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Lucretius 4. 1026
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
puri in 1026 can hardly be right. Bed-wetting is normally confined to children, and tum quibus…in 1030 presupposes the mention of an earlier stage of life in the previous sentence. And what does puri mean? Munro and Bailey translated it as ‘cleanly people’ (or ‘persons’), though Munro himself pointed out that the Latin for this was mundi rather than puri, and in any case there is no reason to suppose that in ancient Rome cleanly people were addicted to bed-wetting. Giussani, followed by Merrill and by Leonard and Smith, tried to give the required sense by supposing that puri meant ‘innocents’ and hence ‘children’, an expedient which is very far from convincing. Emendation seems called for. M. F. Smith in the 1982 edition of the Loeb Lucretius adopts Avancius' multi,2 but this does not provide the reference we need to the age of those concerned.
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 1984
References
1 Bailey denies that there is a contrast between two ages, but none the less (rightly in my opinion) translates tum as ‘later on’.
2 See also his ‘Notes on Lucretius’ in Sileno, special issue in honour of Professor Adelmo Barigazzi (forthcoming).
3 It was adopted by Brieger (who attributed it to Bergk) and is regarded as possible by Giussani and Ernout.
4 Varro, L.L. 7. 28.
5 Cic. Fin. 2. 32 (twice); 3. 16, 17; 5. 31, 42, 43; Lucr. 5. 977.
6 discedunt (O) for discedant, 2. 833; conueniunt (O and Q) for conueniant, 4. 1259; substructa (O and Q) for substracta, 6. 605; eum (O) for earn, 6. 1064. There are also examples of the reverse confusion, a for u. See Bailey's edition i. 38.