam nequeunt : id nimirum sine partibus extat et minima constat natura nec fuit umquam per se secretum neque posthac csse valebit, alterius quoniamst ipsum pars, primaque et una inde aliae atque aliae similes ex ordine partes 605
agmine condenso naturam corporis explent, quae quoniam per se nequeunt constare, necessest haerere unde queant nulla ratione revelli. sunt igitur solida primordia simplicitate quae minimis stipata cohaerent partibus arte, 610
non ex illarum conventu conciliata, sed magis aeterna pollentia simplicitate, unde neque avelli quicquam neque deminui iam concedit natura reservans semina rebus. praeterea nisi erit minimum, parvissima quaeque 615
corpora constabunt ex partibus infinitis, quippe ubi dimidiae partis pars semper habebit dimidiam partem nec res praefiniet ulla. ergo rerum inter summam minimamque quid escit ? nil erit ut distet ; nam quamvis funditus omnis 620
summa sit infinita, tamen, parvissima quae sunt, ex infinitis constabunt partibus aeque. quod quoniam ratio reclamat vera negatque
599 — 634 : this passage which is difficult, but not corrupt, has been sadly mutUated by all editors from Lambinus to Lachmann and Bernays, who all in different ways force on Lucretius a succession of absurd and self-contradictory assertions. There seems after 599 to be a hiatus such as this Corporibus, quod iam nohis minimuni esse videtur, Debet itevi ratione pari minimum esse cacumen Corporis cet. : besides this illarum for illorum in 611 is the sole change I have made, two or three slight and obvious errors of AB having been corrected in the later mss. or older editions : 599 for quoniam Lach. quianam, Bern. quod iam : 600 for illius Lach. and Bern. ullius. Lamb. quoniam ext. quoiusque c. Cor. est aliquod: 611 Lach. ullorum after Ald. 1 Junt. Lamb. etc. : 628 and 631 Lamb. followed by all subsequent editors pei-versely reads ni for si, multis for nullis. 603 nulla
Elor. 31 Ver. Ven. etc. for ulla. ut nequeant ulla B corr. which may be right.
618 iam Flor. 81 Ver. Ven. etc. for tam. 626 constent Ald. Junt. for con-
6o I
credere posse animum, victus fateare necessest
esse ea quae nuUis iam praedita partibus extent 625
et minima constent natura. quae quoniam sunt,
illa quoque esse tibi solida atque aeterna fatendum.
denique si minimas in partis cuncta resolvi
cogere consuesset rerum natura creatrix,
iam nil ex illis eadem reparare valeret 630
propterea quia, quae nullis sunt partibus aucta,
non possunt ea quae debet genitalis habere
materies, varios conexus pondera plagas
concursus motus, per quae res quaeque geruntur,
Quapropter qui materiem rerum esse putarunt 635
ignem atque ex igni summam consistere solo, magno opere a vera lapsi ratione videntur. Heraclitus init quorum dux proelia primus, clarus ob obscuraui linguam magis inter inanis quamde gravis inter Graios qui vera requirunt. 640
omnia enim stolidi magis admirantur amantque, inversis quae sub verbis latitantia cernunt, veraque constituunt quae belle tangere possunt auris et lepido quae sunt fucata sonore.
Nam cur tam variae res possint esse requiro, 645
ex uno si sunt igni puroque creatae ; nil prodesset enim calidum denserier ignem nec rarefieri, si partes ignis eandem naturam quam totus habet super ignis haberent. acrior ardor enim conductis partibvis esset, 650
languidior porro disiectis disque supatis : amplius hoc fieri nil est quod posse rearis talibus in causis, nedum variantia rerum tanta queat densis rarisque ex ignibus esse. id quoque, si faciant admixtum rebus inane, 655
denseri poterunt ignes rarique relinqui. sed quia multa sibi cernunt contraria nasci
stant. 634 quae res Mar. Junt. for quas res. 639 ob added by Festus.
645 cur possint esse requiro,...si sunt Ed. for cur possent? requiro etc. : comp. above 356 593 and 597. 646 uno B corr. Turnebus Lamb. ed. 3, Lach. for
uro. vero A corr. Nicc. Flor. 31 Camb. Vat. Lamb. ed. 1 and 2, Creech. 649
haberent Nicc. for haberet A, hahere B Gott. 651 disiectis disqne A corr. Flor.
30 corr. for disiectisque. 657 7iasci Ed. for muse A, mu B Gott. This word
I 6i
et fugitant in rebns inane relinqiiere purum,
ardua dum motuunt, amittunt vera viai,
nec rursum cernunt exempto robus inani 660
omnia donseri fierique ex omuibus unum
corpus, nil ab se quod possit mittere raptim ;
aestifer ignis uti lumen iacit atque vaporem,
ut videas non e stipatis partibus esse.
quod si forte alia credunt ratione potesse 665
ignis in coetu stingui mutareque corpus,
scilicet ex nulla facere id si parte reparcent,
occidet ad nilum nimirum funditus ardor
omnis et e nilo fient quaecumque creantur.
nam quodcumque suis mutatum finibus exit, G70
continuo hoc mors est illius qnod fuit ante.
proinde aliquit superare necesse est incolume oUis,
ne tibi res redeant ad nilum funditus omnes
de niloque renata vigescat copia rerum.
nunc igitur quoniam certissima corpora quaedam 675
sunt quae conservant naturam semper eandem,
quorum abitu aut aditu mutatoque ordine mutant
naturam res et convertunt corpora sese.
