On the Months

...is held by John Lydus. For although he himself suffers from all the flaws that afflict other writers of "declining Greek" original: cadentis Graecitatis — a term used by older scholars to describe the Byzantine style, which they viewed as less "pure" than the language of Classical Athens., he nevertheless managed his particular field much more accurately than most of the others; thus, a significant portion of antiquity is illuminated by his work.

· This being the case, those who brought this author’s short works into the light have certainly earned great gratitude from lovers of antiquity. I speak of Niels Schow, who in the ninety-fourth year of the previous century 1794 published his treatise On the Months; Jean-Dominique Fuss, who in the year 1812 published his books On the Magistracies; and Karl Benedict Hase, who very recently brought the treatise On Omens out from the hiding places of libraries—where it lay mutilated in many parts—and restored it from with a critical skill that is plainly wonderful and almost incredible. The more we are delighted by the work of this most learned man Hase, the more we must lament that the treatise On the Months, when it was first published, did not receive the same care and diligence from its editor. For I believe it will not escape anyone who has even lightly touched that work just how much Schow left behind for a future editor of the same treatise, both to be corrected and to be explained. Indeed, there is hardly a page—to put it this way—in which we are not hindered, once and again, by the most foul defects with which the text suffers, preventing us from immediately understanding the meaning of a writer who is otherwise not at all difficult.

Therefore, I did not think I should refuse when, more than three years ago, Friedrich Creu- The text cuts off mid-name; the editor is referring to the scholar Friedrich Creuzer.