Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/387

 On some passages in Lucretius. 377 appears to me Lucretian ; compare v, 332 Quare etiam qucedam nunc artes expoliuntur, Nunc etiam augescunt. I will now attempt to supply a defect of a different kind. In I, 555 we find this faulty verse Conceptum summum cetatis per- vadere finis. The attempts of previous editors to emend it have not been successful. Marullus read fiorem for finis. But that will not do, as Lachmann has well shewn that pervadere with an accusative cannot mean to ' arrive at,' but only ' to pass through/ so that you would have to read at all events ad summum. Wake- field's finem is open to the same objection, as well as to the addi- tional one that^ms is always feminine in Lucretius. But Lach- mann's own reading I cannot approve of. For summum he reads summa and explains it to mean universo vivendi actu, and cetatis pervadere finis he says is per omne vital spatium vadere. I feel convinced that finis is a mere interpolation, the true word having perished and a corrector of the original manuscript having perhaps hit upon finis because it ends so many of the following verses. This verse 555 concluded the 23rd page of that lost original manuscript from which our manuscripts are all derived, mediately or immediately. Now the 23rd page is on the right hand, and therefore the last word of such a page would be more exposed to damage than perhaps any other. We see from the latter part of this book how greatly the archetype must have been injured in some parts of it, and the last words of several of the corre- sponding contiguous pages shew signs of mutilation ; 606 Agmine condenso &c. is the last line of the 25th or next corresponding page ; there we find at the end explet for explent ; but that proves little. The last line however of the 27th page viz. 657 Sed quia multa &c. has its last word more mutilated ; we find there muse or mu, which as I said in the first number should I think be nasci. In 708 the concluding verse of the 29th page the last word putarunt was probably in part illegible, as we find in our MSS. putant or putaniur. The last word of 759 the con- cluding verse of the 31st page is also mutilated; we there find vene for veneno ; the last word of the preceding line is also imper- fect, Tiabes for habebis. Two other verses of this page viz. 748 and 752 are mutilated at the end. I have little doubt as to what word should take the place of finis. Pervadere cursum would in itself make good sense, ' to pass through the career of life/ but the epithet summum renders that inadmissible. We