scire licet non esse haec ignea corpora rerum.
nil referret enim quaedam decedere abire, 680
atque alia adtribui, mutarique ordine quaedam,
si tamen ardoris naturam cuncta tenerent ;
was tbe last in p. 27 of the archetj^pe and therefore on the outpide margin, and as in many other cases had become partly illegible. mussant Flor. 31 Camb. Pont. Lamb. ed. 2 and 3, etc. without sense. Tnulti Mar. Junt. Lamb. ed. 1, etc. inesse Flor. 30 corr. Ver. Ven. Ald. 1 Candidus at end of Junt. Memmi Heins. in ms. notes. 'amusoe i.e. &/xov<roi ' Is. Voss. in ms. notes. nclesse ha.ch. amussim Bern. •illud Lucretio Bernaysius restituens cedet hodie nisi fallor H. Munroni nasci emendanti ' Eitschl opusc. 11 p. 272. 659 vera viai A corr. for ver aula.
660 inani Flor. 30 corr. Mar. Junt. for inane. 662 raptim Pont. Avauc. for
raptis. 'quidam raptim agnoscunt. Marullus natum' Caiulidus at end of Junt. and so Flor. 30 corr. and Mar. in cod. Vict. 665 alia Lach. rightly for mia.
ulla Mar. Ald. 1 Junt. etc. una Nicc. etc. 666 coetu stingui Pont. Turneb.
Lamb. ed. 2 and 3, etc. for coetus stingui. mutare Mar. Junt. for musare. Ver. Ven. Mar. Ald. 1 Lamb. ed. 1 have absurdly in coetus stringi massareque corpus ; and Flor. 31 Camb. mussare. &68 fitnditus B corr. tor funditur. ardor A corr.
Nicc. for arbor. 674 vigescat Heins. in notes and Lach. for vivescat : comp.
757. virescat Nicc. vulg. 680 decedere Lamb. Lach. etc. for descendcre.
discedere A corr. Mar. Junt. eto. 681 alia Mar. Lamb. most rightly for alio
62 I
ignis enim foret omnimodis quodcumque crearent. verum, ut opinor, itast : sunt quaedam corpora quorum concursus motus ordo positura figurae 685
efficiunt ignis, mutatoque ordine mutant naturam neque sunt igni simulata neque ulli praeterea rei quae corpora mittere possit sensibus et nostros adiectu tangere tactus.
Dicere porro ignem res omnis esse neque ullam 690
rem veram in numero rerum constare nisi ignera, quod facit hic idem, perdelirum esse videtur. nam contra sensus ab sensibus ipse repugnat et labefactat eos unde omnia credita pendent, unde hic cognitus est ipsi quem nominat ignem ; 695
credit enim sensus ignem cognoscere vere, cetera non credit, quae nilo clara minus sunt. quod mihi cum vanum tum delirum esse videtur; quo referemus enim ? quid nobis certius ipsis sensibus esse potest, qui vera ac falsa notemus ? 700
praeterea quare quisquam magis omnia tollat et velit ardoris naturam linquere solam, quam neget esse ignis, quidvis tamen esse relinquat ? aequa videtur enim dementia dicere utrumque.
Quapropter qui materiem rerum esse putarunt 705
ignem atque ex igni summam consistere posse, et qui principium gignundis aera rebus constituere, aut umorem quicumque putarunt iingere res ipsum per se, terramve creare omnia et in rerum naturas vertier omnis, 710
magno opere a vero longe derrasse videntur. adde etiam qui conduplicant primordia rerum aera iungentes igni terramque liquori, et qui quattuor ex rebus posse omnia rentur ex igni terra atque anima procrescere et imbri. 715
quorum Acragantinus cum primis Empedocles est,
■which Lach. retains. Candidus at end of Junt. ' alio pro alii positum. sunt qui alia legunt', i.e. Mar. 683 crearent Lamb. first for crearet. 690 ignem B corr. ior iq. nem. 703 qitidvis hach. summam Nicc. and all before Lach. AB Gott.
omit the vrord, which must be uncertain. 708 putarunt Nicc. B corr. for
putantur B, A corr., putant A p. m. 710 vertier B corr. Nicc. for verti.
711 longe derrasse Yat. 3275, and unless I err 1136 Othob., for longi derrasse of
I 63
insula quem triquetris tenarum gessit in oris,
quam fiuitans circum maguis anfractibus aequor
lonium glaucis aspargit virus ab undis,
angustoque fretu rapidum mare dividit undis 720
Italiae terrarum oras a linibus eius.
hic est vasta Charybdis et hic Aetnaea minantur
murmura flammarum rursum se colligere iras,
faucibus eruptos itcrum vis ut vomat ignis
ad caelumque ferat flammai fulgura rursum. 725
quae cum magna modis multis miranda videtur
gentibus humanis rcgio visendaque fertur,
rebus opima bonis, multa munita virum vi,
nil tamen hoc habuisse vii'o praeclarius in se
nec sanctum magis et mirum carumque vidctur. 730
carmina quin etiam divini pectoris eius
vociferantur et exponunt praeclara reperta,
ut vix humana videatur stirpo creatus.
