the corpus, épinal, erfurt and leyden glossaries, viii - World eBook ...

12 THE CORPUS, EPINAL, ERFURT AND LEYDEN GLOSSARIES
While Leid. keeps the form used by Rufinus, a re-casting (for
dictionary-purposes) often appears in the other two. An amusing
example is the gloss from Ruf iv, 9, 3 (illud mehercule magno-
curabis '
pere
annotator of the Rufinus MS. had explained the unfamiliar ex-
that, by Hercules, you will greatly heed '). The
pletive by mi fortis '
'
my strong one ; and we have in Hessels'
apograph (§35, 19) Miherculi (a miswriting of : Mehercule) mi
fortis. But the annotation is not faithfully reproduced in the
other two. It is re-cast into the absurd form, Herculus : fortis
(Ep. 11 A 26 = C. G. L. V 364, 23 = Corp. H 54). This teaches us
the danger of appealing to the authority of glosses before we know
the history of the glossary's compilation. It happens that the
explanation of mehercule as the Vocative of meus and of the byform
Herculus is the latest theory in Latin Etymology. But of
course the Rufinus annotator cannot pass for a philologist and the
Herculus (not -les) of the common source of EE and Corpus waS
sheer ignorance. Other examples of re-casting are items like
Laniones (lanionibus Ruf and Leid.), Lenones (lenonibus Ruf and
Leid.), and so on.
In Orosius glosses (from the History) the Leyden MS. is quite
outnumbered by its rivals. All that it can shew is the twenty-twc
items of § 36, all taken from Books i-ii of Orosius, and with no
clear trace of kinship to the Orosius glosses of the common source"
of EE and Corpus, glosses which are a mighty host in comparison
with the small band in Leid. In nearly every section of EE there
is a prominent Orosius batch (in the P-section, for example,.
Ep. 17 E 27-18 C 11 = C. G. L. v 377, 48 Procuratio—378, 57
Perosus), and although
the order of the words' occurrence in the
text is by no means preserved always, we are at least guided to
Orosius as the source of a very large number of items in the
glossary (e.g. Atque of Ep. 2 E 23 = C. G.L.v 341, 28 = Corp. A 204).
This irregularity of order may mean that more than one collection
of Orosius glosses was used by the compiler and that he dipped
his hand now into one of them, now into another. And occasional
varieties of interpretation perhaps point the same way : e.g. the
gloss on Oros. vi, 11, 26 (cupas pice, sebo et scindulis repletas ac
deinde immisso igne in prona praecipitant) appears as Pice sebo :
unamaelti smerwi{¥.^. 19 A 32 = C. G. L. v 380, 43 = Corp. P 400),
Sebo : smerwi (Ep. 24 C 5 = C. G. L. V 391, 7 = Corp. S 268).