04-05-2010, 10:55 PM
Quote:It would appear, actually, that the original text has a lacuna at this point: "Agricola... Batavorum cohortes ac Tungrorum duas cohortatus est" (according to 'Some Notes upon Roman Britain' in Classical Review Vol 18 , 9, 1904) - the missing number having been variously supplied as quinque, tres or quattuor. To be fair, though, it does seem that the latter is the accepted modern one, and the Church/ Brodribb translation is very old (1868?!) and presumably relying on some outdated interpretations.The Agricola is certainly a mess at certain points. But this isn't one of them! The problem here is that Church & Brodribb were working from an inferior manuscript. The "good" one wasn't discovered until 1902! (This is not the "Codex Toletanus" that McElderry refers to in the article you've read -- the Toletanus was discovered in 1897 -- but the "Codex Aesinas", which was discovered in 1902 and published in 1907.) And it reads quattuor.