The ways of naming the comedian which happen to survive to us are Plautus, Macci Titi, Maccus, accius, and T. Macci Plauti; the best attested oi these names, Plautus, is twice adorned with curiously arch flourishes. The evidence as a whole presents two main problems: how do we interpret and reconcile Macci Titi, Maccus, and Maccius: and how do these names relate to the name Plautus? The purpose of this paper is to emphasize more strongly some known facts and relate (...) them to a point not brought into the discussion before. (shrink)

‘The sudden emergence of all the post-classical functions of habeo+Infinitive in Tertullian is very remarkable’, as Mr. Coleman has said in his important paper on the origin and development of this structure, so prominent in the formation of the Future and Conditional paradigms of the main Romance languages. The functions which he has in mind are all Prospective: he distinguishes meanings tangential, as he puts it, to Possibility, Obligation/Necessity, Futurity, and, for the past tenses of habeo, Futurity-in-the-Past and Conditioned Unreality (...) . In this he essentially follows received opinion, though there have been those who would also distinguish a meaning tangential to Volition. Mr. Coleman gives these short shrift . Whether rightly, the reader may judge from what follows. (shrink)

This is clearly meant to ‘speak’, and offer thereby some clue to the interpretation. But what it ‘says’ is debatable. Most modern edd. settle for Ipsitilla as the least badly attested form. The prominence of bidding in the poem best accords with the assumptions that the stem is indeed ipsa connoting ‘mistress of the establishment’ and that the denotation is something facetious like ‘Miss Bossy-wossy’, ‘Imperia’, ‘Your nibsy-wibsy’.

Most editors and commentators have acquiesced without enthusiasm in the reading in Creta religasset at 174, though Mynors in his Oxford text reverted to what had been the old vulgate in Cretam religasset ; Vulpius' . If we read in Cretam, the sense must be ‘ had not untied his rope.

My purpose in this paper is, firstly, to investigate the relationship of the three passages printed below, and, secondly, to illustrate in passing the curious chain of historical accidents which have prevented the truth about that relationship from becoming common lore long ago.