A NOTE ON LUCRETIUS, DE RERUM NATURA 3.361

A conjecture made by Lambinus in 1565 proposes replacement of difficilest (present in the three authoritative manuscripts O, Q and V) at 3.361 with desiperest. Although commonly printed until the end of the nineteenth century (including in Lachmann's famous edition and Heinze's edition of Book 3, but excluding Wakefield's and Munro's), in the twentieth century the conjecture fell out of favour, both in editions of the entire De rerum natura (DRN) and of Book 3; the manuscript reading of difficilest has been kept by editors since 1900: Duff, Bailey, Martin, Kenney, Muller, Smith and Brown. But with this consensus there are problems, and there are several reasons for preferring Lambinus' conjecture.