The Codex ParisinusALDUS MANUTIUS, in the preface to his edition of Pliny’sLetters, printed at Venice in 1508, expresses his gratitude to Aloisio Mocenigo, Venetian ambassador in Paris, for bringing to Italy an exceptionally fine manuscript of theLetters; the book had been found not long before at or near Paris by the architect Fra Giocondo of Verona. Theeditio princeps, 1471, was based on a family of manuscripts that omitted Book VIII, called Book IX Book VIII, and did not contain Book X, the correspondence between Pliny and Trajan. Subsequent editions had only in part made good these deficiencies. More than a half of Book X, containing the letters numbered 41-121 in editions of our day, was published by Avantius in 1502 from a copy of the Paris manuscript made by Petrus Leander.2Aldus himself, two years before printing his edition, had received from Fra Giocondo a copy of the entire manuscript, with six other volumes, some of them printed editions which Giocondo had collated with manuscripts. Aldus, addressing Mocenigo, thus describes his acquisition:
“Deinde Iucundo Veronensi Viro singulari ingenio, ac bonarum literarum studiosissimo, quod et easdem Secundi epistolas ab eo ipso exemplari a se descriptas in Gallia diligenter ut facit omnia, et sex alia uolumina epistolarum partim manu scripta, partim impressa quidem, sed cum antiquis collata exemplaribus, ad me ipse sua sponte, quae ipsius est ergo studiosos omneis beneuolentia, adportauerit, idque biennio ante, quam tu ipsum mihi exemplar publicandum tradidisses.”
So now the ancient manuscript itself had come. Aldus emphasizes its value in supplying the defects of previous editions. TheLetterswill now include, he declares:
“multae non ante impressae. Tum Graeca correcta, et suis locis restituta, atque retectis adulterinis, uera reposita. Item fragmentatae epistolae, integrae factae. In medio etiam epistolae libri octaui de Clitumno fonte non solum uertici calx additus, et calci uertex, sed decem quoque epistolae interpositae, ac ex Nono libro Octauus factus, et ex Octauo Nonus, Idque beneficio exemplaris correctissimi, & mirae, ac uenerandae Vetustatis.”
The presence of such a manuscript, “most correct, and of a marvellous and venerable antiquity,” stimulates the imagination: Aldus thinks that now even the lost Decades of Livy may appear again:
“Solebam superioribus Annis Aloisi Vir Clariss. cum aut T. Liuii Decades, quae non extare creduntur, aut Sallustii, aut Trogi historiae, aut quemuis alium ex antiquis autoribus inuentum esse audiebam, nugas dicere, ac fabulas. Sed ex quo tu ex Gallia has Plinii epistolas in Italia reportasti, in membrana scriptas, atque adeo diuersis a nostris characteribus, ut nisi quis diu assuerit, non queat legere, coepi sperare mirum in modum, fore aetate nostra, ut plurimi ex bonis autoribus, quos non extare credimus, inueniantur.”
There was something unusual in the character of the script that made it hard to read; its ancient appearance even suggested to Aldus a date as early as that of Pliny himself.
“Est enim uolumen ipsum non solum correctissimum, sed etiam ita antiquum, ut putem scriptum Plinii temporibus.”
This is enthusiastic language. In the days of Italian humanism, a scholar might call almost any book acodex pervetustusif it supplied new readings for his edition and its script seemed unusual. As Professor Merrill remarks:3
“The extreme age that Aldus was disposed to attribute to the manuscript will, of course, occasion no wonder in the minds of those who are familiar with the vague notions on such matters that prevailed among scholars before the study of palaeography had been developed into somewhat of a science. The manuscript may have been written in one of the so-called ‘national’ hands, Lombardic, Visigothic, or Merovingian. But if it were in a ‘Gothic’ hand of the twelfth or thirteenth centuries, it might have appeared sufficiently grotesque and illegible to a reader accustomed for the most part to the exceedingly clear Italian book hands of the fifteenth century.”
In a later article Professor Merrill well adds that even the uncial script would have seemed difficult and alien to one accustomed to the current fifteenth-century style.4A contemporary and rival editor, Catanaeus, disputed Aldus’s claims. In his second edition of theLetters(1518), he professed to have used a very ancient book that came down from Germany and declared that the Paris manuscript had no right to the antiquity which Aldus had imputed to it. But Catanaeus has been proved a liar.5He had no ancient manuscript from Germany, and abused Aldus mainly to conceal his cribbings from that scholar’s edition; we may discount his opinion of the age of the Parisinus. Until Aldus, an eminent scholar and honest publisher,6is proved guilty, we should assume him innocent of mendacity or naïve ignorance. He speaks in earnest; his words ring true. We must be prepared for the possibility that his ancient manuscript was really ancient.
