in the Composition of Nouns and Adjectives. 75 



commentators, misled by the authority of Gellius, interpreted 

 vepallida " very pale." Bentley fell foul of the word itself, pro- 

 nounced it naught, and proposed to read " ne pallida." Later 

 commentators and editors read " vel pallida," to the ruin of the 

 sense and spirit of the whole passage, which is subjoined in a 

 note *. The scholar who will read the whole attentively, cannot 

 fail seeing that the clause is not an alternative, but a necessary 

 consequence of " vir rure recurrat." Bentley's emendation 

 does not destroy the sense, although it does the spirit of the pas- 

 sage. It retards the almost simultaneous occurrence of the se- 

 veral incidents, and assigns an epithet by no means felicitous to 

 the offending dame. Whoever will compare a passage in the 

 Augustus of Suetonius f with Juvenal's line, 



" Vexatasque comas vultusque auresque calentes," 



and with another in the Nero of Suetonius £, must needs con- 

 fess, that the " curiosa felicitas" so deservedly ascribed to Ho- 

 race, must have sadly deserted him, had he applied " pallida" 

 to a culprit so circumstanced, however great her alarm. The 

 old reading was undoubtedly the right one, and its signification 

 is parum pallida, " flushed," and far from being cool and pale 

 enough to face her husband. 



* " Nee vereor, ne, dum futuo, vir rure recurrat, 

 Janua frangantur, latret canis, undique magno 

 Pulsa domus strepitu resonet, vepallida lecto 

 Desiliat mulier, miseram se conscia clamet." 



Hor. Sat. lib. i. sat. 2. ver. 126. et seq. 



f " Marcus Antoninus objecit fceminam in cubiculum obductam, rursus in 

 convivium, rubentibus auriculis, incomtiore capillo reductam." 



\ " Egressus triclinio cum maxime placitam sevocasset, paulo post, recentibus 

 adhuc lasciviae notis, reversus." 



K2 