Hic tamen et supra quos diximus inferiores partibus egregie multis multoque minores, 735
quamquam multa bene ac divinitus invenientcs ex adyto tamquam cordis respousa dedere sanctius et multo certa ratione magis quam Pythia quae tripodi a Phoebi lauroque profatur, principiis tamen in rerum fecere ruinas 740
et gi-aviter magni maguo cecidere ibi casu ; primum quod motus exempto rebus inani constituunt, et res mollis rarasque relinquont, aera solem ignem terras animalia frugis,
B Gott. A corr. longi errasse A p. m. longeque errasse Nicc. etc. 720 undis.
undans Lia.ch. aZmae Bern. , without cause. Priscian i 35 confirms undfs. 721
Italiae Nicc. for Haeliae. HaeoUae A corr. Aeoliae Heins. in ms. notes and Is. Vossius who says in ms. notes ' mss. habent Haeoliae vel Aeoliae. Puto olim sic dictam eam partem Italiae quam inhabitavit Jocastes Aeoli filius qui ad fretum Siculum habitabat : vid : Diodorum hb. 5. [ch. 8] G. V.' Thus Preiger and Lach- mann's doubt is solved. Haverc. and Wak. also adopt this reading of Gerard father of Is. Vossius. 724 vis ut vomat Lamb. ed. 3 for vis ut omniat. ut vis
evomat ed. 1 and 2 after Mar. Ald. 1 Junt. etc. 725 Heins. in ms. notes
'leg. sursum', to avoid the repetition of rursum. 737 adyto Nicc. for
adito. 739 profatur A corr. Nicc. for prosatur. 741 casu A corr. Nicc. for causa. liifrugis AB Flor. 31 etc. not Nicc: so iv 577 and 992 vocis AB. fruges Lach. and 1. L voces : he says ' [membranas] quamvis consentientes imitari ausus non
64 I
nec tamen admiscent in eorum corpus inane ; 745
deinde quod omnino finem non esse secandis
corporibus faciunt neque pausam stare fragori
nec prorsum in rebus minimum consistere (\mcquam ;
cum videamus id extremum cuiusque cacumen
esse quod ad sensus nostros minimum esse videtur, 750
conicere ut possis ex hoc, quae cernere non quis
extremum quod habent, minimum consistere in illis.
huc accedit item, quoniam primordia rerum
mollia constituunt, quae nos nativa videmus
esse et mortali cum corpore funditus, utqui 755
debeat ad nilum iam rerum summa reverti
de niloque renata vigescere copia rerum ;
quorum utrumque quid a vero iam distet habe6iS.
deinde inimica modis multis sunt atque venewo
ipsa sibi inter se ; quare aut congressa peribunt 760
aut ita dififugient ut tempestate coacta
fulmina diffugere atque imbris ventosque videmus.
Denique quattuor ex rebus si cuncta creantur atque in eas rursura res omnia dissoluuntur, qui rnagis illa queunt rerum primordia dici 765
quam contra res illorum retroque putari ? alternis gignuntur enim mutantque colorem et totam inter se naturam tempore ab omnl sin ita forte putas ignis terraeque coire 770
suin hoc loco, ubi habent frugis, neque in iv 577 991 1000, ubi vocis ; quamquam apud Nonium p. 149 16 e Varrone scriptum est pacis, et Manihi exemplaria in III 446 habent lucis '. But Varro de Ung. Lat. ix 76 observes 'frugi rectus est natura /ra.r, at secundum consuetudinem dicimus ut haec avis, haec ovis, sic haec frugis '. I have no doubt then that the accus. plur. frugis and vocis come from Lucr. as well as religionis and the Uke ; and that an abl. frugi was possible. Augustus in the monum. Ancyr. iii 2 has comulis acc. plur. 747 faciunt
Flor. 31 Camb. for facient. 748 quicquam Mar. Ald. 1 and Junt. for qui.
quire Flor. 31 Camb. Vat. 1136 Othob. which may be right. 752 in illis I have
added ; and these must I think be the actual words of the poet : see Camb. Journ. of phil. I p. 29. prorsum Lach. 'who quite misunderstands the argument. rebus Nicc. and all before Lach. 755 utqui of mss. is quite right : see notes 2.
Lach. reads 753 utei for item, and here funditus usque. 758 habebis A corr.
Nicc. etc. for habes. habebas Lamb. vulg. wrongly. 759 veneno Wak. Lach.
for vcne. venena Flor. 31 Camb. vulgo : this 1. ended p. 31 of the lost archetype ; and therefore these four mutilated endings of verses were on the outer mar- gin. 767 Alternis A corr. for Aternis. 769 = 762, repeated without mean-
I 65
corpus et aerias auras roremque liquoria, nil in concilio naturam ut rautet eorum, nulla tibi ex illis poterit res esse creata, non animans, non exanimo cum corpore, ut arbos : quijDpe suam quicque in coetu variantis acervi 775
naturam ostendet mixtusque videbitur aer cum terra simul atque ardor cum rore manere. at primordia gignundis in rebus oportet naturam clandestinam caecamque adhibere, emineat nequid quod contra pugnet et obstet 780
quominus esse queat proprie quodcumque creatur. Quin etiara repetunt a caelo atque ignibus eius et primum faciunt ignem se vertere in auras aeris, hinc imbrem gigni terramque creari ex imbri retroque a terra cuncta reverti, 7^5
umorem primum, post aera, deinde calorem, nec cessare haec inter se mutare, meare a caelo ad terram, de terra ad sidera mundi. quod facere haud ullo debent primordia pacto; immutabile enim quiddam superare necessest, 79^
ne res ad nilum redigantur funditus omnes. nam quodcumque suis mutatura finibus exit, continuo hoc mors est illius quod fuit ante. quapropter quoniam quae paulo diximus ante in commutatum veniunt, constare necessest 795
ex aliis ea, quae nequeant convertier usquara, ne tibi res redeant ad nilum funditus omnes. quin potius tali natura praedita quaedam corpora constituas, ignem si forte crearint, posse eadem demptis paucis paucisque tributis, 800
ing. 772 ut B corr. Flor. 31 Camb. for et. 774 animans Pont. Mar.
