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

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Insertion of any marginal jotting

Finally, it should be noticed that not merely a gloss but any jotting in the margin (or elsewhere) may find its way into the text. Thus the words huc usque, which often appear in the margin of MSS.—sometimes to show how far a “corrector” (or copyist) has gone, sometimes as an indication of the end of a quotation or special passage in the text¹ — have been repeatedly inserted in the text of a thirteenth-century MS. of Aulus Gellius (see Hertz's Introduction p. lvii).

Caput (also written Kaput, or merely .c.), a marginal adscript indicating the beginning of a new paragraph, has found its way into the text of our MSS. of Nonius Marcellus at p. 48 M. 27, where a paragraph ends: idem populus caput. The Leyden MS. of Nonius ends a paragraph (p. 108 M. 9) with oppido .c. (see Philologus 1896 p. 167).

Other marginal adscripts of common occurrence in MSS. are: r[equire],² qu[aere], d[cest], nota (often written no with a stroke above, like the contraction for nomen and occasionally for non, p. 76), nota bene, and expressions of admiration like mire, optime. Index words, showing the contents of paragraphs, were often written in the margin. For example, in the margin of the Laurentian codex of Nonius Marcellus, opposite the paragraph (86 M. 10): “Caecuttiunt. Varro Gerontodidascalo: “utrum oculi mei caecuttiunt? An ego vidi servos in armis contra dominos?”” is written the index-heading Cecuttiunt, lippíunt. In the Harleian copy of this MS. this marginal adscript has been treated as if it formed the first part of the line (beginning with oculi) opposite which it stood in the margin, and the passage is copied in this way: “Caecuttiunt. Varro Gerontodidascalo: “utrum caecuttiunt lippiunt oculi mei caecuttiunt”” etc. The same Harleian MS. has sometimes incorporated in the text the marginal adscript quaere (written in contracted form) of its Florentine original. The quae inserted curiously into sentences (e.g. 107. 27 “incideret quae in mortis malum”; 114. 25 “Cicero Tusculanarum quae lib. v”) in the copy is nothing but a misreading of this contraction (cf. p. 96 below).

On the insertion of a syllable in cases of substitution like considero for consido, see ch. v. § 8.