EDITOR'S PREFACE.

Fair judges would have branded an edition of that kind with the shameful name of paratyposis reprinting/piracy. Perhaps I would have harmed the interests of Matranga, a learned and most industrious man who pursues studies equal to my own. I will add, what is the truth and not merely likely, that I have read almost nothing of the Matranga-edition Tzetzes Allegories except for the final part on the Iliad. Mindful of the immense weariness I had endured in describing and illustrating that minor poet, I recoiled from stirring up the foul-smelling Camarina again A reference to the proverb "Do not stir up Camarina," meaning do not cause trouble by disturbing a stagnant situation., for "it is better to leave it alone," as the proverb says. I glanced through the other short works in haste, thinking it sufficient to extract a few things to touch upon in the Addenda, since I was not greatly invited by the titles, and the editor himself had kept himself more modestly within the office of transcribing and prefacing.

Matranga therefore preceded me; may it be happy and auspicious for him. In the hunting of unpublished manuscripts, some are more fortunate than others; and more than once I have been less fortunate than others. But I do not complain, nor have I ever complained, as Fortune plays her customary game. I do not even complain about a certain foreign man who, almost thirty years ago, visited me with the utmost courtesy. While we were talking, as is common, about the studies of both of us, I had told him about a Greek writer, one unpublished, whose manuscript I had begun to transcribe for the purpose of an edition, and he had already replied something or other about his own affairs and plans...