Junt. for animas. 775 quicque in coetu Mar. Junt. for quisque in coetum.
776 ostendet Flor. 31 Avanc. for ostendit. 777 atq. ardor cum rore Lamb,
acutely for et quodam cum rore. 778 rehus oportet. rebu^ necessest Lach.
Bern. without any necessity: if Ennius Accius Seneca Catullus, Virgil in his eclogues, Propertius Ovid and others can use the word, it is not too prosaic for Lucr. 780 Emineat Naugerius first for demineat. 781 creatur A corr. for
creatas. 784 785 hinc imhrem, ex imbri, a terra Mar. Ald. 1 and Junt. for
hinc ignem, ex igni, in terram : the change is peremptorily required: CatuUus 62 7 imbrfis mss. for ignes. 789 pacto Mon. Ald. 1 Junt. for facto. 806 ut
M. 5
66
ordine mutato et motu, facere aeris auras, sic alias aliis rebus mutarier omnis ?
' At manifesta palam res indicat' inquis *in auras aeris e terra res omnis crescere alique ; et nisi tempestas indulget tempore fausto 805
imbribus, ut tabe nimborum arbusta vacillent, solque sua pro parte fovet tribuitque calorem, crescere non possint fruges arbusta animantis '. scilicet et nisi nos cibus aridus et tener umor adiuvet, amisso iam corpore vita quoque omnis 810
omnibus e nervis atque ossibus exsoluatur; adiutamur enim dubio procul atque alimur nos certis ab rebus, certis aliae atque aliae res. nimirum quia multa modis communia multis multarum rerum in rebus primordia mixta 815
sunt, ideo variis variae res rebus aluntur. atque eadem magni refert primordia saepe cum quibus et quali positura contineantur et quos inter se dent motus accipiantque ; namque eadem caelum mare terras flumina solem 820
constituunt, eadem fruges arbusta animantis, verum aliis alioque modo commixta moventur. quin etiam passim nostris in versibus ipsis multa elementa vides multis communia verbis, cum tamen inter se versus ac verba necessest 825
confiteare et re et sonitu distare sonanti. tantum elementa queunt permutato ordine solo ; at rerum quae sunt primordia, plura adhibere possunt unde queant variae res quaeque creari.
Nunc et Anaxagorae scrutemur homoeomerian 830
Prisc. for et of mss. : this change of a letter, as Bern. has seen, gives imbribus to the preceding sentence and eompletely restores the fine passage, which Lach. deplorably disfigures by transposing 806 and 807 and changing arbusta into am- busta, as if rain forsooth could like 'frost perform the effect of fire'. Lamb. and Gif. ed. 1 et...vacillant, the vulgate. Gif. ed. 2 keeps et.,.vacillent of mss. and says ' q. v. Marull. et vulg. focillant, q. v. vacillant, male '. Now Ald. 1 has et tabes...focillant. Ver. Ven. read et tale...facillent, whence comes focillant. Marullus in cod. Victor. makes no change. 814 niulta modis Lamb. for
multimodis. 824 verbis Flor. 31 Camb. Vat. Pont. Mar. etc. for bellis : see
Lach. 830 et. ut Lach. : in five other places he changes et, and in two
I 6;
qnam Grai memorant nec nostra dicere lingua
concedit nobis patrii sermonis egestas,
sed tamen ipsam rem facilest exponere verbis.
principio, rerum quom dicit homoeomerian,
ossa videlicet e pauxillis atque minutis 835
ossibus hic et de pauxillis atque minutis
visceribus viscus gigni sanguenque creari
sanguinis inter se multis coeuntibu' guttis
ex aurique putat micis consistere posse
aurum et de terris terram concrescere parvis, 840
ignibus ex ignis, umorem umoribus esse,
cetera consiniili fingit ratione putatque.
nec tamen esse ulla parte idem in rebus inane
concedit neque corporibus finem esse secandis.
quare in utraque mihi paritcr ratione videtur 845
errare atque illi, supra quos diximus ante.
adde quod inbecilla nimis primordia fingit ;
si primordia sunt, simili quae praedita constant
natura atque ipsae res sunt aequeque laborant
et pereunt neque ab exitio res ulla refrenat. 850
nam quid in oppressu valido durabit eorum,
ut mortem effugiat, leti sub dentibus ipsis ?
ignis an umor an aura ? quid horum ? sanguen an ossa ?
gives a far-fetched interpretation, because he says Lucr. could not use et for etiam. 834 quom Lach. for quavi. Lamb. reads Prmcipium rerum qiiam
and joins it with what precedes : he is foUowed by all before Lach. and may be right. ' quid quod ita ne dixit quidem usquam Lucretius, sed rerum princijna I 740 1047 II 789 ' says Laeh. Yes, because his primordia are plural ; but i 707 he writes Et qui principium gignundis aera rehus Constituere of those who have one first-beginning of things. 835 e Pont. Mar. Ald. 1 Junt. for de.
