The article on crater cratera creterra in T.L.L. iv. 1108–10 is imperfect: several examples are omitted and no clear and coherent account of these forms is given. crater appears first in Ennius' Annales ; and very likely it was Ennius who, finding cratera too ordinary for poetry, transliterated . For several centuries crater remained a poets' word. It may have been introduced into prose by the elder Pliny, who affects poetic vocabulary; in later prose it is found more frequently than (...) either cratera or creter. (shrink)

To Munro's conjecture, which has been accepted by Diels , S. B. Smith , Bailey , Büchner , Martin , and M. F. Smith , there is a serious, possibly a fatal, objection: the genitive plural of hiems is a grammarians' figment and never occurs in classical Latin ; while Lachmann's conjecture is palaeographically improbable. Read ad gelidas rigidasque pruinas; rigidas was omitted by haplography, a fecund source of corruption, and hiemis then supplied from the context to repair the metre. (...) Cf. 2.431 denique iam calidos ignis gelidamque pruinam, 2.521 hinc flammis Mine rigidis infesta pruinis, and, for the collocation of the two adjectives, 2.858 nec frigus neque item calidum tepidumque uaporem. (shrink)