Page:The poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus - Francis Warre Cornish.djvu/11

 according to Professor Hale, is in the main a copy of R, though the scribe had both R and G before him, and occasionally followed the reading of G; while R is a copy, and, as regards the variant readings, a fuller copy, of the MS., now lost, (X), (itself copied from V) which is the immediate parent of G.

It is impossible to restore with certainty the orthography of Catullus. The MSS. give little help, though they have preserved some of the earlier forms which were current at the time. I have, I believe, printed few if any orthographical forms which Catullus could not have used: but in doubtful cases I have admitted forms justified by the usage of the Augustan age, an age in which much attention was paid to orthography, in preference to those found in inscriptions, the tendency of which is to perpetuate archaic spelling.

It is pretty certain that Catullus and his contemporaries wrote and, not  and  not , or even , not. is found, though rarely, in inscriptions of c. 70 The substitution in later Latin of  for  probably denotes a gradual change of pronunciation which was progressing in Catullus's