839 840 aurique . . .aurum '. as he immediately enumerates the three other ele- ments, Bentl. proposes auraeque...auram. ' quid hic aurum? oculos credo inter- pretum praestrinxit...Simphc. tamen [in Axist. phys. fol. 6 b] de Anaxag. TrdvTa To. 6/j.oiop.eprj oTov t6 v8up rj irdp rj xpfcrii' etc' This and other passages seem to defend the text : see notes 2 : yet comp. 853. 841 ignis, umorem. ignem,
umorem ex Lamb. and the plur. is awkward. 843 ulla parte idem Nicc. vulgo
for ulla idem parte. ulla idem ex parte Lach. because Lucr. he says only omits the preposition when a genitive is added ; but in rehus seems equivalent to one : comp. Juven. VI 437 Adque alia parte in trutina suspendit Homerum. 846 illi supra quos marg. Flor. 32 Ald. 1 Junt. for illis uira quod A, quo B Gott. illisju^ta quod Camb. Vat. 1954 Othob. viris iuxta quos Flor. 31 illis iuxta Ang. Pohtian in marg. Flor. 29.
847 inbeciUa Flor. 31 Camb. for inhecilia. 852 effugiat B corr. Flor. 31
5—2
68
nil, ut opinor, ubi ex aequo res funditus omnis
tam mortalis erit quam quae manifesta videmus 855
ex oculis nostris aliqua vi victa perire.
at neque reccidere ad nilum res posse neque autem
crescere de nilo testor res ante probatas.
praeterea quoniam cibus auget corpus alitque,
scire licet nobis venas et sanguen et ossa 860
sive cibos omnis commixto corpore dicent
esse et habere in se nervorum corpora parva
ossaque et omnino venas partisque cruoris,
fiet uti cibus omnis, et aridus et liquor ipse,
ex alienigenis rebus constare putetur, 865
ossibus et nervis sanieque et sanguine mixto.
praeterea quaecumque e terra corpora crescunt
si sunt in terris, terram constare necessest
ex alienigenis, quae terris exoriuntur.
transfer item, totidem verbis utare licebit. 870
in lignis si flamma latet fumusque cinisque,
ex alienigeuis consistant ligna necessest.
praeterea tellus quae corpora cumque alit, auget
* ex alienigenis, quae lignis his oriuntur.
Pont. Mar. for efficiat. 853 sanguen an ossa marg. Flor. 32 Pont. Lamb.
for sanguis an os. sanguis was unknown to Lucr. : iv 1050 sanguis unde ; vi 1203 sanguis expletis : see Lach. and add Sen, Med. 776 and Val. Flacc. m 234 sanguis. Flor. 31 does not as Lach. says read sanguis an, an «s. sanguen os aurum Lach., an awkward and improbable correction. 860 : the verse lost
here Lamb. thus supplies, Et nervos alienigenis ex partibus esse ; which must be very like what Lucr. wrote. 861 Sive Flor. 31 Camb. for Sine. corpore
Nicc. for core. 862 Esse et Nicc. for Esset. 866 sanieque. venisque
Avanc. Lamb. Lach. wrongly : see notes 2 : Avancius formed his text by cor- recting Ven. aud it and Ver. have sanisque ; heuce venis. mixto Lach. after
Mar. Ald. 1 Junt. Lamb. which have misto. mixtim PoHtian in marg. Flor. 29, which may be right. 873 here there is I believe a hiatus of two or more
verses, which I formerly supphed thus, Ex alienigenis quae tellure exoriuntur. Sic itidem quae ligna emittunt corpora, aluntur Ex cet. : comp. especially 859 — 866 and notes 2. In 874 I have added his after lignis. 1 hardly understand
Lach. who reads quae alienigenis oriuntur : see also Luc. Mueller de re metrica p, 284, who seems to prove that a monosyll. diphthong is never elided before a short vowel. Mar. Junt. followed by Gif. Creech omit both 873 and 874, Lamb. foUowed by Wak. only 873; which seems absurd: he reads in 874 lignis
I 69
Linquitur hic quaedam latitandi copia tenvis, 875
id quod Anaxagoras sibi sumit, ut omnibus omnis res putet inmixtas rebiis latitare, sed illud apparere unum cuius sint plurima mixta et magis in promptu primaque in fronte locata. quod tamen a vera longe ratione repulsumst. 880
conveniebat enim fruges quoque saepe, minaci robore cum saxi franguntur, mittere signum sanguinis aut aliquid, nostro quae corpore aluntur. 885 consimili ratione herbis quoque saepe decebat, 884 cum lapidi in lapidem terimus, manare cruorem: 885
et latices dulcis guttas similique sapore mittere, lanigerae quali sunt ubere lactis, scilicet et glebis terrarum saepe friatis herbarum genera et fruges frondesque videri dispertita in^er terram latitare minute, 890
postremo in lignis cinerem fumumque videri, cum praefracta forent, ignisque latere minutos. quorum nil fieri quoniam manifesta docet res, scire licet non esse in rebus res ita mixtas, verum semina multimodis inmixta latere 895
multarum rerum in rebus communia debent.
' At saepe in magnis fit montibus ' inquis ' ut altis arboribus vicina cacumina summa terantur inter se, validis facere id cogentibus austris, donec flammai fulserunt flore coorto'. 900
scilicet et non est lignis tamen insitus ignis, verum semina sunt ardoris multa, terendo quae cum confluxere, creant incendia silvis.
exoriuntur vnfb. Flor. 31 Camb. etc. 882 cum saxi Mar. Ald. 1 Junt. etc.
for cum in saxi. 884 885 rightly transposed by N. P. Howard : see notes 2
for explanation of the whole passage in which much needless change has been made : 884 in om. Mar. Junt. etc. ' recte, ut puto, etsi cur addita sit [praep. in\ non intellego ' Lach. terimus Nicc. for tenemus. 885 herbis. herbas
Mar. Ald. 1 Junt. Lach. vulgo. 886 latices. laticis Flor. 31 Camb. vulg.
