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

of the Palatine recension was accustomed to change the forms amatust he is loved, amatast she is loved in such a way that the true order has often been disturbed (e.g., Casina 620 nostrast domo it is our house] nostra domo est P P is our house; Casina 878 puditumst umquam it has ever been shameful] puditum umquam est P); from which it will be clear that no faith should be given to the Palatine recension against the authority of the Ambrosian in Cistellaria 120 and similar passages. Nor will those readers who, in lines 556 and 567 of the play Trinummus, discovered that the Palatine scribe fell into the same error twice (dixisti for dixti), hesitate to condemn him for the same error in line 602 and reconstruct the verse thus:

But I have spoken elsewhere (Journ. Phil. 26, 290) about this method of emending¹. Here it is enough to profess that I have frequently left the choice to the judgment of Paleography between that great mass of conjectures which you will find in the larger Teubner edition, so that I have awarded the palm among equals to that reading which could most easily have assumed the form that appears in the codices from the customary errors of our scribes².

in Chapter III those from omissions, in IV those from additions, in V those from words similar to one another confused, in VI those from forms of letters, and in VII those from forms of abbreviations or shorthand scripts. I say this for the sake of those who do not wish to pursue paleographical matters further. For in the annotation, I have repeatedly cited this or that section of this or that chapter; for example, at Aulularia 659 intro inside] 'hinc intro cod. (iv. 3)'—the numbers enclosed within brackets refer to the third section of the fourth chapter, where it is narrated that scribes were accustomed to read a word in the exemplar too hastily, transcribe it wrongly, then, having immediately recognized the error, leave the wrongly transcribed word, and place the correctly transcribed one nearby. If anyone therefore wishes the whole matter explained, let him turn to the booklet; if he does not wish to pursue these trifles, it will be enough to know the error arose from the faulty addition of a word.

¹ [Following these writings, I now add that in a booklet soon to be published ('Ancient Editions of Plautus', Parker, Oxford, 1903), I have treated the whole matter more fully and have argued about the readings of many passages (an index of which is at the end of the booklet).]
² Therefore, if any citation of my booklet in the annotation seems superfluous at first glance, believe that I am offering it as a kind of argument as to why I have preferred the reading that is in the text over other conjectures.