Astronomicon

task confronting him. For his benefit and intimidation let me point out one small part of it. The following words, II 750 cuncta all things, III 32 casus chance, 274 ora shores/mouths, IV 680 hanc this, V 157 uero in truth, 198 sese itself, and many lesser ones, now printed in all editions, are absent from LM and repose on the sole authority of GL².

What may be the origin of genuine readings which were neither in α nor in β, and how they found their way into G or GL², I do not know, and therefore, having no inkling of Ueberlieferungsgeschichte history of textual transmission, I will not pretend to know. If I formulate an hypothesis which would explain the facts, I beg that it may not be called my hypothesis. These readings, then, may have been in the margin of the archetype; they may thence have been copied into the margin of α and not of β, and thence into the text of γ and not of L. Catullus affords a parallel. The variants in the margin of his archetype were ignored by O but survive in the margins of G and R, whence some of them, even though obviously corrupt, have found their way into the text of later MSS manuscripts. At 64 23 O has simply mater mother, G and R have mater with the variant matre by the mother, which is nearer to the true reading matrum of the mothers preserved in the Veronese scholia of Virgil; and this matre, though meaningless, appears in the text of Laur. xxxiii 12. At 1 8 O has libelli little books, G libelli al. mei little books, variant: my [books], Laur. mei, unmetrical though it is. At 64 324 O has only tutum opus safe work, G and R have also the marginal variant tu tamen opis you, however, of [his] help, which a few MSS therefore exhibit in their text. And in Manilius three or four of G's true and unique readings are offered by itself as variants: I 26 munera uel e gifts or e, II 584 leuis uel lis light or suit, V 372 nitidos clamare uel nidis damnare to call the shining [ones] or to condemn to nests, 408 insitor uel institor grafter or peddler. This hypothesis however will hardly account for what we find at V 545, where the virtue of G resides in the mere absence of an interpolated word; and there it is conceivable that solaque and alone without in was the reading of the archetype, preserved in α and transmitted to G, and that β and L hit independently on the same false conjecture.

There are about 20 MSS of the 15^th century beside M. M's only progeny are URH and the latter and larger part of V. All the rest, so far as known, are descendants of α and apparently of the Cusanus.* This strain is pure, or virtually so, in the first part of V, in Voss. 1, and in the Venetian cod. Marc. xii 69 whence some lections are

There are none of G, and the Venetus seems to have perished without issue; for its agreement here and there with later MSS, I 90 alias otherwise Flor. Bodl., II 565 agitat it stirs Par., III 4 indictos unspoken Par. Bodl. Caesen., 607 per through Flor., 641 riget it is stiff Flor., V 223 concita aroused Flor., may easily be coincidence in conjecture. Mr Garrod's statement, p. liv, that Bentley's δ has I 13 altum deep, 813 euentus outcome, II 29 solantem consoling, is an error.