Since Aldus’s time the Parisinus has disappeared. To quote Merrill again:7
“This wonderful manuscript, like so many others, appears to have vanished from earth. Early editors saw no especial reason for preserving what was to them but copy for their own better printed texts. Possibly some leaves of it may be lying hid in old bindings; possibly they went to cover preserve-jars, or tennis-racquets; possibly into some final dust-heap. At any rate the manuscript is gone; the copy by Iucundus is gone; the copy of the correspondence with Trajan that Avantius owed to Petrus Leander is gone; if others had any other copies of Book X, in whole or in part, they are gone too.”
The Bodleian volumeIn 1708 Thomas Hearne, the antiquary, bought at auction a peculiar volume of Pliny’sLetters. It consisted of Beroaldus’s edition of the nine books (1498), the portions of Book X published by Avantius in 1502, and, on inserted leaves, the missing letters of Books VIII and X.8The printed portions, moreover, were provided with over five hundred variant readings and lemmata in a different hand from that which appeared on the inserted leaves; the hand that added the variants also wrote in the margin the sixteenth letter of Book IX, which is not in the edition of Beroaldus. Hearne recognized the importance of this supplementary matter, for he copied the variants into his own edition of theLetters(1703), intending, apparently, to use them in a larger edition which he is said to have published in 1709; he also lent the book to Jean Masson, who refers to it in hisPlinii Vita. Upon Hearne’s death, this valuable volume was acquired by the Bodleian Library in Oxford, but lay unnoticed until Mr. E. G. Hardy, in 1888,9examined it and, after a comparison of the readings, pronounced it the very copy from which Aldus had printed his edition in 1508. External proof of this highly exciting surmise seemed to appear in a manuscript note on the last page of the edition of Avantius, written in the hand that had inserted the variants and supplements throughout the volume:10
“hae plinii iunioris epistolae ex uetustissimo exemplari parisiensi et restitutae et emendatae sunt opera et industria ioannis iucundi prestantissimi architecti hominis imprimis antiquarii.”
What more natural to conclude than that here is the very copy that Aldus prepared from the ancient manuscript and the collations and transcripts sent him by Fra Giocondo? One fact blocks this attractive conjecture: though there are many agreements between the readings of the emended Bodleian book and those of Aldus, there are also many disagreements. Mr. Hardy removed the obstacle by assuming that Aldus made changes in the proof; but the changes are numerous; they are not too numerous for a scholar who can mark up his galleys free of cost, but they are decidedly too numerous if the scholar is also his own printer.
Merrill, in a brilliant and searching article,11entirely demolishes Hardy’s argument. Unlike most destructive critics, he replaces the exploded theory by still more interesting fact. For the rediscovery of the Bodleian book and a proper appreciation of its value, students of Pliny’s text must always be grateful to Hardy; we now know, however, that the volume was never owned by Aldus. The scholar who put its parts together and added the variants with his own hand was the famous Hellenist Guillaume Budé (Budaeus). The parts on the supplementary leaves were done by some copyist who imitated the general effect of the type used in the book itself; Budaeus added his notes on these inserted leaves in the same way as elsewhere. It had been shown before by Keil12that Budaeus must have used the readings of the Parisinus; indeed, it is from his own statement inAnnotationes in Pandectasthat we learn of the discovery of the ancient manuscript by Giocondo:13
“Verum haec epistola et aliae non paucae in codicibus impressis non leguntur: nos integrum ferme Plinium habemus: primum apud parrhisios repertum opera Iucundi sacerdotis: hominis antiquarii Architectique famigerati.”
The wording here is much like that in the note at the end of the Bodleian book. After establishing his case convincingly from the readings followed by Budaeus in his quotations from theLetters, Merrill eventually was able to compare the handwriting with the acknowledged script of Budaeus and to find that the two are identical.14The Bodleian book, then, is not Aldus’s copy for the printer. It is Budaeus’s own collation from the Parisinus. Whether he examined the manuscript directly or used a copy made by Giocondo is doubtful; the note at the end of the Bodleian volume seems to favor the latter possibility. Budaeus does not by any means give a complete collation, but what he does give constitutes, in Merrill’s opinion, our best authority for any part of the lost Parisinus.15
The Morgan fragment possibly a part of the lost ParisinusThe scriptPerhaps we may now say the Bodleian volumehas been hithertoour best authority. For a fragment of the ancient book, if my conjecture is right, is now, after various journeys, reposing in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City.
