2, praef. 2 (31, 24)

NOTES ON VITRUVIUS

BY MORRIS H. MORGAN

(1) On the Text

cogitationes et formas dignas tuae claritati.

Here the MSS. have the dative with dignus. Wesseling (Obs. Var. p. 68) emended to the genitive claritatis, and Rose in both his editions has followed, in spite of Wölfflin's protest.1 It is true that the genitive with dignus is not unknown: cf. Balbus ap. Cic. Att. 8, 15 A, 1; Verg. A. 12, 649 (with indignus); Tac. A. 15, 14; to say nothing of the disputed passage in Plaut. Trin. 1153 (Nonius for the genitive, but the MSS. of Plautus for the ablative). Still the dative also is found as follows: Plaut. Poen. 256: diem dignum Veneri (emended to the ablative by Ritschl and so Leo); Sall. Or. Phil. 20: decernite digna nomini (where Maurenbrecher, I, 77, 20, emends to the ablative); Cod. Theod. 9, 28, 1: quoniam nec condigna crimini ultio est; C G L. II, 305, 12: maívov aέios laudi dignus. See also Schmalz, Lat. Gramm., p. 249, who cites from late Latin examples of this dative in Commodian, Vopiscus, and Arnobius, as well as passages in Apuleius, Jerome, and Cyprian, where the form leaves the question of genitive or dative doubtful. To these last may be added the Pompeian dignus rei publicae (CIL. IV, 566; 702; 768), and note also the usage of Priscillian (Archiv III, p. 317). As a good warrant for the dative with dignus, Wölfflin suggests the use of decet with the dative in early Latin; cf. Sommer, p. 241, 'dig-nus aus *dec-nos zu decet. We may now examine the constructions which actually do accompany dignus in Vitruvius apart from this passage.

The word is used certainly once as a mere attributive adjective: 83, 15, dignam et utilissimam rem; and probably this should be the explanation of 158, 6, merenti digna constitit plena, for the dative merenti here belongs to the whole following phrase and not to digna alone. Then

1 Rhein. Mus. XXXVII, p. 115.

we have the impersonal dignum est once with an ut clause in 46, 6: dignum esset ut. . . perficerentur, a construction found with dignus used personally in Plautus, Livy, and Quintilian (Schmalz, p. 406). Once the neuter dignum is found personally with the passive infinitive, in 212, 14: id enim magis erat institui dignum. We have the neuter dignum used impersonally with the passive infinitive in Livy, 8, 26, 6: quibus dignius credi est; cf. Cic. Quinct. 95: indignum est a pari vinci. But in Vitruvius the verb erat has a neuter subject expressed, so that the usage resembles dignus or digna (fem.) with the passive infinitive, noted as not found in prose before the Silver Age by Schmalz (p. 281 f.) and Dräger (II, 331 f.). It may be remarked in passing that dignum est with a passive infinitive is (understanding the infinitive as originally a dative) a support for the dative case with dignus, and here again the connection of dignus with decet is suggested by Plaut. Poen. 258: nunc me decet donari cado vini veteris ?1 Again, Vitruvius has the impersonal dignum est with the active infinitive, 237, 7: sed uti fuerint ea exquisita, dignum est studiosis agnoscere; cf. Plaut. Ps. 1013: salutem scriptam dignumst dignis mittere; Verg. A. 6, 173: si credere dignum. I have no examples of this use in prose before Gellius (see Dräger, II, 332) for dignum, but for indignum, cf. Sall. Iug. 79, 1: non indignum videtur egregium facinus commemorare. Whether in Vitruvius studiosis is dative or ablative, I see no way of deciding. Finally, Vitruvius has a personal use, in the masculine gender, of digniores with the active infinitive, 134, I ipsos potius digniores esse ad suam voluntatem quam ad alienam pecuniae consumere summam. I can cite no prose parallel for this before Plin. Pan. 7: dignus alter eligi, alter eligere; cf. Apul. M. 1, 8: tu dignus es extrema sustinere; but in poetry the usage seems to appear first in Catullus 68, 131: concedere digna; and that it was familiar to Horace appears from Ep. 1, 10, 48: tortum digna sequi potius quam ducere funem, and (with indignus) from Ep. 1, 3, 35: indigni fraternum rumpere foedus (i. e. quos non decet); cf. also A. P. 231. The commentators speak of tnis construction as modelled on the Greek idiom with ἄξιος and δίκαιος. It is not strange that Vitruvius, who

1 I owe this to Professor Minton Warren, who also points out that it is even conceivable that the dative was the original case used with dignus, and that the ablative came in and prevailed through a misunderstanding of the doubtful forms in inflection.

drew so much from Greek authors, should have been influenced, just as poets were, by Greek syntax.

This examination of the usages with dignus in Vitruvius shows such a considerable variety that it becomes obviously unsafe to emend away the dative claritati in 31, 24.

2, 8, 16 (52, 7): quibus et vectigalibus et praeda saepius licitum fuerat... habere.

Here the MSS. have saepius, while Rose 2 follows Nohl (Anal. Vitr. p. 19 f.) with the emendation saeptis. Nohl says merely: 'quid sibi velit saepius nescio.' But it seems to be nothing except the not uncommon use of the comparative degree of an adverb instead of the positive; see Köhler, Acta Erlang. I, 410, Wölfflin, Comparation, p. 63, and Praun, Syntax des Vitruv, p. 80. In Vitruvius himself the comparative form saepius occurs six times (see Nohl's Index), and in none of them does it have a distinctively comparative sense. As for the emendation saeptis, that verb is used but twice in Vitruvius (203, 3; 211, 6), both times literally. And its metaphorical use in other authors seems to convey nothing like the sense which the emendation would require here.

