Varro: On the Latin Language (De Lingua Latina)

can only be noted from the index of Jerome, Goetz conjectured that Peter included among the six preserved books the three sent to Septumius, which are commemorated at the very beginning of Book V: and that conjecture is confirmed by the similar errors of others, concerning which Spengel (preface² p. IX) compiled certain points. Finally, one must not overlook the agreement of form between that codex, which exhibits the Varronian fragment along with Frontinus and Vegetius, and F itself: for both, as Keil already pointed out in his commentary (p. 434), are oblong in quarto, whereas otherwise, in the codices of the monastery of Monte Cassino, imperial folios with two columns are the norm. Since all these things agree so remarkably with one another, we can affirm, even more confidently than Keil, that Peter the Deacon took his excerpts from the very codex F at Monte Cassino and that from there the same unique book was later transported to Florence.1 Nor does it cause us any hesitation in this inquiry that the same Spengel, who brought forward a most lucid argument for this matter, nonetheless decided (l. s. s. p. 481 sq. — with the agreement of Groth in his Strasbourg dissertation p. [81] 3) that the fragment was drawn not from F itself, but rather from its source. He reached this conclusion from one specific correction which he did not admit could be owed to conjecture, even though he himself conceded that the epitomizer—whom we can identify as Peter the Deacon—must necessarily have been learned enough to have prudently chosen a most weighty fragment from the slenderness of the work (how much this fits the studies of Peter the Deacon we have just explained). And that he acutely corrected consederunt they sat together for conserunt they sow/join and other things, a learned man readily grants: and this clearly appears on p. 14, 15, where he supplied ibidem in the same place, even though ibi there would suffice, and earlier Albanorum of the Albans—as Spengel also once did—beside the point. But as for the fact that at 15, 11 he exhibited aceleuiben n a instead of aceleuiben n o, it can hardly be believed that he restored that very rare Etruscan name by his own effort, but rather that it was taken from this exemplar. But even if we concede that the name Caeles Vibenna was hardly, if at all, known to the epitomizer—whom we can name as Peter the Deacon—nevertheless, from the analogy of the most well-known names such as Perpenna and Spurinna—about which Varro speaks in these very books—Porsenna and others, he could spontaneously infer

¹ In passing, we touch upon the fact that in orthographical matters there are things that seem to betray an Italian scribe. For example, the fact that oscur. exists at 4, 15 before correction and at 106, 11 without correction (cf. also istitutus begun at 85, 11). Now at 62, 8, although Spengel (preface² p. VIII sq.) not unjustly opines that F offered diti rather than dicti, it is by no means correct to refer it to Diti, which could not be supported in any way: for it must be referred to the pronunciation by which later speakers said Otobrem and similar things. To this we add vices that should be referred to the sound of the letters g and j, such as ierusia for ger. 47, 18 (cf. ierofante and gerofante and the like) and 69, 10 abigebat for aiebat (from agiebat), and the like. Similarly, the epitomizer at 17, 14 put g for j, correctly accepting l for i in F (whence the correction in the notes). We shall speak of other orthographical matters later.