First of all, we are impressed with the script. It is an uncial of about the year 500 A.D.—certainlyvenerandae vetustatis. If Aldus had this same uncial codex at his disposal, we can understand his delight and pardon his slight exaggeration, for it is only slight. The essential truth of his statement remains: he had found a book of a different class from that of the ordinary manuscript—indeeddiversis a nostris characteribus. Instead of thinking him arrant knave or fool enough tobring down “antiquity” to the thirteenth century, we might charitably push back his definition of “nostri characteres” to include anything in minuscules; script “not our own” would be the majuscule hands in vogue before the Middle Ages. That is a position palaeographically defensible, seeing that the humanistic script is a lineal descendant of the Caroline variety. Furthermore, an uncial hand, though clear and regular as in our fragment, is harder to read than a glance at a page of it promises. This is due to the writing of words continuously. It takes practice, as Aldus says, to decipher such a script quickly and accurately. Moreover, the flesh sides of the leaves are faded.
Provenience and contentsWe next note that the fragment came to the Pierpont Morgan Library from Aldus’s country, where, as Dr. Lowe has amply shown, it was written; how it came into the possession of the Marquis Taccone would be interesting to know. But, like the Parisinus, the book to which our fragment belonged had not stayed in Italy always. It had made a trip to France—and was resting there in the fifteenth century, as is proved by the French note of that period on fol. 51r. We may say “the book” and not merely “the present six leaves,” for the fragment begins with fol. 48, and the foliation is of the fifteenth century. The last page of our fragment is bright and clear, showing no signs of wear, as it would if no more had followed it;16I will postpone the question of what probably did follow. Moreover, if theprobatio pennaeon fol.53ris Carolingian,17it would appear that the book had been in France at the beginning as well as at the end of the Middle Ages. Thus our manuscript may well have been one of those brought up from Italy by the emissaries of Charlemagne or their successors during the revival of learning in the eighth and ninth centuries. The outer history of our book, then, and the character of its script, comport with what we know of Aldus’s Parisinus.
The text closely related to that of AldusBut we must now subject our fragment to internal tests. If Aldus used the entire manuscript of which this is a part, his text must show a general conformity to that of the fragment. An examination of the appended collation will establish this fact beyond a doubt. The references are to Keil’s critical edition of 1870, but the readings are verified from Merrill’s apparatus. I will designate the fragment asΠ, usingPfor Aldus’s Parisinus andafor his edition.
We may begin by excluding two probable misprints in Aldus, 64, 1conturberniumand 65, 17subeuertas. Then there are various spellings in which Aldus adheres to the fashion of his day, assexcenties,millies,millia,tentarunt,caussas,autoritas,quanquam,syderum,hyeme,coena,ocium,hospicii,negociis,solatium,adulescet,exoluit,Thuscos; there are other spellings which modern editors might not disdain,i.e.,aerariiandillustri, and some that they have accepted, namelyapponitur,existat,impleturus,implorantes,obtulissem,balinei,caret(notkaret),caritas(notkaritas).18
A study of our collation will also show some forty cases of correction inΠby either the scribe himself or a second and possibly a third ancient hand. Here Aldus, if he read the pages of our fragment and read them with care, might have seen warrant for following either the original text or the emended form, as he preferred. The most important cases are:61, 14 sera]ΠaseruaΠ261, 21 considit]ΠconsidetΠ2a. The original reading ofΠis clearlyconsidit. The secondihas been altered to a capitale, which of course is not the proper form for uncial. 62, 5 residit]Πresideta. HereΠis not corrected, but Aldus may have thought that the preceding case ofconsidet(m. 2) supported what he supposed the better formresidet. 63, 11 posset]apossit(inposset m. 1?)Π. Again the correctedeis capital, not uncial, but Aldus would have had no hesitation in adopting the reading of the second hand. 64, 2 modica vel etiam]amodica est etiam(corr. m. 2)Π. 64, 28 excurrissem accepto, ut praefectus aerari, commeatu]a. HereΠomittedaccepto ut praefectus aerari,—evidently a line of the manuscript that he was copying, for there are no similar endings to account otherwise for the omission. 66, 2 dissentientis]a exdissitientism. 1(?)Π.
There are also a few careless errors of the first hand, uncorrected, inΠ, which Aldus himself might easily have corrected or have found the right reading already in the early editions. 62, 23 conteror quorum]aconteror qui horumΠ B F63, 28 si]asibiΠ64, 24 conprobasse]comprouasseΠ.
