To philologians corruptelae are like dragons. Those who slay them may gain a place in the text or a mention in the apparatus. Most often the dragon wins, the crux remains, ready for the next victim. Win or lose, we descend to the field to attack an obelus.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Friday, May 23, 2014
Dragons
J. Linderski, "Transitus. Official Travel Under the Sign of the Obelus," Philologus 143 (1999) 288-299 (at 288), rpt. in Roman Questions II. Selected Papers (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2007), pp. 307-318 (at 307):