I have only to add, that instead of paulatim according to Linden and Almeloveen, I have read paulum with Pinzi, Junta, Aldus, and others.
[65.] Soft thread, acia molli.) Acia occurs no where else but in this single place of Celsus; the translation is agreeable to the sentiments of Rhodius de Acia, cap. 14. and I think it capable of no other sense. It may not be improper however to observe, that in some copies, though they are not of the best authority, acu is read instead of acia, but with no apparent meaning.
[66.] After applying.) I read with Constantine imposito for impositum, which last has no place in the construction with a proper sense.
[67.] And the flesh within is corrupted.) Malique odoris est, et caro intus corrupta. All the editions of Morgagni[ JI ] have carunculæ corruptae, and the MS, carunculaeque corruptae, which Morgagni likes better; because it would have been to no purpose to have repeated caro ejus corrupta, which had occurred only a few lines before; whereas with the other reading, we expunge the colon, and make carunculae relate to the verb resolvuntur.
[68.] The skin a little farther off.) I have here followed the reading of the older editions, ulterior instead of deterior in Linden, which agrees much better with the sense of the whole passage. Vide Morg. ep. 6. p. 149.
[69.] The skin is entire, but the flesh within.) Linden omits integra cute, which is in the older editions, and Morgagni’s MS[ JJ ].—As the sense seems to require it, I have taken it into the translation.
[70.] Almost all bites.) I read here, omnis fere morsus, with Nicolaus Junta and the Manutii, and not feræ, as Linden and Almeloveen have it. For Celsus himself makes no distinction between venenatos et non venenatos morsus.
[71.] Psylli.) Pliny, from the authority of Agatharchides, says, there was a nation called Psylli, in whose bodies there was some humour destructive to serpents, by the odour of which they stupified them. They had a custom among them of exposing their children to the fiercest of these creatures, that they might try the chastity of their wives, the serpents not flying from those, that were not of their blood. Plin. lib. vii. c. 2. This account of Pliny’s has no better foundation than other vulgar errors: but we may observe, our author was too curious an enquirer into nature to give credit to such fables.
[72.] Especially in Gaul.) The Gauls tinged their arrows in hunting with hellebore, and cutting out the wound they made all round, they pretended it made the flesh more tender. Plin. lib. xxv. c. 5.