In view of these certain errors of the first hand ofΠ, most of them corrected but a few not, Aldus may have felt justified in abiding by one of the early editions in the following three cases, whereΠmight well have seemed to him wrong; inone of them (64,3) modern editors agree with him: 62, 20 aurium oculorum vigor] Π aurium oculorumque uigora64, 3 proferenda]aconferandaΠ 65, 11 et alii] Π etiam aliia.
There is only one case of possible emendation to note: 64, 29 questuri] Π quaesturiMVa. Aldus’s reading, as I learn from Professor Merrill, is in the anonymous edition ascribed to Roscius (Venice, 1492?), but not in any of the editions cited by Keil. This may be a conscious emendation, but it is just as possibly an error of hearing made by either Aldus or his compositor in repeating the word to himself as he wrote or set up the passage. Once in the text,quaesturigives no offense, and is not corrected by Aldus in his edition of 1518. An apparently more certain effort at emendation is reported by Keil on 62, 13, where Aldus is said to differ from all the manuscripts and the editions in readingagereforfacere. So he does in his second edition; but here he hasfacerewith everybody else. The changes in the second edition are few and are largely confined to the correction of obvious misprints. There is no point in substitutingagereforfacere. I should attribute this innovation to a careless compositor, who tried to memorize too large a bit of text, rather than to an emending editor. At all events, it has no bearing on our immediate concern.
The striking similarity, therefore, between Aldus’s text and that of our fragment confirms our surmise that the latter may be a part of that ancient manuscript which he professes to have used in his edition. Whatever his procedure may have been, he has produced a text that differs from Π only in certain spellings, in the correction, with the help of existing editions, of three obvious errors of Π and of three of its readings that to Aldus might well have seemed erroneous, in two misprints, and in one reading which is possibly an emendation but which may just as well be another misprint. Thus the internal evidence of the text offers no contradiction of what the script and the history of the manuscript have suggested. I can not claim to have established an irrefutable conclusion, but the signs all point in one direction. I see enough evidence to warrant a working hypothesis, which we may use circumspectly as a clue, submit to further tests, and abandon in case these tests yield evidence with which it can not be reconciled.
Editorial methods of AldusFurther, if we are justified in our assumption that Aldus used the manuscript of which Π is a part, the fragment is instructive as to his editorial methods. If he proceeded elsewhere as carefully as here, he certainly did not perform his task with the high-handedness of the traditional humanistic editor; rather, he treated his ancient witness with respect, and abandoned it only when confronted with what seemed its obvious mistakes. I will revert to this matter at a later stage of the argument.
BUT, it will be asked, how do we know that Aldus used Π rather than some other manuscript that had a very similar text and that happened to have gone through the same travels? To answer this question we must examine the relation of Π to the other extant manuscripts in the light of what is known of the transmission of Pliny’sLettersin the Middle Ages. A convenient summary is given by Merrill on the basis of his abundant researches.19
Classes of the manuscriptsManuscripts of theLettersmay be divided into three classes, distinguished by the number of books that each contains.
Class I, the ten-book family, consists ofB(Bellovacensis or Riccardianus), now Ashburnhamensis, R 98 in the Laurentian Library in Florence, its former home, whence it had been diverted on an interesting pilgrimage by the noted book-thief Libri. This manuscript is attributed to the tenth century by Merrill, and by Chatelain in his description of the book. But Chatelain labels his facsimile page “Saec.IX.”20The latter seems the more probable date. The free use of a flat-toppeda, along with the general appearance of the script, reminds me of the style in vogue at Fleury and its environs about the middle of the ninth century. A good specimen is accessible in a codex of St. Hilary on the Psalms (Vaticanus Reginensis 95), written at Micy between 846 and 859, of which a page is reproduced by Ehrle and Liebaert.21F(Florentinus), the other important representative of this class, is also in the Laurentian Library (S. Marco 284). The date assigned to it seems also too late. It is apparently as early as the tenth century, and also has some of the characteristics of the script of Fleury; it is French work, at any rate. Keil’s suggestion22that it may be the book mentioned asliber epistolarum Gaii Pliniiin a tenth-century catalogue of the manuscripts atLorsch may be perfectly correct; though not written at Lorsch, it might have been presented to the monastery by that time.23These two manuscripts agree in containing, by the first hand, only Books I-V, vi (Fhaving all andBonly a part of the sixth letter). However, as the initial title inBisplini · secundi · epistularum · libri · decem, we may infer that some ancestor, if not the immediate ancestor, ofBandFhad all ten books.