2, 9, 1 (54, 23): inanibus et patentibus venis in se recipiet lambendo sucum et ita solidescit et redit in pristinam naturae firmitatem.

2

Here Rose changes to the plurals recipient, solidescunt, and redeunt, as referring to corpora muliebria in 54, 16. But in line 18 we have in corpore, to which id ex quo in line 21 refers. It seems needless, therefore, to go back to corpora muliebria, and I should keep recipiet with G (recipient, H S), and solidescit and redit with all three manuscripts.

5, praef. 4 (104, 7): uti sunt etiam tesserae quas in alveo ludentes

iaciunt.

So H G and Rose in his first edition. S has in alea. Rose in his second edition changes to in alveolo, based upon Varro ap. Gell. 1, 20: quales sunt tesserae quibus in alveolo luditur (here, however, one good MS. has albeo, the others albeolo). Rose's change seems unnecessary. It is true that alveolus is found in the sense of 'diceboard' in Paul. Fest., Lucilius, Cicero, and Juvenal (for the passages, see the Thesaurus); but alveus occurs in the same sense in Plin. N. H. 37, 13; Val.

Max. 8, 8, 2; Suet. Claud. 33; and Varro himself uses the word in the sense of the game of dice in frag. ap. Non. 108, 26. Although the passage and context in Vitruvius, about the cube, may well be based upon Varro (see Thiel, Jahrb. f. Phil. CLV, p. 366), yet a comparison of both in their entirety will show that there is no reason for thinking that he followed the words of Varro with slavish exactness.

5, 11, 3 (128, 4): altera simplex ita facta uti in partibus quae fuerint circa parietes et quae erit ad columnas, margines habeat uti semitas.

Here, for erit, the inferior manuscripts and the editio princeps give erunt, which has been adopted by Rose and the other editors. The best manuscripts have erit, which seems to me to be right. Vitruvius provides that the sunken running track under this colonnade should have margines, serving as semitae, on the sides which are' along the surrounding walls (there would of course be three of these, one at each end and one forming the inner boundary), and 'on the side which is' along the columns. Of course there would be only one such side, hence the singular number.

5, 12, 6 (130, 16):

locus qui ea saeptione

finitus fuerit exinaniatur sicceturque, et ibi inter saeptiones fundamenta fodiantur. Si terrena erunt, usque ad solidum crassiora quam qui murus supra futurus erit exinaniantur siccenturque, et tunc structura ex caementis calce et harena compleantur. Sin autem mollis locus erit, palis ustilatis alneis aut oleaginis configantur et carbonibus compleantur.

20

Here the manuscripts exhibit several errors in giving the singular of verbs instead of the plural. In lines 19-20 they have exinaniatur sicceturque, due to the occurrence of that phrase in the singular in line 17, and perhaps further influenced by futurus erit, but obviously wrong, as crassiora shows, and corrected by Marini. In line 21, codd. H S Gr have compleatur, due to the impression that structura is a nominative, but correctly transmitted as a plural by G. So far, then, the manuscripts erred and have been rightly abandoned. But in the last line the two verbs configantur and compleantur are plural in all the manuscripts, while the editors have followed the editio princeps with its readings configatur and compleatur, doubtless due to the singular number of

locus. The plurals, however, are correct and refer back to fundamenta (line 18), with which agree erunt (18), exinaniantur siccenturque (1920), and compleantur (21); cf. fundamenta impleantur, 76, 3; infra fundamenta aedificiorum palationibus crebre fixa, 57, 12. Editors should therefore restore these plurals, which are indeed the lectio difficilior. It can scarcely be thought that they got into the archetype from assimilation to compleantur in line 21, for the singular locus erit intervenes.

7, praef. 12 (159, 6): Philo (sc. edidit volumen) de aedium sacrarum symmetriis et de armamentario quod fuerat Piraeei portu.

The word fuerat is the reading of the manuscripts. A correction to fecerat was suggested by Hemsterhuis (ad Poll. 10, 188: 'credo legendum fecerat'), and this correction is adopted by Schneider and succeeding editors. It is unnecessary. To be sure, Vitruvius has been using, and uses in the next clause, the present tense est of the buildings described by the authors whom he is cataloguing; but these other buildings were still in existence in his day. The armamentarium of Philo, however, had been burnt by Sulla; see Appian, B. M. 41 ; · Plut. Sull. 14. It is therefore to the disappearance of the building that Vitruvius wishes to refer, not to the fact that it was built by Philo. For a similar use of fuerat, cf. 28, 22: reposito autem gnomone ubi antea fuerat, and 216, 9; 221, 23. In general, for Vitruvius's employment of fuerat instead of erat or fuit, see Eberhard, de Vitruvii genere dicendi, II, p. 10.

7, 10, 2 (180, 6): namque aedificatur locus uti laconicum.

Here Rose reads lacus for locus, following a suggestion of Nohl in his Index, who based the change upon Faventinus 307, 16: lacusculus curva camera struatur. But an inspection of the context of Faventinus shows that his lacusculus (repeated twice below) is for Vitruvius's laconicum, not for his locus. And furthermore the emendation is unfortunate because it introduces into Vitruvius a meaning for the word lacus not elsewhere found in him. He does not use it of anything that is roofed over. Generally he has it in the sense of 'lake'; once it means an artificial pool or basin for water (207, 9), and once 'mortar bed' (165, 24).