Comedies

PREFACE

for I did not want to impose a character upon Latin comedies other than that of the Greek ones; at the same time, I was persuaded that those marks were the reason why most scholars felt wrongly1 about the Plautine metric ictus. I have, however, the less hesitated to throw away those troublesome marks from this edition, and not to use them unless to indicate roughnesses (I do not say corruptions) in the text,2 because it seemed to me that I had explained the more difficult meters quite clearly through the very extensive Schemes of Meters added at the end of both volumes.

This brought more doubt: by what right should I claim a place for a new edition of Plautine plays? For

however, do all acknowledge the latter. For my part, I have explained fully elsewhere what I think ('Journ. Phil.' 27, 200). Know, therefore, that in the text of this edition I signify a hiatus that is legitimate in my judgment with marks added, but with a straight line a hiatus that is either entirely false or suspect. Even in this matter, I have used continuous and separated word writing to indicate prosodic variety; e.g., circumit (or circuit) has three syllables, circum it two, introeo four, intro eo three. In phrases like flagitium hominis, ita me di ament, and similar ones, which always exhibit hiatus in Plautine verses (and naturally in the daily speech of his age), there was no reason why I should use marks; nor more so in the so-called acrostic Arguments, in which hiatus is in use. Also in the prologues, which are not always Plautine, both hiatus and other things that Plautus himself would have rejected are perhaps to be tolerated (cf. to Cas. prol. 23, Cist. arg. 10, Amph. arg. I 7), whence it happens that in the prologues I have often used a mark where in the rest of the play that straight line would have been used.

1: For there are those today (believe it, posterity!) who seriously affirm that the force of the metric ictus was so great that in a Plautine verse (though not in the daily speech of the Plautine age) 'amĭca' could become from amīca (Stich. 700), 'abĭre' from abīre (Trin. 983), 'venĭre' from venīre (Truc. 504), 'duŏbus' from duōbus (Cas. 1011, Mil. 290), 'deŏrum', 'deărum', 'duŏrum' from deōrum, deārum, duōrum (Mil. 736, Pseud. 5), 'eămus' from eāmus (Men. 387), 'diĕbus' from diēbus (Poen. 1207). It is shameful to bring forward more. For wherever a short syllable appears in a Plautine verse, they seem to believe that Plautus could 'place that syllable under the metric ictus' (for so they are accustomed to speak) so that the following syllable would become short from long. See those things which I have written elsewhere (Berl. Phil. Woch. 22, 842) about this prosody which the Muse finds utterly hateful, unpleasant, and hideous, and useless.

2: Whence you also have this benefit, that you easily understand to what the conjectures of learned men mentioned in the annotation point.