In Class II the leading manuscript is another Laurentian codex (Mediceus XLVII 36), which contains Books I-IX, xxvi, 8. It was written in the ninth century, at Corvey, whence it was brought to Rome at the beginning of the sixteenth century. It is part of a volume that also once contained our only manuscript of the first part of theAnnalsof Tacitus.24The other chief manuscript of this class isV(Vaticanus Latinus 3864), which has Books I-IV. The script has been variously estimated. I am inclined to the opinion that the book was written somewhere near Tours, perhaps Fleury, in the earlier part of the ninth century.25If Ullman is right in seeing a reference to Pliny’sLettersin a notice in a mediaeval catalogue of Corbie,26it may be that the codex is a Corbeiensis. But it is also possible that a volume of theLettersat Corbie was twice copied, once at Corvey (M) and once in the neighborhood of Tours (V). At any rate, with the help ofV, we may reach farther back than Corvey and Germany for the origin of this class. There are likewise two fragmentary texts, both of brief extent, Monacensis 14641 (olim Emmeramensis)saec.IX, and Leidensis Vossianus 98saec.IX, the latter partly in Tironian notes. Merrill regards these as bearing “testimony to the existence of the nine-book text in the same geographical region,” namely Germany.27There they are to-day, in Germany and Holland, but where they were written is another affair. The Munich fragment is part of a compositevolume of which it occupies only a page or two. The script is continental, and may well be that of Regensburg, but it shows marked traces of insular influence, English rather than Irish in character. The work immediately preceding the fragment is in an insular hand, of the kind practised at various continental monasteries, such as Fulda; there are certain notes in the usual continental hand. Evidently the manuscript deserves consideration in the history of the struggle between the insular and the continental hands in Germany.28The script of the Leyden fragment, on the other hand, so far as I can judge from a photograph, looks very much like the mid-century Fleury variety with which I have associated the Bellovacensis; there can hardly be doubt, at any rate, that De Vries is correct in assigning it to France, where Voss obtained so many of his manuscripts.29Except, therefore, forMand the Munich fragment, there is no evidence furnished by the chief manuscripts which connects the tradition of theLetterswith Germany. The insular clue afforded by the latter book deserves further attention, but I can not follow it here. The question of the Parisinus aside,BandFof Class I andVof Class II are sure signs that the propagation of the text started from one or more centres—Fleury and Corbie seem the most probable—in France.
The third class comprises manuscripts containing eight books, the eighth being omitted and the ninth called the eighth. Representatives of this class are all codices of the fifteenth century, though the class has a more ancient basis than that, namely a lost manuscript of Verona. This is best attested byD, a Dresden codex, while almost all other manuscripts of this class descend from a free recension made by Guarino and conflated withF;o,u, andxare the representatives of this recension (G) that are reported by Merrill. The relation of this third class to the second is exceedingly close; indeed, it may be merely a branch of it.30
The early editionsAs is often the case, the leading manuscript authorities are only inadequately represented in the early editions. The Editio Princeps (p) of 1471 was based ona manuscript of the Guarino recension. A Roman editor in 1474 added part of Book VIII, putting it at the end and calling it Book IX; he acquired this new material, along with various readings in the other books, from some manuscript of Class II that may have come down from the north. Three editors, called ς by Keil—Pomponius Laetus 1490, Beroaldus 1498, and Catanaeus 1506—tookras a basis; but Laetus had another and a better representative of the same type of text as that from whichrhad drawn, and he likewise made use ofV. With the help of these new sources the ς editors polished away a large number of the gross blunders ofpandr, and added a sometimes unnecessary brilliance of emendation. Avantius’s edition of part of Book X in 1502 was appropriated by Beroaldus in the same year and by Catanaeus in 1506; these latter editors had no new sources at their disposal. No wonder that the Parisinus seemed a godsend to Aldus. The only known ancient manuscripts whose readings had been utilized in the editions preceding his own wereFandV, both incomplete representatives of Classes I and II. The manuscripts discovered by the Roman editor and Laetus were of great help at the time, but we have no certain evidence of their age.BandMwere not accessible.31Now, besides the transcript of Giocondo and his other six volumes, whatever these may have been, Aldus had the ancient codex itself with all ten books complete. Everybody admits that the Parisinus, as shown by the readings of Aldus, is clearly associated with the manuscripts of Class I. Its contents corroborate the evidence of the title inB, which indicates descent from some codex containing ten books.