Lach. wrongly. 887 quali B, qualis A, quales A corr. Nicc. Flor. 31
Camb. ubere. ubera Lamb. : the exact reading is uncertain. 890 inter
terram Lach. first for in terram : older editors have blundered strangely.
893 res added by Nicc. B corr. etc. 900 flammai Pont. Junt. for
flammae : a simple correction, yet overlooked by many of the later editors : even Nauger. has here deserted Junt. and reads fulserunt flammae fulgore
70
quod si facta foret silvis abscondita flamma,
non possent iillum tempus celarier ignes, 905
conficerent volgo silvas, arbusta cremarent.
iamne vides igitur, paulo quod diximus ante,
permagni referre eadem primordia saepe
cum quibus et quali positura contineantur
et quos inter se dent motus accipiantque, 910
atque eadem paulo inter se mutata creare
ignes et lignum ? quo pacto verba quoque ipsa
inter se paulo mutatis sunt elementis,
cum ligna atque ignes distincta voce notemus.
denique iam quaecumque in rebus cemis apertis 915
si fieri non posse putas, quin materiai
corpora consimili natura praedita fingas,
hac ratione tibi pereunt primordia rerum :
fiet uti risu tremulo concussa cachinnent
et lacrimis salsis umectent ora genasque. 920
Nunc age quod superest cognosce et clarius audi. nec me animi fallit quam sint obscura ; sed acri percussit thyrso laudis spes magna meum cor et simul incussit suavem mi in pectus amorem musarum, quo nunc instinctus mente vigenti 925
avia Pieridum peragro loca nullius ante trita solo. iuvat integros accedere fontis atque haurire, iuvatque uovos decerpere flores insignemque meo capiti petere inde coronam unde prius nulli velarint tempora musae ; 930
primum quod magnis doceo de rebus et artis religionum animum nodis exsolvere pergo, deinde quod obscura de re tam lucida pango carmina, musaeo contingens cuncta lepore. id quoque enim non ab nulla ratione videtur ; 935
sed vekiti pueris absinthia taetra medentes cum dare conantur, prius oras pocula circum
after Nicc. etc. 909 contineantur Nauger. for contingantiir, after Pont.
apparently ; for Victorius in lais 2nd copy of Ven. seems to imply that contimtantur of the first was his own error. 912 et B corr. Wak. for e. 918
Hac Nicc. B corr. for Haec. 919 uti rim tremnlo Nicc. for utiris ut aemitlo.
932 aniDUim. animos Lamb. Creech after Lactantius iust. i 16. Pius says 'mo-
I 71
contingunt mellis dulci flavoque liquore,
ut puerorum aetas inprovida ludificetur
labrorura tenus, interea perpotet amarum 940
absinthi laticem deceptaque non capiatur,
sed potius tali pacto recreata valescat,
sic ego nunc, quoniam haec ratio plerumque videtur
tristior esse quibus non est tractata, retroque
volgus abhorret ab hac, volui tibi suaviloquenti 945
carmine Pierio rationem exponere nostram
et quasi musaeo dulci contingere melle,
si tibi forte animum tali ratione tenere
versibus in nostris possem, dum perspicis omnem
naturam rerum qua constet compta figura. 950
Sed quoniam docui solidissima materiai corpora perpetuo volitare invicta per aevom. nunc age, summai quaedam sit finis eorum necne sit, evolvamus ; item quod inane repertumst seu locus ac spatium, res in quo quaeque gerantur, 955 pervideamus utrum finitum funditus omne constet an immensum pateat vasteque profundum.
Omne quod est igitur nulla regione viarum finitumst; namque extremum debebat habere. extremum porro nullius posse videtur 960
esse, nisi ultra sit quod finiat ; ut videatur quo non longius haec sensus natura sequatur. nunc extra summam quoniam nil esse fatendum, non habet extremum, caret ergo fine modoque. nec refert quibus adsistas regionibus eius ; 965
usque adeo, quem quisque locum possedit, in omnis tantundem partis infinitum omne relinquit. praeterea si iam finitum constituatur omne quod est spatium, siquis procurrat ad oras ultimus extremas iaciatque volatile telum, 970
id validis utrum contortum viribus ire
dulatius animos leges '. But iv 7 animum Lamb. animos Creech. 942 pacto
Heins. in ms. notes and Lach. rightly for facto. 954 Necne sit Pont. Lamb. for
nec sit. 957 vasteque Nicc. corrupted into adusque ; his followers adusque into
vel adusque ; or, as Mar. marg. Flor. 32 Ald. Junt., patefiat ad usque. 966 omiiis
Nicc. for omnus. 971 Id validis Lamb. first for Invalidis. Flor. 32 and Mar.
