These are the edition's working notes, published as they were written. They record, work by work, where Migne's plate is defective or the reading uncertain: the printed form, what the English does with it, and why. They are not a groomed apparatus. Where a note argues with itself, withdraws an earlier decision, or leaves a question open, that is the record of how the reading was actually reached, and it is left standing — a conjecture that is visible can be checked, and one that has been tidied away cannot.
The English never silently repairs the page. A construable but wrong reading is rendered literally and the conjecture is recorded here, never applied to the text. How the English is produced and checked →
<!-- corpus-polarity-sweep 2026-07-28 --> ## Corpus polarity sweep — 2026-07-28
Blind Opus read of the Latin/English pair for sense-reversing defects (one word or one letter asserting the opposite of what the context requires). 3 site(s). Migne's defects are recorded here and rendered literally in the English; our own errors were fixed in place. Full context: data/sweeps/corpus-polarity/REPORT.md.
1148B — added-negative (ours, low confidence)
Printed: partim te reprehendens, quod omnia formides, nihilque non metuas
Conjecture: 'nihilque non metuas' = 'and there is nothing you do not fear'. The English strands the negative after the verb ('fear nothing not'), so it reads as 'fear nothing' with a stray particle — the opposite of the Latin's emphatic universal fear. Should read 'and there is nothing you do not fear'.
Its own immediate neighbour in the same clause is 'quod omnia formides' / 'you dread everything'; the English as printed pairs 'dread everything' with 'fear nothing' in one breath. The letter's argument depends on Periander fearing all: 'Esset ergo optimum abstinere tyrannide, ut causas omnis metus evaderes' ('that you might escape all causes of fear').
1150B — dropped-word (ours, low confidence)
Printed: tu autem sponte filio ingrato si quid egeris, peccas
Conjecture: 'filio ingrato' = the son who is UNGRATEFUL (or, as dative of disadvantage, 'anything unwelcome to my son'). 'Guiltless' reverses the son's moral standing.
The closing clause of the same short letter, 'nam et ipse satis diu poenas dedit' / 'for he too has paid the penalty long enough', presupposes that the son had something to pay for; a son already declared 'guiltless' has no penalty owing, and the 'et ipse' ('he too', alongside Periander himself) loses its force.
1152B — dropped-non (migne, high confidence)
Printed: Equidem nisi senectus mihi obsisteret, sum enim octogenarius, corpusque praeterea invalidum, ipse ad te venirem, ut jubes. Quia vero id datur, quosdam ex conturbernalibus meis ad te mitto
Conjecture: Quia vero id NON datur (or Quia vero id non licet) — a 'non' has dropped out of Migne's plate; our English silently supplies it ('is not granted').
The immediately preceding clause is a contrary-to-fact conditional: 'nisi senectus mihi obsisteret ... ipse ad te venirem' — i.e. old age DOES stand in his way, so he does NOT come. 'Quia vero id datur' ('but since that IS granted') would make the very next clause, 'quosdam ex contubernalibus meis ad te mitto' (I send companions INSTEAD of coming), a non sequitur: if coming were granted he would have no reason to send substitutes. Zeno's whole letter is a polite refusal of Antigonus's summons.