Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/563

. ii. DEC. 10,

NOTES AND QUERIES.

463

modern comma, side by side with semicolons ; e.r/., "eius dilectio ; Terrain diligis / terra

eris ; quid dicam. deus eris 12 ." The last

sign is perhaps a mark of interrogation.

In B.M. See also Pal. Soc., i. pi. 95. Martyrology. Written in the diocese of Burgos, A.D. 919. 13

The i not dotted. The mark after "Pro- tasius " is not a mark of exclamation, but, as in 1], apparently the slight punctuation mark of other MSS. Note that it is not unlike (in disposition of elements at least) the colon used after plecti. The dot over i in Xpi is part of the abbreviating mark, as it is not found over other i's.

The Codex Vetus of Plautus, in which there occurs 6 written as an ecphoneme, at Cist., 727, &c., was written in Germany in

the tenth century (W. M. Lindsay, 4 Introd. to Latin Textual Emendation,' p. 57).

Prof. Lindsay (loc. cit.\ after giving the- above-quoted evidence as to the employment of 6, goes on to say that "this is the origin of our sign of exclamation (/)." The italicizing is mine. Such deductions are quite unwar- ranted from such slight premise. Of course, if Prof. Lindsay can show other (many) occurrences his position would be stronger, though amidst the confusion of the MS. usages this kind of derivation can with extreme difficulty be proved. Obviousness- is delusive. Besides, might not o in 6 be- simply a variant of the dot 1 ? I have not seen MS. or facsimile.

F. W. G. FOAT, D.LiL (To be continued.)