Abbots and Beavers.

I’m finally getting around to Richard Tarrant’s Texts, Editors, and Readers: Methods and Problems in Latin Textual Criticism, which bulbul gave me back in 2018, and I thought I’d quote this passage from the introduction (p. 11; I added a few links): Many errors arise from the interaction of more than one factor in the form and content of the text and the mental state of the scribe. One of the nicest examples of apparent error Christianus, the misreading in Petronius’ Satyricon 43.1 of ab asse creuit (‘he has grown from a penny’ or ‘he started out with only a penny’) as abbas secreuit (‘the abbot has hidden it away’), was almost certainly prompted as much by absence of word division in the exemplar and the scribe’s lack of familiarity with the coin term as, assis as by any grievances he may have harboured against his superior. Finally, I cannot resist mentioning a slip for which I was responsible when editing the Canadian classical journal Phoenix. The Spring 1980 issue included a…