ABSTRACT
It is not often that even the most conservative classical scholars agree about a passage being wrong in spite of the manuscripts. Virgil’s Culex 26 exhibits such a rare example: E ttu, cui mentis oriturfiducia chartis, | Octavi venerande, meis adlabere coeptis, | sancte puer: tibi namque ca n it non p a gin a be llum | Triste Tovis Rhaetique canit non pagina bellum. Everybody admits that line 26 as it stands is impossible, and critics are unanimous in declaring that canit non pagina bellum is a clerical error, the scribe’s eyes having been caught by the words in line 27 before he finished line 26. It is a sort of visual derailment.
