PREFACE

...what we draw from those sources is due more to conjecture than to a memory preserved intact from antiquity.

It would have been tedious to list the various readings of the Excerpts (L), since they stood entirely on the side of manuscript Q, which is, so to speak, original: "τρίτος ἀπὸ τῆς ἀληθείας" "third from the truth" regarding the reliability of the traditional context (Volume I, page XXIX). Only once does it provide the truth against all other books, on page 172, line 31, where it correctly interpreted the abbreviation for "one" original: "$\bar{a}$" as the nominative "one" original: "ἕνα" instead of the genitive "of one" original: "ἑνός". For as to the fact that the same book on page 173, lines 17–18, starting from the words "of that which is under" original: "τοῦ ὑπὸ" in manuscripts B and Γ, seems to offer a more complete context than M, P, and Q, you will easily recognize that those additions are scholia marginal or interlinear scholarly comments partially preserved also in the Marcian manuscript (M); the person who excerpted Proclus's commentary foolishly admitted these into the main text and perhaps expanded them by his own wit (cf. page 329).

Regarding the Latin version by Niccolò Leonico Tomeo (th), we have compared many pages—following Schneider’s work—as diligently as possible with the Greek recension. The archetype the lost original manuscript from which others are copied from which it emerged cannot be found among the books still preserved today.¹⁾ Although it is to be valued more highly than the common edition (Volume I, page XXI), it nevertheless does not equal manuscript D (or rather, the best specimen of that same class, the Escorial manuscript), and is certainly inferior to manuscript Q. Nonetheless, not infrequently—especially in those parts of the commentaries where M or MP are lacking—we have included Tomeo's reading in the critical apparatus, since that most learned Venetian very often restored the true form of the context in his Latin translation through his own intellect.

We have explained the signs sigla: symbols used in a critical edition to represent specific manuscripts for the manuscripts above; the remaining signs are the same as those we used in the first volume.

WILHELM KROLL, with the greatest industry and generosity, has also undertaken the cleaning and correcting of the proof-sheets of this volume—

1. In the Rhenish Museum original: "Musei Rhenani" volume 58, page 251, note 2, we determined that the readings of the second hand of the Platonic manuscript F, which were taken from Proclus's lemmas the themes or titles of a section, perhaps go back to a certain book of Proclus related to Niccolò Leonico Tomeo's copy.