Worst Mistake Discovered Yet!!

On pg. 60 fn. 52 at the end of the note I wrote:

Quintilian (1.7.23) mentions that Servius Sulpicius, presumably the consul of 53 BCE, was criticized for removing final s whenever the next word began with a vowel.

This sentence is embarrassingly full of errors. First, the passage where Quintilian discusses Servius Sulpicius' treatment of final -s is not 1.7.23 (that's the famous one about dice and facie), it's 9.4.38. Second, what Quintilian reports there is as follows:

Quae fuit causa et Servio Sulpicio, ut dixit, subtrahendae s litterae quotiens ultima esset aliaque consonante susciperetur, quod reprehendit Luranius, Messala defendit. Nam neque Lucilium putat uti eadem ultima, cum dicit "Aeserninus fuit" et "dignus locoque", et Cicero in Oratore plures antiquorum tradit sic locutos.

This was the reason (i.e. avoidance of stridor) why Servius, as he himself has observed, (or "as I said" if ut dixi is read) dropped the final s, whenever the next word began with a consonant, a practice for which Luranius takes him to task, while Messala defends him. For he thinks that Lucilius did not pronounce the final s in phrases such as, Aeserninus fuit and dignus locoque, while Cicero in his Orator records that this was the practice with many of the ancients. [Translation H. E. Butler, Loeb edition]

So Sulpicius is said to have eliminated s when the next word began with a consonant, presumably an affectation modeled on old writers of the Republic, not before a vowel as I erroneously reported.

Third, Servius Sulpicius was consul in 51 BCE, not 53 BCE.  Finally—this last one is not really an error on my part—it is not certain that the Servius Suplicius referred to here is the consul of 51 BCE or his son.  Syme 1981 argued for the later.

So the sentence should be emended to:

Quintilian (9.4.38) mentions that Servius Sulpicius, either the consul of 51 BCE or more probably his son (see Syme 1981), was criticized for removing final s whenever the next word began with consonant to avoid a cacophonous effect. He was probably modeling this archaizing affectation on early Republican authors.

Syme, Ronald. 1981. A great orator mislaid. The classical quarterly. 31.2:421–7.