Π a member of Class INow nothing is plainer than thatΠis a member of Class I, as it agrees withBFin the following errors, or what are regarded by Keil as errors. I consider the text of theLettersand not their superscriptions. 60, 15 duplicia]MVDduplicataΠBFGa; 61, 12 confusa adhuc]MVadhuc confusaΠBFGa; 62, 6 doctissime]MVdoctissimaΠBFDaet doctissimaG; 62, 16 nec adficitur]MVDet adficiturΠBFGa; 62, 23 quorum]MVDGaqui horumΠBF; 63, 22 teque et]MVDGtequeΠBFa; 64, 3 proferenda]DoxaconferendaBFuconferandaΠ(MVlack an extensive passage here); 65, 11 alii quidam minores sed tamen numeri]DGalii quidam minores sed tam innumeriMValii quidem minoris sed tamen numeriΠBFa; 65, 12 voluntariis accusationibus]M(uoluntaris)Dvoluntariisom. Vaccusationibus uoluntariisΠBFGa; 65, 15 superiore]MVDprioreΠBFGa; 65, 24 iam]MVDGom. ΠBFa.
Tastes differ, and not all these eleven readings of Class I may be errors. Kukula, in the most recent Teubner edition (1912), accepts three of them (60, 15; 62, 6; 65, 15), and Merrill, in his forthcoming edition, five (60, 15; 61, 12; 62, 6;65, 12; 65, 15). Personally I could be reconciled to them all with the exception of the very two which Aldus could not admit—62, 23 and 64, 3; in both places he had the early editions to fall back on. However, I should concur with Merrill and Kukula in preferring the reading of the other classes in 62, 16 and 65, 24. In 65, 11 I would emend toalii quidam minoris sed tamen numeri; if this is the right reading,ΠBFagree in the easy error ofquidemforquidam, andMVDin another easy error,minoresforminoris—the parent manuscript ofMVfurther changedtamen numeritotam innumeri. Whatever the final judgment, here are five cases in which all recent editors would attribute error to Class I; in the remaining six cases the manuscripts of Class I either agree in error or avoid the error of Class II—surely, then,Πis not of the latter class. There are six other significant errors ofMVin the whole passage, no one of which appears inΠ: 61, 15 si non] sintMV; 62, 6 mira illis] mirabilisMV; 62, 11 lotus] illicMV; cibum] cibosMV; 62, 25 fuit—64, 12 potes]om. MV; 66, 12 amatus] est amatusMV. Once the first hand inΠagrees withVin an error easily committed independently: 61, 12 ordinata]ordinata, diss.m. 2ΠornataV.
Π, then, andMVhave descended from the archetype by different routes. With Class III, the Verona branch of Class II,Πclearly has no close association.
But the evidence for allyingΠwithBandF, the manuscripts of Class I, is by no means exhausted. In 61, 14,BFuxhave the erroneous emendation, which Budaeus includes among his variants, ofseruaforsera. A glance atΠshows its apparent origin. The first hand hasseracorrectly; the second hand writesuabove the line.32If the second hand is solely responsible for the attempt at improvement here, and is not reproducing a variant in the parent manuscript ofΠ, thenBFmust descend directly fromΠ. The following instances point in the same direction: 61, 21 considit] considetBF.Πhasconsiditby the first hand, the second hand changing the secondito a capitale.33In 65, 5, however,residitis not thus changed inΠ, and perhaps for this very reason is retained by the careful scribe ofB;F, which has a slight tendency to emend, has, withG,residet. 63, 9 praestat amat me] praestatam ad meB. Here the letters of thescriptura continuainΠare faded and blurred; the error ofBwould therefore be peculiarly easy if this manuscript derived directly fromΠ. If one ask whether the page were as faded in the ninth century as now, Dr. Lowe has already answered this question; the flesh side of the parchment might well have lost a portion of its ink considerably before the Carolingian period.34In any case, the error ofpraestatam ad meseems natural enough to one who reads the line for the first time inΠ.Bdid not, as we shall see, copy directly fromΠ; a copy intervened, in which the error was made and then, I should infer, corrected above the line, whenceFdrew the right reading,Btaking the original but incorrect text.
There are cases in plenty elsewhere in theLettersto show thatBis not many removes from thescriptura continuaof some majuscule hand. In the section included inΠ, apart from the general tightness of the writing, which led to the later insertion of strokes between many of the words,35we note these special indications of a parent manuscript in majuscules. In 61, 10 me autem],Bstarted to writemeaand then corrected it. 64, 19 praeceptori a quo] praeceptoria quoB, (m. 1)F. IfBor its parent manuscript copiedΠdirectly, the mistake would be especially easy, forpraeceptoriaends the line inΠ. 64, 25 integra re]. Afterintegra, a letter is erased inB; the copyist, it would seem, first mistookintegra refor one word.
