quod credibile esset te aliquando Plautina nostra exempla de officina tua denuo esse emissurum, sepositis aliis rebus, annotavi ea quae perperam expressa essent, ut altera editio tua esset inculpatior. Haec publice hic edi volui, ideo, ut qui iam exempla illa9 comparassent, de nostra subiectione errata possent corrigere, nam omnino decrevimus hoc quasi cumulo studii nostri extremam manum imponere ei labori, quem huic autori impendimus.10 Ne tamen nimis exilis et parvus esset hic libellus si nihil nisi correctiones erratorum in officina complecteretur, addidimus et Georgii Fabricii eruditiss. viri summi nostri, incredibilis diligentiae praeclariss. studio conquisita quaedam, habitura momenti et adiumenti allatura plurimum ad Plautinarum fabularum fructuosam lectionem. Quae mitto ad te et peto ut secundum illa ubi iterum edere Plauti fabularum nostrarum exempla volueris, libros corrigi, et, nisi tibi non videatur, hunc etiam libellum istic iam exprimi cures. [The rest of the letter is general flattery.]
Because it seemed likely you’d eventually republish my edition of Plautus, I put other business aside and drew up a list of things that had been printed mistakenly, so that your second printing would be less open to criticism. I wanted the list to be published here so that people who have already bought the first edition could use this appendix to correct the mistakes. You see, I have firmly decided that with this mass (as it were) of my attention [i.e. the list or appendix], to put my finishing stroke on the effort I’m giving to Plautus. Still, so that this pamphlet won’t be too small or insubstantial if all it contains is a list of typos, I’ve also added a number of things hunted down by Georg FabriciusFabricius, Georg. They will make a tremendous impact and offer a ton of help for reading Plautus’ plays properly. I’m sending them to you, and I ask than when you do want to reprint my edition of Plautus’ plays, you use it to correct them; and unless you don’t think it’s a good idea, I ask that you soon have this pamphlet printed there in Basel, too.
But HervagiusHervagius, Johannes ignored that last request. As the title page announces, the pamphlet was printed not in Basel but in Leipzig, where CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim lived. It is impossible to say whether HervagiusHervagius, Johannes took offense at what now looks like an “open letter to HervagiusHervagius, Johannes,” in which CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim waffles between accepting and rejecting blame for “mistakes” in the text, but it would be reasonable.
9. Conclusion
To sum up, my case remains circumstantial. I doubt the camel FabriciusFabricius, Georg mentions in his 1549 letter is the Vetus, though a palaeographer could change my mind (ch. 6), and I cannot prove it is the Decurtatus (ch. 7), because the Decurtatus contains no notes resembling HassensteinHassenstein, Bohuslaus von’s handwriting, and nothing is written on its untrimmed front, top, or bottom edges. If proof does exist – a shelfmark, say, or a handwritten title – a peek behind its binding might tell us. When I asked the Heidelberg librarian to pull it off and check, however, she politely refused.1
Nevertheless, if the salt road that brought us Plautus did pass through Bohemia, then in these days of increasing interest in provenance, some folks at the Lobkowicz Library might want their book back.
Hactenus en potui; tu nunc succede camelis
curandis, aliquis lector amice, mihi.
Summa: librum Decurtatum decorticet audax,
et Veteri impositas cum veter, ede notas.
Bibliography
Camel B, the Vetus, is digitized online at https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/bav_pal_lat_1615/0001.
Camel C, the Decurtatus, is digitized online at https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/cpl1613/0001/image.
Camel D, Cusanus’ stick of dynamite, is digitized online at https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.lat.3870.
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Pelliccia,
