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The Lorem ipsum text is derived from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of Cicero‘s De finibus bonorum et malorum.^[6][7] The physical source may have been the 1914 Loeb Classical Library edition of De finibus, where the Latin text, presented on the left-hand (even) pages, breaks off on page 34 with “Neque porro quisquam est qui do-” and continues on page 36 with “lorem ipsum …,” suggesting that the galley type of that page was mixed up to make the dummy text seen today.^[1]

The discovery of the text’s origin is attributed to Richard McClintock, a Latin scholar at Hampden–Sydney College. McClintock connected Lorem ipsum to Cicero’s writing sometime before 1982 by searching for recorded uses of the Latin word consectetur, which was rarely used in classical literature.^[2] McClintock first published his discovery in a 1994 letter to a Before & After magazine editor,^[8] contesting the editor’s earlier claim that Lorem ipsum had no meaning.^[2]

The sections of De finibus bonorum et malorum from which Lorem ipsum ultimately derives is one in which Cicero promotes obtaining pleasure rationally instead of impulsively, in his home city of Cumae between himself and Lucius Manlius Torquatus, a young Epicurean, while another young Roman, Gaius Valerius Triarius, listens on. The relevant sections as printed in the source is reproduced below with fragments used in Lorem ipsum underlined. Letters in brackets were added to Lorem ipsum and were not present in the source text: