Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/38

 28 Journal of Philology. v v. 349 isdem seems to be necessary. Other minute points like these I shall for the present pass over ; but I may here observe that I do not think Lachmann warranted in making cujus a monosyllable in Lucretius ; I. 149, this can be prevented by the simple transposition of Marullus or Avancius ; and iv. 1089, I would read quom. . . turn for quam. . . tarn. I will now proceed to discuss some passages in which the meaning and philosophy of our poet appear to want elucidation. i. 459 482, Lucretius shews that time is not self-existent, but is only perceived by the things done in it, and that these things are mere accidents of matter and space, corporis atque loci, &c. 482. In the course of this passage he illustrates his argument (464, &c.) by saying, with the play on the substantive verb usual among the ancients, that you are not to suppose, be- cause Helen was ravished and the Trojan people were subdued, that the rape of Helen and conquest of Troy now are y since time has irrevocably swept away the generations of which these things were accidents. Then comes 469, which stands thus in the MSS. Namque aliut terris, aliut regionibus ipsis Eventum &c, which makes no sense ; Lachmann's persest for terris destroys the meaning ; Bernays* smelts I don't understand. Now c and r are perpetually interchanged in our MSS., read therefore Teucris for terris : " one thing may be called an accident of the Trojans, i.e. corporis, another of the countries there, i.e. loci, res in quo geruntur." Lachmann, I. 489, reads caelum for cmli, and his reasoning is in my opinion most perverse. Lucretius is giving instances from which the vulgar apprehension falsely infers that nothing can be perfectly solid, because what they see and think to be most solid, is yet broken or dissolved, stone walls, metals, &c. Now the fact that lightning passes through air, one of the rarest of mediums, could hardly be given as an illustration of this belief. Keep therefore cmli, and in the next verse ut. But v. 1244, where authority is in favour of cmli fulmine misso, Lachmann reads cmlo t and remarks: "neque dixit alibi Lucretius fulmen caeli, sed plagam ceeli supra, 1095 ;" that is to say, plaga cmli, being once used, proves that fulmen colli is not right though twice used, so far as we can depend on our MSS. Surely fulmen cmli is not a more unusual expression than sol cadi or nubila cmli. I now come to a more important passage, I. 599 634, which