The process of giving greater credence to the codices has been constant in editions of Apuleius from the last century to the present day. Accordingly, the following suggestions are proposed.

I

et statim miser ut cum ilia adquieui, ab unico congressu annosam ac pestilentem con<dicionem> contraho.

And at the very moment when I—wretch that I am!—lay with her, from that one relationship, I contracted this interminable and miserable condition.

condicionem contraho scripsi: con contraho Fø: coniunctionem c. Chodaczek: consuetudinem c. van der Vliet: contagionem c. Lütjohann: cladem c. Helm: luem c. Heinsius: contraho adfectionem Novák con dittographiam putans, cf. 8.14.1 (187.22): noxam ante annosam Giarratano, post annosam Birt

In this case, where a word is obviously missing and the mysterious con appears, there are two general possibilities for correcting the text: con may be taken as a dittograph for contraho or considered to be part of the missing word. Another approach would be to interpret contraho differently: the verb can apply to a disease (as proposed by Lütjohann and Heinsius—followed by Hildebrand—no doubt swayed by pestilentem), harm or misfortune (meaning: ‘draw misfortune upon oneself’, as in the later sentence nequam tibi lingua intemperante noxam contrahas [Helm, Giarratano, and Birt]), a custom (more or less following van der Vliet and Novák) or marriage (Chodaczek). The solutions offered by van der Vliet, in particular, and Novák are reasonable: other commentators have been led astray by the sentence I have quoted, assuming that what is missing is something like ‘harm', ‘misfortune’.