How any editor of Plautus can become one of the slash-cut-and-carve critics I cannot understand. The fair garden-beds of Plautus are scored all over with the hoof-prints of the reckless emender. Take this line of the Poenulus for example. Hanno gets a sight of his two long-lost daughters and is surprised to find how they have grown:

Haecine meae sunt filiae?

Quantae e quantillis iam sunt factae!

His would-be son-in-law, not a very refined youth, says with a smile:

Scin quid est?

Thraecae sunt: in celonem sustolli solent.