Wednesday, April 01, 2020
Another Profiteer
Petronius, Satyricon 43.1 (tr. J.P. Sullivan):
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He started out in life with just a penny and he was ready to pick up less than that from a muck-heap, even if he had to use his teeth.F.W. Hall, A Companion to Classical Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913), p. 189, classified the scribal error under the heading of "monkish interpolations," but cf. Richard Tarrant, Texts, Editors, and Readers: Methods and Problems in Latin Textual Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), p. 11:
ab asse crevit et paratus fuit quadrantem de stercore mordicus tollere.
ab asse crevit Scheffer: abbas secrevit H
One of the nicest examples of apparent error Christianus, the misreading in Petronius' Satyricon 43.1 of ab asse creuit ('he has grown from a penny' or 'he started out with only a penny') as abbas secreuit ('the abbot has hidden it away'), was almost certainly prompted as much by absence of word division in the exemplar and the scribe's lack of familiarity with the coin term as, assis as by any grievances he may have harboured against his superior.Hat tip: Kevin Muse.
