quinquaginta uhi erant centum inde occidit Achilles.1
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The
controversial theme, “A certain man in his will
ordered his heirs to erect statuam auream hastam
tenentem,'” turns on a similar ambiguity; for it raises
the question whether it is the statue holding the
spear which is to be of gold, or whether the spear
should be of gold and the statue of some other
material. The same result is even more frequently
produced by a mistaken inflexion of the voice, as in
the line:
1 “Achilles slew fifty out of a hundred,” or “a hundred out of fifty.” Translated from a Greek line in Arist. Soph. El. i. 4. (πεντήκοντ᾽ ἀνδρῶν ἑκατὸν λίπε δῖος). Quinquaginta is the object of occidit. Faulty reading might make it go with ubi erant, leaving centum as the object of occidit, and making nonsense of the line.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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