Other instances showing a close connection betweenBandΠare as follows: 62, 23 unice]Πhas by the first handinuice, the second hand writinguabovei, and a vertical stroke aboveu. InBF,uince, the reading of the first hand, is changed by the second tounice; this second hand, Professor Merrill informs me, seems to be that of a writer in the same scriptorium as the first. The error inBFmight, of course, be due to copying an original in minuscules, but it might also be due to the curious state of affairs inΠ. 65, 24 fungerer]. InΠthe finalris written, somewhat indistinctly, above the line.Bhasfungerercorrected by the second hand fromfungeret(?), which may be due to a misunderstanding ofΠ. 66, 2 avunculi]auonculiΠ(oin ras.)B. This form might perhaps be read;Fhas emended it out, and no other manuscript has it. 65, 7 desino, inquam, patres conscripti, putare]. Here the relation ofBFtoΠseems particularly close.Π, likeMVDoxa, has the abbreviationp.c.On a clearly written page, the error ofreputare(BF) forp.c. putareis not a specially likely one to make. But in the blur at the bottom of fol. 52v, a page on the flesh side of the parchment, the combination might readily be mistaken forreputare.
Another curious bit of testimony appears at the beginning of the third book. The scribe ofB36wrote the wordsnescio—apudin rustic capitals, occupying therewith the first line and about a third of the second. This is not effective calligraphy. It would appear that he is reproducing, as is his habit, exactly what he found in his original. That original might have had one full line, or two lines, of majuscules, perhaps, following pretty closely the lines inΠ, which has the same amount of text, plus the first three letters ofspurinnam, in the first two lines. IfBhadΠbefore him, there is nothing to explain his most unusual procedure. His original, therefore, is notΠbut an intervening copy, which he is transcribing with an utter indifference to aesthetic effect and with a laudable, if painful, desire for accuracy. This trait, obvious inB’s work throughout, is perhaps nowhere more strikingly exhibited than here.
Π the direct ancestor of BF with probably a copy interveningIfΠis the direct ancestor ofBF, these manuscripts should contain no good readings not found inΠ, unless their writers could arrive at such readings by easy emendation or unless there is contamination with some other source. From what we know of the text ofBFin general, the latter supposition may at once be ruled out. There are but three cases to consider, two of which may be readily disposed of: 64, 3 proferenda] conferendaBFconferandaΠ; 64, 4 conprobasse] (comp.)BFcomprouasseΠ. These are simple slips, which a scribe might almost unconsciously correct as he wrote. The remaining error (63, 28sibitosi) is not difficult to emend when one considers the entire sentence:quibus omnibus ita demum similis adolescet, siimbutus honestis artibus fuerit, quas, etc. It is less probable, however, thatBwithΠbefore him should correct it as he wrote than, as we have already surmised, that a minuscule copy intervened betweenΠandB, in which the lettersbiwere deleted by some careful reviser. Two other passages tend to confirm this assumption of an intermediate copy. In 65, 6 (tum optime libertati venia obsequio praeparatur),Bhasoptimae, a false alteration induced perhaps by the followinglibertati. InΠ,optimestands at the end of the line. The scribe ofB, had he not foundlibertatiimmediately adjacent, would not so readily be tempted to emend; still, we should not make too much of this instance, asBhas a rather pronounced tendency to writeaefore. A more certain case is 66, 7 fungar indicis] fungarindicisexfungari dicisB; here the error is easier to derive from an original in minuscules in whichinwas abbreviated with a stroke above thei. There is abundant evidence elsewhere in theLettersthat the immediate ancestor ofBFwas written in minuscules; I need not elaborate this point. Our present consideration is that apart from the three instances of simple emendation just discussed, there is no good reading ofBorFin the portion of text contained inΠthat may not be found, by either the first or the second hand, inΠ.37
We may now examine a most important bit of testimony to the close connection existing betweenBFandΠ.Balone of all manuscripts hitherto known is provided with indices of theLetters, one for each book, which give the names of the correspondents and the opening words of each letter. NowΠ, by good luck, preserves the end of Book II, the beginning of Book III, and between them the index for Book III. Dr. F. E. Robbins, in a careful article onBandF, and oneon the tables of contents inB,38concluded thatPdid not contain the indices which are preserved inB, and that these were compiled in some ancestor ofB, perhaps in the eighth century. Here they are, in the Morgan fragment, which takes us back two centuries farther into the past. A comparison of the index inΠshows indubitably a close kinship withB. A