Abstract

quippe Byzantium fertili solo, fecundo mari, quia uis piscium in metapontum erumpens et obliquis subter undas saxis exterrita omisso alterius litoris flexu hos ad portus defertur.For Byzantium is favoured with fertile soil and teeming seas, since a multitude of fish, bursting out and spooked by rocks slanting beneath the water, leave off the curve of the opposite shore and are wafted to these harbours. That is the text of the second Medicean and all of its descendants. For centuries now the unfitness of the words in metapontum has been obvious to editors. J. Lipsius conjectured innumera Pontum, G. Brotier innumera Ponto, N. Bach and G.A. Ruperti immensa Pontum. F. Ritter returned to the problem again and again, first proposing immensa Ponto, then immensum Ponto, i.e. ‘immensa multitudine’, and finally in meatu Ponti. Bach's and Ruperti's remedy is clearly the most efficient. Modern editors agree in printing uis piscium immensa Pontum erumpens, ‘an immense multitude of fish, bursting out of the Pontus'. Neat, but perhaps unnecessary. My object here is to defend the text of the manuscripts.