Hostname: page-component-77f85d65b8-6bnxx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-04-18T07:45:41.516Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Two Horatian Problems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Giuseppe Giangrande
Affiliation:
Birkbeck College, University of London

Extract

This is one of the Horatian passages most tormented by the critics. Four points, I think, may now be safely regarded as established.

First of all, the lectio tradita can hardly be sound : those who have tried to defend it—their Nestor is Porphyrio himself—have encountered insuperable difficulties. Magnum—to use Kiessling—Heinze's word—is patently ‘sinnlos’. Secondly, none of the proposed conjectures really satisfies. Maga non, as Kiessling-Heinze rightly note, is excluded by metrical reasons alone, not to mention its stylistic harshness ; magica, favoured by Kiessling-Heinze, is scarcely better : the epithet is tautological after venena, and if we accept the emendation we are compelled to postulate a very awkward zeugma (cf. Kiessling-Heinze and Wickham ad loc.). Thirdly, the corruption is pre-medieval, because Porphyrio already read magnum : if we have to apply palaeographical methods for the solution of the problem, we must reason in terms of Roman cursive.

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1967

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable