Three critical notes on the Metamorphoses of Apuleius

Extract

The process of giving greater credence to the codices has been constant in editions of Apuleius from the last century to the present day. Accordingly, the following suggestions are proposed.

I

et statim miser ut cum ilia adquieui, ab unico congressu annosam ac pestilentem con<dicionem> contraho.

And at the very moment when I—wretch that I am!—lay with her, from that one relationship, I contracted this interminable and miserable condition.

condicionem contraho scripsi: con contraho Fø: coniunctionem c. Chodaczek: consuetudinem c. van der Vliet: contagionem c. Lütjohann: cladem c. Helm: luem c. Heinsius: contraho adfectionem Novák con dittographiam putans, cf. 8.14.1 (187.22): noxam ante annosam Giarratano, post annosam Birt

In this case, where a word is obviously missing and the mysterious con appears, there are two general possibilities for correcting the text: con may be taken as a dittograph for contraho or considered to be part of the missing word. Another approach would be to interpret contraho differently: the verb can apply to a disease (as proposed by Lütjohann and Heinsius—followed by Hildebrand—no doubt swayed by pestilentem), harm or misfortune (meaning: ‘draw misfortune upon oneself’, as in the later sentence nequam tibi lingua intemperante noxam contrahas [Helm, Giarratano, and Birt]), a custom (more or less following van der Vliet and Novák) or marriage (Chodaczek). The solutions offered by van der Vliet, in particular, and Novák are reasonable: other commentators have been led astray by the sentence I have quoted, assuming that what is missing is something like ‘harm', ‘misfortune’.