W. M. Lindsay, An Introduction to Latin Textual Emendation

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Other causes for omissions

Of the causeless omission of a line, like the causeless omission of the word juris in the passage quoted above (§ 9), an example will be found in Cas. 376—a line which was omitted, for no apparent reason, in the original of BD (the archetype of VEJ, p. 7), and which would have remained unknown to us had not the corrector of B (p. 41) added it in the margin.

A change of copyist may be accompanied by the omission of a line or lines. At Merc. 961, for example, one of the copyists employed on the archetype ended his task. The new copyist began his task at v. 963 instead of v. 962, but rectified his error immediately, with the result that in our MSS. v. 962 follows v. 963. If the original of EJ began a new page, like B, at Epid. 271 nunc occasiost faciundi etc., the omission in EJ of the preceding lines (four in our editions, between two and three in the archetype) may be due to the fact that one of the copyists of the original laid down his pen too soon, before he had quite reached the end of the portion allotted to him.

Some editors have attempted to reconstruct the archetype of MSS. of authors on the supposition that accidentally-omitted lines would naturally be the top or bottom lines of a page, lines occupying this position being liable to be over-looked by a scribe, or to become stained and illegible, or to be cut off by a binder. But the correctness of this supposition is doubtful.