On the Latin Language, Vol. I

There is a serious transposition in F, in the text of Book V. In § 23, near the end, after qui ad humum which [reaches] to the ground, there follows ut Sabini as the Sabines, now in § 32, and so on to Septimontium the Seven Hills, now in § 41; then comes demissior lower, now in § 23 after humum, and so on to ab hominibus by men, now in § 32, after which comes nominatum named of § 41. Mueller,In the preface to his edition, pp. xvii-xviii. The disorder in the text had previously been noticed by G. Buchanan, Turnebus, and Scaliger, and discussed by L. Spengel, Emendationum Varronianarum Specimen I Specimen of Varronian Emendations I, pp. 17-19. who identified the transposition and restored the text to its true order in his edition, showed that the alteration was due to the wrong folding of folios 4 and 5 in the first quaternion of an archetype of F; though this was not the immediate archetype of F, since the amount of text on each page was different.

This transposition is now always rectified in our printed texts; but there is probably another in the later part of Book V., which has not been remedied because the breaks do not fall inside the sentences, thus making the text unintelligible. The sequence of topics indicates that v. 115-128 should stand between v. 140 and v. 141;L. Spengel, Emendationum Varronianarum Specimen I Specimen of Varronian Emendations I, pp. 13-19, identified this transposition, but considered the transpositions to be much more complicated, with the following order: §§ 105-114, §§ 129-140, § 128, §§ 166-168, §§ 118-127, §§ 115-117, §§ 141-165, § 169 on. there is then the division by topics: