Attic Nights

At times he adapts Gellius's less common diction to the well-worn laws of grammar, as in I 3, 16 "by the end" instead of the rarer usage, 8, 5 "of denarii," 12, 14 "and to the Quirites," 16, 15 "they were turning," or he introduces more common words in place of rare ones, such as "neighboring" or "contrary" in I 2, 4, or "to have been" in place of "to have stood" in 11, 13, or "not to be spurned" in place of "to be held in contempt" in 19, 8. He does not even hesitate to introduce larger changes, attempting to unravel and explain a thought implied by words of more obscure meaning, as in I 3, 13: "Since therefore, he says, either the case is pleaded for the sake of a friend's status and reputation"; 5, 2: "more precise clothing"; 6, 8: "If they see us erring, they disinherit us of their goods... unless we put an end to our wanderings"; 18, 1: "Just as it was made Latin before"; 21, 5: "It was discovered and he did not spurn it," etc. Therefore, unless we emphasize minor corrections like 3, 16 "they teach," 7, 1 "in a book" (7, 17 "in number"), 16, 11 "a thousand," 21, 4 "a stone," X 21, 2 "some," his sole authority lies in patching up the lacunae. For just as he exhibits the end of I 2 and the beginning of 3—albeit not without discrepancy from A—so he hands down more in I 9, 6; 11, 4; 8; 12, 11; 21, 4; 22, 5; XVIII 9, and others. I think that concerning some of these places, there will be a dispute under judgment. Indeed, he seems to have correctly preserved in I 11, 4: "and delightful and even venerable," which is mutilated in the others due to the similar cadence of the sentence, and for the same reason I 9, 6: "musical astrology," 11, 8: "but of minds and spirits," 12, 11: "and of which—is done XVII 2, 13 from—travel money" (with Z). But in I 1, 3, I have not accepted into the text the words "how great a distance of the body might correspond to that measure," following Hertz, thinking that he amplified the words due to an excessive brevity not unusual for Gellius, an external cause, so to speak, with no gap. For the same reason in I 8, 3: "it was demanding however, that too much, how much it increased, to what extent it was difficult to give, a manifest handle of corruption." 1) That "it was demanding too much, how much" seems to be expressed from Terence, Phormio 642: "I yield, what does he demand? What? Too much, how much." Gellius loves to affect the color of antiquity with the phrases of comic (and tragic) poets; see the places I have cited regarding VII 13, 2; IX 9, 15; XI 16, 3; XII 1, 17; 7, 1; XVI 3, 2; XIX 8, 1 and others, and, which did not escape the sagacity of Skutsch, II 22, 25 "since I have drunk a little more" = Terence, Heauton Timorumenos 220. Regarding the archaism of Gellius, see C. Knapp, "Archaism in A. Gell-"