The sienese camel and the shirtless swalow episodes from the marvelous life of the "Lectio Facilior" scribal error

Abstract

The present article draws attention to some special scribal errors which appear in the manuscript and print tradition of E. S. Piccolomini’s Historia de duobus amantibus. Those errors often are unintendedly humorous, and shad some light on the associative and technical mechanisms influencing the printers and scribes during their work. The two fantastic beasts mentioned in the title of this article were also born on the pen of some anonymous copyist, however, sadly, they did not enter to any of the multiple translations based on the Latin love story.