72 I
quo fuerit missum mavis longeque volare,
an prohibere aliquid censes obstareque posse ?
alterutrum fatearis enim sumasque necessest.
quorum utrumque tibi effugium praecludit et omne 975
cogit ut exempta concedas fine patere.
nam sive est aliquit quod probeat officiatque
quominu' quo missum est veniat finique locet se,
sive foras fertur, non est a fine profectum.
hoc pacto sequar atque, oras ubicumque locaris 980
extremas, quaeram quid telo denique fiat.
fiet uti nusquam possit consistere finis
effugiumque fugae prolatet copia semper. 998 postremo ante oculos res rem finire videtur;
aer dissaepit collis atque aera montes, 985
terra mare et contra mare terras terminat omnis;
omne quidem vero nil est quod finiat extra. 984 Praeterea spatium summai totius omne
undique si inclusum certis consisteret oris
finitumque foret, iam copia materiai 990
undique ponderibus solidis confluxet ad imuni
nec res ulla geri sub caeli tegmine posset
nec foret omnino caelum neque lumina solis. 990 quippe ubi materies omnis cumulata iaceret
ex infinito iam tempore subsidendo. 995
at nunc nimirum requies data principiorum
corporibus nullast, quia nil est funditus imum
quo quasi confluere et sedes ubi ponere possint. 995 seraper in adsiduo motu res quaeque geruntur
partibus e cunctis infernaque suppeditantur lOOO
in margin explain invalidis as valde validis. 977 cfficiat Lamb. rightly and
before him Gryphius of Lyons 1534 and 1540 for efficiat, after the constant usage of Lucr. : so Livy iv 31 5 Madvig after Faber reads offecit (mss. effecit) quominus. Lach. keeps efficiat. [But for efficiat see lex col. Genetivae 11 4 7 neve quisfacito, quo niinus ita aqua ducatur.] 981 Jiat Nicc. iox fiet. 984 — 987
(998 — 1001) I have elsewhere proved should come in this place. 989 inchisum
Nicc. for inclusus. 991 confluxet Flor. 31 first for conflnxit. 997 nullast
Pohtian in marg. Flor. 29 Ver. Ven. Heins. in ms. notes for nullas.
998 possint Ald. 1 Junt. for possit. 1000 e supplied by Mon. and Lach. is
better than in of Mar. and older editors. inferna is quite right: see Camb.
Journ. of phil. i p. 33. Lach. wrongly follows Mar. Ald. 1 Junt. Lamb. etc. in read- ing aeternaque and adds 'rei conveuieuter, quamvis secus videatur Wakefieldo et
I 71
ex infinito cita corpora materiai. I002 est igitur natura loci spatiumque profundi,
quod neque clara suo percurrere fulmina cursu
perpetuo possint aevi labentia tractu
nec prorsum facere ut restet minus ire meando: 1005
usque adeo passim patet ingens. copia rebus
finibus exemptis in cunctas undique partis.
Ipsa modum porro sibi rerum summa parare ne possit, natura tenet, quae corpus inani et quod inane autem est finiri corpore cogit, 10 10
ut sic alternis infinita omnia reddat, aut etiam alterutrum, nisi terminet alterum, eorum simplice natura pateat tamen inmoderatum.
* nec mare nec tellus neque caeli lucida templa nec mortale genus nec divum corpora sancta 10 15
exiguum possent horai sistere tempus ; nam dispulsa suo de coetu materiai copia ferretur magnum per inane soluta, sive adeo potius numquam concreta creasset ullam rem, quoniam cogi disiecta nequisset. I020
nam certe neque consilio primordia rerum ordine se suo quaeque sagaci mente locarunt
Forbigero, qui quotiens philosophantur delirant ' : an insult quite out of place here. 1008 should commence a new paragraph. 1009 inani Mar. Ald. 1 Junt. for inane. 1013 Madvig opusc. pr. p. 313 rightly supposes some verses lost here ; and long before him MaruUus did the same, as I fiud from the margin of Flor. 32 : 'credit Marullus deesse hic aHqua carmina, quae continerent transitum ab infinitate inanis ad infinitatem corporum ; in his enim Nec mare nec tellus . . .^xocxxl dubio agit de infi- nitate corporum, cum supra [953] de utroque infinito se dicturum promiserit': so that Flor. 32 gives here the more mature, at least the better judgment of MaruUus ; since the cod. Victor. has the same perverse corrections which Junt. has. Lach. places the mark of hiatus after 1012, giving a most involved explanation of tlie passage: his arrangement moreover is scarcely grammatical, as pateat is thus answered in the apodosis by imperfects and pluperfects. Indeed the lacuna does not appear to me so great as it did either to Madvig or Lach. : the poet has not only shewn already that the omne quod est, but also 988 (984) — 1007, that the omne quod est spatium is infinite: he now, 1008 foll., shews that matter is infinite. I formerly proposed roughly to supply what is wanting thus, Sed spatium supra docui sinefine patere. Si finita igitur summa esset materiai, Nec mare cet. 1023 the last four words are rightly supplied by Mar. and Junt. from v 421 : the mss. here repeat the last three of 1022. Avancius blunders sadly, doubtless from not understanding
74
nec quos quaeque darent motus pepigere profecto,
sed quia multa modis multis mutata per omne
ex infinito vexantur percita plagis, 1025
omne genus motus et coetus experiundo
tandem deveniunt in talis disposituras,
qualibus haec rerum consistit summa creata,
et multos etiam magnos servata per annos
ut semel in motus coniectast convenientis, 1030
efficit ut largis avidum mare fluminis undis
integrent amnes et solis terra vapore
fota novet fetus summissaque gens animantum
floreat et vivant labentes aetheris ignes ;
quod nullo facerent pacto nisi materiai 1035
ex infinito suboriri copia posset,
unde amissa solent reparare in tempore quaeque.
nam veluti privata cibo natura animantum
diffluit amittens coi^pus, sic omnia debent
dissokii simul ac defecit suppeditare 1040
materies aliqua ratione aversa viai.
nec plagae possunt extrinsecus undique summam
conservare omnem quaecumque est conciliata.
cudere enim crebro possunt partemque morari,
dum veniant aliae ac suppleri summa queatur. 1045
interdum resilii-e tamen coguntur et una
principiis rerum spatium tempusque fugai
largiri, ut possint a coetu libera ferri.
quare etiam atque etiam suboriri multa necessest,
et tamen ut plagae quoque possint suppetere ipsae, 1050
infinita opus est vis undique materiai.
