The Extant Works of Macrobius, Vol. 2

they labor, I was not even able to add, as is customary, the accents to indicate them. Concerning the Plautine passage which is read in Sat. III, 16, 2, I recently consulted F. RITSCHEL, and I cannot but set down here what he communicated to me out of his exceptional kindness.

That distinguished man says that those verses of the Baccaria (for such is how the name of the farce is to be written) are commonly held to be Saturnians, and that verses of that kind can be established roughly thus:

Quis mórtalist tantá for|túna afféctus úmquam
Quam ego núnc sum quótus véntri | haéc portátur pómpa?
Vel híc qui míhi acipénser | látuit in mari ántehac
Eius látus in látebras réddam | déntibús et mális.

But since it was entirely improbable that Plautus had composed Saturnian verses, and there was no need for a violent, or rather, [only] a light alteration to produce perfect iambic septenarii—the meter which it is agreed that poet used most frequently—he thought these verses ought to be written rather thus:

Quis ést mortalis tám bona fortúna affectus úmquam
Quam ego núnc sum, quoius haec [dápsilis] ventri portatur pómpa?
Vel híce qui mihi in mari — acipénser latuit ántehac,
In látebras eius reddám latus meis déntibus et mális.

Bona fortuna is read similarly in the Aulularia (I, 3, 22.), in Cicero (in Verr. IV, 3, 7.), and often in inscriptions. F. B. Vel (v. 3.) he says is the same as velut, and vel hic sic is read also elsewhere, as in Menaech. V, 2, 119. In the last verse, the arrangement of words Eius in latebras reddam latus is less to be approved. From the word manibus, which would be read falsely in Macrobius, maxillis is too remote: mandibulis could hardly be attributed to that age, but even malis could easily have been changed into that word: dentibus, with the final syllable lengthened, is not to be criticized in Plautus.

The matters treated in the books of the Saturnalia demanded a more extensive annotation; but I have nevertheless kept to the method I proposed for myself. I preferred to interpret what Macrobius wrote—using, for the most part, the words of the ancient writers, as far as my limited resources allowed—rather than anxiously inquire whether the things he taught were true: for if I had wished to do that everywhere, I would scarcely have found an end, especially in mythological matters and in the interpretations of the words of Virgil; but I did not omit by design that kind of thing which had been debated by others in other places *).

Nostri maiores, véluti bene multa ínstituere, hoc óptime,
a frígore summo fécere dies séptem Saturnália.

*) To Sat. V, 18, 2 sqq. you should add that which very recently (Neue Jahrb. f. Phil.