glance at platesXIIIandXIVindicates, first of all, that the copyB, here as in the text of theLetters, is not many removes fromscriptura continua. Moreover, the lists are drawn up on the same principle; thenomenandcognomenbut not thepraenomenof the correspondent being given, and exactly the same amount of text quoted at the beginning of each letter. The incipit of III, xvi (ad nepotem—adnotasse uideor fatadictaq·) is an addition inΠ, and the lemma is longer than usual, as though the original title had been omitted in the manuscript whichΠwas copying and the corrector ofΠhad substituted a title of his own making.39It reappears inB, with the easy emendation offactafromfata. The only other case in the indices of a right reading inBthat is not inΠis in the title of III, viii:ad sueton tranqueΠAdsu&on tranqui.B. In both these instances the scribe ofBneeded no external help in correcting the simple error. Far more significant is the coincidence ofBandΠin very curious mistakes, as the address of III, iii (ad caerelliae hispullaeforad corelliam hispullam) and the lemma of III, viii (facis adproceteraforfacis pro cetera).ΠBFagree in omittingsuae(III, iii) andsuo(III, iv), but in retaining the pronominal adjectives in the other addresses preserved inΠ. The same unusual suspensions occur inΠandB, asad sueton tranque(tranquiB);ad uestric spurinn·;ad silium procul.40In the first of these cases, the parent ofΠevidently hadtranq·, whichΠfalsely enlarges totranque; this form and nottranq·is the basis ofB’s correction—a semi-successful correction—tranqui. This, then, is another sign thatBdepends directly onΠ. Further,Bomits one symbol of abbreviation whichΠhas (possum iam perscri{-b}), the lemma of the ninth letter), and in the lemma of the tenth neither manuscript preserves the symbol (composuisse me quaed). In the first of these cases, it will be observed,Bhas a very longiinperscrib.41This longiis not a feature of the script ofB, nor is there any provocation for it in the way in which the word is written inΠ. This detail, therefore, may be added to the indications that a copy in minuscules intervened betweenBandΠ; the curiousi, faithfully reproduced, as usual, byB, may have occurred in such a copy.
These details prove an intimate relation betweenΠandBF, and fit the supposition thatBandFare direct descendants ofΠ. This may be strengthenedby another consideration. IfΠandBindependently copy the same source, they inevitably make independent errors, however careful their work.Πshould contain, then, a certain number of errors not inB. As we have found only three such cases in 12 pages, or 324 lines, and as in all these three the right reading inBcould readily have been due to emendation on the part of the scribe ofBor of a copy betweenΠandB, we have acquired negative evidence of an impressive kind. It is distinctly harder to believe that the two texts derive independently from a common source. Show us the significant errors ofΠnot inB, and we will accept the existence of that common source; otherwise the appropriate supposition is thatBdescends directly from its elder relativeΠ. It is not necessary to prove by an examination of readings thatΠis not copied fromB; the dates of the two scripts settle that matter at the start. Supposing, however, for the moment, thatΠandBwere of the same age, we could readily prove that the former is not copied from the latter. ForBcontains a significant collection of errors which are not present inΠ. Six slight mistakes were made by the first hand and corrected by it, three more were corrected by the second hand, and twelve were left uncorrected. Some of these are trivial slips that a scribe copyingBmight emend on his own initiative, or perhaps by a lucky mistake. Such are 64, 26 iudicium] indiciumB; 64, 29 Caecili] caeciliiB; 65, 13 neglegere] neglereB. But intelligent pondering must precede the emendation ofpraeceptoria quointopraeceptori a quo(64, 19), ofbeaticisintoBaeticis(65, 15), and ofoptimaeintooptime(65, 26), while it would take a Madvig to remedy the corruptions in 63, 9 (praestatam ad me) and 65,7 (reputareintopatres conscripti putare). These are the sort of errors which if found inΠwould furnish incontrovertible proof that a manuscript not containing them was independent ofΠ; but there is no such evidence of independence in the case ofB. Our case is strengthened by the consideration that various of the errors inBmay well be traced to idiosyncrasies ofΠ, not merely to itsscriptura continua, a source of misunderstanding that any majuscule would present, but to the fading of the writing on the flesh side of the pages inΠ, and to the possibility that some of the corrections of the second hand may be the private inventions of that hand.42We are hampered, of course, by the comparatively small amount of matter inΠ, nor are we absolutely certain that this is characteristic of the entire manuscript of which it was once a part. But my reasoning is correct, I believe, for the material at our disposal.