Notes On Festvs

Extract

In the Teubner edition, just published, I had to reduce the apparatus criticus to the smallest possible dimensions. All conjectures that were merely probable and not fairly certain had to be excluded. Some of them that are new may find a place here. There is only one MS. of Festus′ epitome of Verrius. It is now at Naples, and is said to have been found in Illyria. Dr. E. A. Loew, the leading authority on Italian script, tells us that it was written at Rome towards the end of the eleventh century. It must have been rescued (in Illyria?) from a fire; for the outer edges of all the pages are burned away, so that the greater part of the outer of the two columns on each page has been lost. The chief task for editors is to fill up by conjecture these gaps in the outer columns. Scaliger won immortal fame in this work, although many of his conjectures merely followed out a suggestion of his predecessor, Augustini. Ursini and Miiller were of service in adapting to the conditions of space the stop-gaps of Scaliger, and both of them, chiefly Miiller, added excellent conjectures of their own. The conjectural supplements, printed in italics in Müller's edition, have often, especially in German students′ dissertations, been treated as if they were actually part of the text. The Hungarian editor, Emil Thewrewk, who first provided satisfactory manuscript material for Paulus′ epitome of Festus, in order to prevent this error, took the extreme course of omitting these supplements in his edition; although many of them are made absolutely certain by the words of Paulus. I have taken a middle course between Miiller and Thewrewk and have admitted the certain and the probable supplements, leaving blanks elsewhere. The supplements are printed within angular brackets, the merely probable supplements being in italic type.