This paper analyses the probability of a reading so far neglected by editors in Lactantius Placidus’ late antique commentary on Stat. Theb. 5.16. Next, the article argues that, regardless of the accepted reading, this part of the scholium is likely an interpolation.

This paper identifies a neglected manuscript, Viterbo, Centro Diocesano di Documentazione, Capitolare 51, as the extant archetype of the Libri Romani version of the glossary of Placidus. It first demonstrates that R is the parent of the three witnesses to the Libri Romani text used by editors, and it considers the implications of the neglected manuscript for future editions of the text. It then corroborates the importance of R by tracing its travels in humanistic and antiquarian circles in Italy (...) in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This history provides a framework for future research on the textual transmission of the Libri Romani text of Placidus. (shrink)

The Placidus Glossary was hailed in Ritschl's time as a new clue to Plautus' true text. And Buecheler, Ritschl's pupil, seized on its Alapari est alapas minari, etc., and foisted this verb on Plaut. True. 928. The great Latin Thesaurus quotes the line with this piece of new cloth put on an old garment: nil alapari satiust, miles, instead of the correct philippiari satiust, miles.

All that we know of this writer comes from an item in the collection of pseudoPlacidus, who, like Nonius Marcellus, collected scholia from MSS. of Republican authors, and with laudable accuracy recorded the exact phrase used by the author as well as the scholium which explains the phrase. The great Latin Thesaurus now makes a practice of distinguishing these valuable items from the worthless Placidus items . A phrase labelled ‘ps.-Plac’ in the Thesaurus may, as a rule, be accepted (...) as the ipsa uevba of a Republican writer; and the next editor of fragments of Republican Dramatists, etc., must bear this in mind. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri enable us to see the kind of MSS., provided with a very few short marginal scholia, from which pseudo-Placidus made his apparently haphazard collection, a collection of which only a part, possibly a very small part, has survived. (shrink)

The Dative or Ablative of this ‘plurale tantum’ was used by one of the earlier Republican writers. It is quoted by Ps.-Placidus from a MS. which had the marginal note ‘capillis muliebribus ante, id est a fronte, pendentibus.’ These marginal notes were often direct traditions from the earliest glossographi, the ‘glossematum scriptores,’ who provided material also for Varro and Verrius Flaccus, either directly or through the writings of earlier grammatici.

The relation of the glossae breviores of Placidus, or rather Pseudo–Placidus, to Festus1 epitome of Verrius has been the subject of much discussion; but after Karl's detailed examination inDe Placidi Glossis , the view has generally prevailed that Ps.–Plac. is not dependent on Festus, and that any similarities between them are referable to the use of similar sources by Verrius and our compiler.

In App. Verg. Priap. 3, 3, the most recent editor adopts the form fomitata, first proposed by I. Voss, a form which seems to derive its only authority from a passage in Paulus' abridgement of Festus . Though there is some variation in the MSS. of the Priapeia , the first four letters are in every case the same—namely, form-. Again, in Ps.-Placidus the MSS. give formitat, but Goetz prints this as fo[r]mitat. The reading formitata was upheld by Skutsch, (...) who quoted the form formitare as a parallel to exitare in Catull. 17, 24, which all recent editors have changed to excitare. (shrink)