Comedies

It is typical of the Palatine recension to alter forms like amatust and amatast he/she is loved in such a way that the true order is often disrupted (e.g., Casina 620, nostrast domo our house] nostra domo est in manuscript P; Casina 878, puditumst umquam ever ashamed] puditum umquam est in P). From this, it will be clear that no trust should be placed in the Palatine recension against the authority of the Ambrosian palimpsest in Cistellaria 120 and similar cases. Nor will those readers who have detected that the Palatine scribe fell twice into the same error in lines 556 and 567 of the Trinummus (dixisti for dixti) hesitate to convict him of the same error in line 602 and reconstruct the verse as follows:

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 Palaeography between that great crowd of conjectures found in the larger Teubner edition, in such a way that I have awarded the palm to the reading among peers which could most easily have taken the form appearing in the manuscripts from the customary errors of our scribes².

...positions, in the third [chapter] from omissions, in the fourth from additions, in the fifth from words similar to one another being confused, in the sixth from forms of letters, and in the seventh from forms of abbreviations or shorthand notations. I say this for the sake of those who do not wish to pursue the palaeographical matter further. For in the annotations, I have repeatedly cited this or that part of this or that chapter; for example, at Aulularia 659, intro inside] 'hinc intro hence inside in the codex (iv. 3)'. The numbers enclosed within parentheses refer to the third part of the fourth chapter, where it is narrated that scribes were accustomed to read a word in the exemplar too hastily, transcribe it incorrectly, then, upon immediately recognizing the error, leave the incorrectly transcribed word, and place the correctly transcribed one beside it. If anyone, therefore, wishes to have the whole matter explained, they should turn to the booklet; if they do not wish to follow these trifles, it will suffice to recognize the error arising from the perverse addition of a word.

¹ [After these things were written, I now add that I have treated the whole matter more fully in a booklet ('Ancient Editions of Plautus', Parker, Oxford, 1903) which is soon to be published, and have discussed the readings of many passages (an index of which is at the end of the booklet).]
² If therefore any citation of my booklet in the annotation seems superfluous at first...