[p. 329] wrote in the commentary which he composed On the Use of Archaic Terms, that inseque should not be read in Ennius, but insece; and that therefore the early writers called what we term narrationes, or “tales,” insectiones; that Varro also explained this verse from the Menaechmi of Plautus: 1
Nihilo minus esse videtur sectius quam somnia,as follows: “they seem to me no more worth telling than if they were dreams.” Such was their discussion. I think that both Marcus Cato and Quintus Ennius wrote insecenda and insece without u. For in the library at Patrae 2 I found a manuscript of Livius Andronicus of undoubted antiquity, entitled ᾿οδύσσεια, in which the first line contained this word without the letter u: 3
Tell me (insece), O Muse, about the crafty man,translated from this line of Homer: 4
῎ανδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον.On that point then I trust a book of great age and authority. For the fact that the line of Plautus has sectius quam somnia lends no weight to the opposite opinion. However, even if the men of old did say insece and not inseque, I suppose because it was lighter and smoother, yet the two words seem to have the same meaning. For sequo and sequor and likewise secta and sectio differ in the manner of their use, but anyone who examines them closely will find that their derivation and meaning are the same.
