The Comedies of Plautus, Vol. I (T. Macci Plauti Comoediae)

Because I was ordered, for the sake of young students, to standardize the orthography, it pleased me to continue throughout all the plays the orthography that we can elicit from the best testimony of the manuscripts in the later plays. For that method in an edition of this kind is perhaps better than to follow in the first eight plays a standardization from some unknown scriptorium1 Cf. ad Asin. 589, 593. Traces of antiquity are rarely preserved in this part except through ignorance, like that quo iusserat (Capt. 887) which was for quoius, since that corrector (B³) was incurious about ancient orthography. of the Middle Ages. Therefore, I have always written caussa, quoi, opsecro, optineo, maxumus, optumus (but minimus), and similar things; but wherever a variety of orthography appeared, as in aio and aiio, quoius (in the genitive case) and quoiïus, I have either followed the writing of the manuscripts (aio Capt. 710, aiio Cas. 71) or seized the opportunity to consult the readers and designate prosodic variety through orthographic variety. Know, therefore, that with the customary spelling quoius the customary prosody2 Either the monosyllabic 'quoius' or the bibrevis 'quŏyŭs.' For 'grammarians disagree, and the matter is still under judgment.' of the genitive is expressed, while with the spelling quoiïus a trochaic one is expressed; furthermore, that immutatum signifies 'changed,' while inmutatum signifies 'unchanged.' However, forms that are either too unknown (e.g., quomqueneiscam for conquiniscam Cist. 657) or ambiguous (e.g., quom as a preposition, quit and nequit for quid and nequid, perierat for pei(i)erat, ei for i long in the imperative ei, aureis in the acc. plur., deicere) I preferred either to discard silently or, if they seemed worthy of mention, to relegate from the text to the annotation; for in an edition of this kind, the convenience of the readers seemed more valuable than strict consistency3 I always wrote vaco, but in Cas. 527 I could not help but write vocent: Fac habeant linguam tuae aedes. Quid íta? Quom ueniam, uocent. or the preservation of the traditional spelling. I have also adjusted the division of words to the explanation of the meter, such as sī quidem4 I have kept the separate spelling, as being more common, wherever doubt seemed to exist. and sĭquidem, tū quidem and tŭquidem...