De Abusu linguae Graecae

he has been criticized in this place of his previous Annotations on the Pandects: original: "His Pandectis coagmentandis septem & triginta iurisconsulti symbolas contulerunt: ex quorum verbis Digestorum leges, velut centones, confarcinatae sunt." "Thirty-seven legal experts contributed their symbolas contributions to the compiling of these Pandects; from their words the laws of the Digests were patched together like patchwork quilts." Indeed, even this passage seems to be able to testify that he read both symbolam contribution and symbolas contributions in those places which were produced. Meanwhile, I am not unaware that there were those who, having been warned about this error in Terence, said that symbolum token/ring could be understood as a ring. And certainly, I think a bad case cannot be defended better than in that way, and that is because of a certain passage in the Eunuchus Eunuch (play by Terence), and because we have learned from Pliny that symbolum was also said specifically of a ring. But the passage of Plautus stands against any prevarication: and I shall teach in the following that Donatus also accepted the other meaning (which both suits the passage and immediately comes to the reader’s mind).

It is less surprising that our ancestors stumbled at this cliff than that there are many now who still stumble at it. It is even much more surprising that the authority of that Lexicon—which preceded my Thesaurus Graecae linguae Treasury of the Greek Language—confirms this (if, indeed, the authority of a lexicon convicted of nearly countless errors should or can have any weight).