Lindsay, W: Ancient Lore in Medieval Latin Glossaries (Class -

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Excerpt from Ancient Lore in Medieval Latin Glossaries When Ritschl set his pupils to work on Latin glossaries there were great hopes of a harvest of ancient lore. These hopes were not lessened by the first publication, Gustav Loewe's 'Prodromus Corporis Glossariorum Latinorum' (1876), for the second chapter of the 'Prodromus' is entitled 'De glossis Plautinis Lucilianisque' and the other chapters made many additions to the extant fragments of the early Republican writers. Scholars waited impatiently for the publication of the whole mass of glossaries, a huge task gradually accomplished by the Jena professor, G. Goetz - 'Corpus Glossariorum Latinorum,' vol. II, 1888; vol. IV, 1889; vol. III, 1892; vol. V, 1894 (vol. I, the Prolegomena, is in the press). Goetz had not time to edit the glossaries, but published merely an apograph of the oldest MS. of each; and even the help of his 'apparatus criticus' with the variant readings of other MSS. scarcely enables the reader to obey the Renaissance scholars' maxim: divinare oportet, non legere. What could be made of a gloss like (C.G.L. IV 151, 14) Provanum avespartui perdetur (with no variant)? Only a year or two ago did it yield its secret: Profanum habes, parvi penditur (=Plaut. frag. 38 Sacrum an profanum habeas, parvi penditur; see below). Some relief came when Goetz published an Index containing the glosses in emended form (so far as he could emend them without having edited the glossaries) - 'Thesaurus Glossarum Emendatarum (1899 - 1901). But even so, much hunting through its pages is required before the reader can find the true form of a gloss which has puzzled him. And the corrupt item just mentioned is printed Pro vano habetur: parvi penditur. Enthusiasm waned. The Corpus and its Index were left to rest on the book-shelves, seldom consulted and, when consulted, seldom enlightening. Still the belief remained that there was a rich harvest of ancient lore here, if we could only reap it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.