PROPERTIUS
4.11.53
uel cuius, trasost cum Vesta reposceret ignis, exhibuit uiuos carbasus alba focos. 53 rasos FLPDVVo., iasos uv There have been many attempts, none of them successful, to emend this verse: cui commissos Itali, cuius castos Markland, tu cui sacros Peerlkamp, cui sacra suos Baehrens, cui sacratos Polster, cui iam exstinctos Plessis, cui seruatos Otto, cuius sacros Rothstein, cui iuratos Butler and Phillimore, cuius stratos Shackleton Bailey, cui tur Iliacos Barber, cuius raptos Alton, cui iusta suos Camps, cui iam canos or tu cui canos Smyth. What Propertius meant is clear enough. Vesta claimed her fire too late, after a careless Vestal had let it go out. Propertius wrote, I suggest: uel cuius seros cum Vesta reposceret ignis. serus in this sense is not uncommon; and the adjective here, as elsewhere in poetry, is put for the adverb. Compare, for structure and idiom, Prop. 3.1.35 meque inter seros laudabit Roma nepotes, 4.4.45 Pallados exstinctos si quis mirabitur ignis; Virg. Georg. 1.291 et quidam seros hiberni ad luminis ignis; Stat. Theb. 2.388 queriturque fidem tam sero reposci. How is the corruption to be explained? seros was turned into resos by the inversion of three letters-a frequent scribal error2-and resos then made into rasos-not very apposite, but a word-by the alteration of a single letter. WENDELL CLAUSEN HARVARD
UNIVERSITY
W. R. Smyth, Thesaurus Criticus ad Sexti Propertii Textum (Leiden 1970) 160-61. 2 Examples in Housman, Manilius I, LVI-LVII.
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