Illud in his rebus longe fuge credere, Memmi, in medium summae, quod dicunt, omnia niti, atque ideo mundi naturam stare sine ullis ictibus extemis neque quoquam posse resolvi 1055
what he is taking from others. 1028 rerum Faber and Bentl. from v 194 most
rightly for rehus. 1033 summissaque Pont. Mar. Junt. for summaque. 1034
Floreat Flor. 31 Camb, etc. iox floreant. 1040 Dissolui Nicc. B corr. for Disso-
luit. 1041 viai B corr. vulgo for via. viaque Lach. : but ratione viaque surely
means ' by method and system ' : see Cic. de fin. i 29 ut ratione et via procedat oratio. 1047 Principiis Mar. Junt. for principium. 1061 Et simili. Lach. reads
I 7S
summa atque ima, quod in mcdium sint omnia nixa :
ipsum si quicquam posse in se sistere credis :
et quae pondcra sunt sub terris omnia sursum
nitier in terraque retro requiescere posta,
ut per aquas quae nunc rerum simulacra videmus. 1060
et simili ratione animalia suppa vagari
contendunt neque posse e terris in loca caeli
reccidere inferiora magis quam corpora nostra
sponte sua possint in caeli templa volare ;
illi cum videant solem, nos sidcra noctis 1065
cernere, et alternis nobiscum tcmpora caeli
dividere et noctes parilis agitare diebus.
sed vanus stolidis haec
amplexi quod habent perv
nara medium nil esse potest I070
infinita, neque omnino, si iam medium sit
possit ibi quicquam consistere
quam quavis alia longe ratione
omnis enim locus ac spatium quod 'm.ane vocamus
per medium per non medium concedere debet 1075
aeque ponderibus, motus quacumque feruntur.
nec quisquam locus est, quo corpora cum •venerunt,
ponderis amissa vi possint stare in inani;
Adsimili and joins with it the preceding verse, putting a full stop at posta. I think him quite wrong : the simile is exactly the same as iv 418, where also Lach. makes unnecessary changes. 1068 — 1075 : these 8 mutilated verses came at
the beginning of p. 45 of the archetype ; and the ends were therefore at the outer margin. B and Gott. omit them altogether, but append a cross and viii. Nicc. gives them imperfect as in A. The later mss. Ald. 1, Junt. after Mar., Lamb. com- plete them in various ways. I formerly suggested in 1068 error falsa prohavit or error somnia Jinxit : 1069 perversa rem ratione : 1070 qiiando omnia constant, or with li&ch. ubi summa profundist : 1072 eammagis ob rem: 1073 repelli. 1073 Lach.
reads alio for alia, and proposes meare at end, and malle putari in 1072: he declines to prophesy in 1068 and 1069. 1071 Mar. Junt. most truly neque omnino si
iam medium sit for denique omnino si iam. 1074 the end is supphed by Mar.
Ald. 1 and Junt. 1075 debet Wak., oportet older corr. 1076 Aeque Junt.
for aequis which Wak. absurdly defends. 1078 in added by Mar. Ald. 1 Junt.
1082 concilio Mar. Junt. for concilium, the m coming from medii. concilium.. .vectae Lach. which seems less poetical. vinctae Bentl. 1085 1086 are transposed by Mar. and Junt. foUowed by all before Lach. : but Ussing, Tidsskr. for Philol. vi, has rightly seen that a v. is lost before 1085, which comparing vi 495 I would thus supply Et quae de supero in terram mittuntur ut imbres.
^e
nec quod inane autem est ulli subsistere debet, quin, sua quod natura petit, concedere pergat, . haud igitur possunt tali ratione teneri res in concilio medii cuppedine victae.
Praeterea quoniam non omnia corpora fingunt in medium niti, sed terrarum, atque liquoris
1080
et quasi terreno quae corpore contineantur,
umorem ponti magnasque e montibus undas,
at contra tenuis exponunt aeris auras
et calidos simul a medio differrier ignis,
atque ideo totum circum tremere aethera siguis
et solis flammam per caeli caerula pasci,
quod calor a medio fugiens se ibi conhgat omnis,
nec prorsum arboribus summos frondescere ramos
posse, nisi a terris paulatim cuique cibatum
1085
1090
1095
IIOO
1091 se ibi Wak. for sihi. 1094 — 1101 : A has faithfully left a blank space
for these eight lost verses : they came at the beginning of p. 46 of the lost arche- type ; the eight mutilated lines above having headed the page on the otlier side of the leaf ; Lach. therefore most justly concludes that this part of the leaf in the original of oiir mss. was by some accident torn away. Both the old ms. collations of A and B which I possess mention this lacuna : Heinsius says 'in A octo versuum hiatus erat relictus ' : the less careful Vossius, though the manuscript was his own, merely says ' vide ms. in quo hiatus post haec verba '. Think now of Havercamp, a Pro- fessor in the TJniversity where A and B then were, never noting this fact, but inserting the miserable makeshift verse of Mar. and Junt. Terra det : at supra circum tegere omnia caelum ; stealing the critical note of the Loudon bookseller's edition,