504 CRITICAL NOTES. 



any supporters beyond its original proposer. But, apart from the 

 fact that it is difficult to see how elatio would be corrupted into datio, 

 " bombast " does not seem to have been the particular feature with 

 which Cicero was displeased in Macer's style and manner of speak- 

 ing. In the ^^ Brutus" LXYII, 238, Cicero says of him, " Hujus 

 (Maori) si vita, si mores, si vultus denique non omnem commenda- 

 tionem ingenii everteret, majus nomen in patronis fuisset. Kon erat 

 abundans non inops tamen; non valde nitens, non plane horrida 

 oratio ; vox gestus et omnis actio sine lepore." From a consideration 

 of this passage, I have been led to suspect that the original was sed 

 actio. The change is easily accounted for, and we have no further 

 than this very book to go for examples of a precisely similar corrup- 

 tion. The initial s of sed would be confounded vidth the final e of 

 ineptias. Examples of this are §29, where the MSS. exhibit omnes 

 sunt omnium and omnes omnium ; but Davies and others maintain 

 that the original was omnes essent omnium; and §55, singulis^ far 

 singidi sed. When once se is absorbed, we have the reading datio or 

 dado, since it is very common, where the letters ct occur together in 

 a word, to find one or other of them omitted, as they are said to be 

 scarcely distinguishable from one another in MSS. For instance, in 

 this passage itself, for the word Macrum we have the various readings, 

 acrum, actium,, accium,, acium, atium. 



Ibid : I. xi, 31. Here we find even greater confusion among the 

 MSS. than in the passage noticed above. In fact, it is frequently 

 difficult to detect any resemblance between the varioiis readings. 

 That which is here proposed approaches more nearly to the MSS. 

 than any of those with which I have met in the different editions 

 which I have consulted. Cicero gives, as an instance of the wonder- 

 ful similarity among men, as well in their virtues as in their vices, 

 the fact that all are caught alike by the lure of pleasure, "which, 

 although an enticement of evil, has still some semblance of a natural 

 good," " levitatis enim et suavitatis est, et suavitate delectans sic ab 

 errore mentis, tanquam salutare aliquid, asciscitur : " "for it belongs 

 to smoothness and sweetness, and delighting them by its sweetness, 

 through a mistake of the mind is rashly approved, as if it were some- 

 thing beneficial." "On the contrary," he says afterwards, "pain is 

 considered one of the greatest of evils, sua asperitate," where asperitas 

 would seem to answer to the preceding levitas. Those MSS. which 

 Bake considers to be generally of most authority have levitatis est 



