Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
What is the dry garment which Sceparnio offers to the sea-soaked Charmides? First of all, there is doubt about the spelling of the word. The Palatine tradition is tigillum, though T has tixillum; the Ambrosian palimpsest is provokingly defective at this point and Studemund was unable to determine whether the vowel is e or i. Since the beginning of the sixteenth century editors have chosen to print tegillum, being influenced by notes preserved in the collections of two grammarians—Nonius and Paulus. I quote these from Lindsay's Teubner editions.
page 277 note 1 ‘Nonius, Tegillum, diminutivum a tigno, alias a tecto. fortasse demonstrat fustem, quo verberari solebat’ (Paris, 1576).
page 277 note 2 As well as making the usual references to Festus and Nonius, Taubmann cites Apuleius (Met. 9. 12). In his Verisimilia (Antwerp, 1582), ii. 5 Guilielmus had proposed that tegili should be altered to tegillo, an improbable emendation which continues to burden the apparatus of modern editions (e.g. Budé, Paravia, Teubner).