Notes on the Abstrvsa Glossary and the Liber Glossarvm

Extract

The Abstrusa glossary consists to a great extent of glosses extracted apparently from the margins of a Virgil MS., which contained not merely explanations of difficult words but many long scholia taken from ancient commentators such as Donatus and Servius. In its original form it was probably much larger than it appears in C.G.L. IV. The process of curtailment is visible in the MSS. we possess. Moreover, the Liber Glossarum and other glossaries borrowed freely from it, and often show its glosses in a fuller form. It is reasonable to suppose that many glosses of the kind described above, which are found in the Liber Glossarum (with the sign DE GLS., i.e. ‘taken from glossaries’) and sometimes elsewhere, belonged to the Abstrusa glossary, though they do not appear in the edition of it which has survived. (See Lindsay, C.Q. XI. 120 sqq.) Some of the following notes will show how these principles help to clear up difficulties which arise in the investigation of individual items.