Talk:Of Peace of Mind

The Wikisource text in Chapter 5, first sentence, read: "a miserable city than Athens."

This is incorrect in English grammar, so I concluded that the text is missing the word, "more," and I added "more." A user deleted it, indicating that "more" is not in the source. I checked, and it seems the user was correct that the English translation in the public domain which is the source of this Wikisource text indeed does not have "more" in this sentence. I suspected that this was a mistake in this source.

I verified this according to Tufts' Perseus Digital Library' Latin text: urbem miseriorem quam Atheniensium; Perseus has miseriorem as a comparative adjective, so the meaning indicates "more miserable," not just "miserable." The Wikisource Latin text is the same as the Perseus text. So it seems the language of the original text meant "more." I also checked other English translations available online, and they all had a comparative phrase with more. And the only other Wikisource languages, Spanish (alguna ciudad más perdida de lo que fue la de Atenas) and French (une ville plus malheureuse que ne le fut Athènes), also make this same comparative statement. So it appears that every version of Seneca's text, in every language on Wikisource, including the original of the author, has "more" ... except the English.

No one should be adding words which are not in the text. But I also believe the text has what many readers will consider an anomaly with respect to English grammar and to other available texts. So we should acknowledge this in order to prevent future changes repeating my mistake of adding "more." I searched for Wikisource guidelines on missing words and did not find any. Adding SIC seems to be best way to recognize the source English translation's apparent flaw, without contravening Wikisource guidelines. Seraphimek (talk) 21:03, 12 July 2016 (UTC)