Completion of argument or construction
Of additions to complete the argument, or to complete the construction of the sentence, a passage of the De Natura Deorum may serve as example (i. 31. 86): “dubium est enim, utrum dicat aliquid beatum esse et inmortale, an, si quod sit [id esse mortale].” Here the words id esse mortale are a scribe's addition of this kind. The change of et spiritu to sed quae spiritu in a passage of Cicero (Marcell. 9. 28), “nec vero haec tua vita ducenda est quae corpore et spiritu continetur”, is clearly the emendation of a monk-copyist. The British Museum MS. of Plautus (J), a twelfth-century MS., is a copy of a lost codex which was professedly an “emended” version. The writer of this lost MS., perhaps an abbot of a monastery, wrote at the end an epigram of his own composition, which has been reproduced in the British Museum copy: “exemplar mendum(Corrupt.) tandem me compulit ipsumcunctantem nimium Plautum exemplarier(To copy.) istum
ne graphicus mendis proprias idiota repertis
adderet, et liber hic falso patre falsior esset.
” The result of the learned abbot's interference has been that J is the most worthless of the twelfth-century MSS. of Plautus. Occasionally, especially in the Epidicus, he has made the right correction of his exemplar mendum; e.g. in v. 329 he has rightly corrected fere to facere (fere E, ferre B). But in the great majority of cases he has added his “propriae mendae” to the “mendae repertae”; e.g. in Capt. 274, “eúgepae! Thalém talento nón emam Milésium”, “bravo! I would not give a talent for Thales of Miletus,” the first two words, written in his original euge potalem (a corruption of euge petalem of BD), have been corrected by him to euge ob talem.
