On the Months

VIII

[variet]y of readings, which Schow Nicolaus Schow (1754–1830), a Danish philologist who produced an earlier edition of Lydus. noted; I have inserted his complete annotations into my own, distinguished by the symbol: SCH. Partly from the sources which Lydus either had before his eyes or seems to have had while writing his book, and finally partly from conjecture—by consulting those writers who treated the same subject—I have purged the text of faults as far as possible, making it more accessible to readers.

In this task, I exercised such caution that I rarely accepted any reading unless it was supported by the authority of either the manuscripts or the sources from which Lydus drew. Where it was manifest that a scribe had made an error, I restored the reading that seemed true to me, even at my own risk original: meo periculo — a philological term meaning the editor is making an educated guess (conjecture) not found in the original manuscripts.; however, I did this in such a way that I gave an account of all my changes in the notes. I made a few exceptions for minor corrections, such as where an omega (ω) was placed instead of an omicron (ο) in comparative forms, or where the "movable nu" ν ἐφελκυστικόν (nu ephelkustikon): a letter 'n' added to the end of Greek words to avoid two vowels clashing or to fit a poetic meter. was missing, and similar instances.

In other places, I was not ashamed to use the little word sic Latin for "thus"; used in editing to indicate that a strange or incorrect word is exactly as it appears in the original source., common in critical notations, to indicate that I did not understand the meaning of a corrupted passage, even though I might sometimes have a way to heal it through conjecture. Furthermore, I have adapted the spelling and the system of punctuation to the style that is currently most prevalent. Moreover, it was my intention that the Planudean Excerpts Summaries written by the 13th-century scholar Maximus Planudes, which help preserve parts of Lydus's work that are otherwise lost., which Schow inserted into the Barberini text The Codex Barberinianus, a significant manuscript once owned by the Barberini family.—though not all in their proper places—especially those which [are found] in Part III...

...a Genevan minister, who at that time was pursuing literary studies at the University of Paris as one of Hase's Karl Benedict Hase (1780–1864), a German-born Hellenist and professor in Paris who was a leading authority on Byzantine Greek. students.