The traces of real, that is, ancient, rival versions of Terence's lines are not so pronounced as of Plautus' lines. Professor Lindsay has drawn attention to a possible instance at Hec. 468 (‘Notes on the Text of Terence,’ C.Q. Vol. XIX., No. i, p. 33). Another seems to be Andr. 532 (‘atque adeo in ipso tempore ecce ipsum [obuiam] Cbremem’), if I am right in supposing that the text used by Donatus had ipsum Chremem. A trace of the variant survives in the unmetrical δ-setting ipsum obuiam Chremem DGL. The text of the other minuscule MSS. has ipsum obuiam. A is not in evidence for this part of Andria. Had it too ipsum Chremem ?

CATVLLVS LXVIII. 157 contains a crux in the last word which has continued to defy editors. In ending his long elegy to Manlius, Catullus showers his gratitude upon him and all who have served him in his first efforts to meet Lesbia:

Sitis felices et tu simul et tua uita

et domus, in qua nos lusimus, et domina

et qui principio nobis terram dedit aufert

a quo sunt primo omnia nata bona.

Cistifero was the reading of A and B, but for want of a satisfactory interpretation of it, or indeed any evidence for it, cistibero (from CA) has been preferred. Hirschfeld, who first brought this forward (in Hermes, 1889, p. 106; cf. Heraeus, Rhein. Mus., 1899, p. 309), explained it as meaning one of the ‘quinqueuiri cis Tiberim,’ a low official contrasting effectively with the senator of Gellia's dreams. It seems worth while to call attention (without prejudice) to the Abstrusa gloss (C.G.L. IV. 192, 27),‘Vicorum et cistifer nomina sunt metallorum’ There seems to be no doubt that the first word should be uiocurus (cf. IV. 194, 8; V. 613, 44); and in theNotae Tironianae (XXXVI. 94–5) uiocurus and cistifer stand thus in succession at the end ofa list of officials. Heraeus thinks the author of the gloss must have confused the words with cistophorus and uictoriatus; but would he be likely to write metallorum for ‘coins’ ? For this last word in the gloss magistratuum has been proposed, a somewhat violent change even in a glossary. I suggest metatorum; cf.Abstr. 116, 17,‘Metatores: mansionum praeparatores.’ Was cistifer perhaps the title of a low-grade official who had something (but what?) to do on the staff of a quartermaster?

So far as I am aware, the commentators on the above passage(Horace, Epp. I. 16, 73 sqq.)all say that it is imitated from Euripides, Bacchae 492 sqq., and the commentators on Euripides, loc. cit., agree. It seems to me, however, that there is reason to suppose them all wrong; not of course that there is no connexion between the two passages, for there most obviously is, but that Horace is not imitating the Greek directly, but an imitation or adaptation of it by Pacuvius.

The various attempts to make sense of ‘sequitur,’ e.g. Palmer ‘naturally follows,’ taking pudor as subject and amorem as object, seem to me most unsatisfactory. Sedlmayer reads ‘quitur’ which Palmer calls ‘mira coniectura.’ But it is obvious that as far as sense and transcriptional probability go the correction is excellent, and also that since a passive infinitive is understood, it is grammatically right or at least would be if we found it in Lucretius. The only, and it may be thought fatal, objection is that this passive use of potestur, quitur, nequitur, etc., has not been found in any writ er later than Lucretius, with the possible and not very relevant exception of Apuleius. Birt, the original author of the conjecture, met this objection by adducing other archaisms in Ovid. My purpose here is not to discuss these, but to add to them the fact that Quintilian did not consider that quitur was obsolete