On the Months

...smaller fragments of these same works, which Lambecius Peter Lambeck (1628–1680) was an influential librarian and historian who cataloged the Imperial Library in Vienna. inserted into his observations on Codinus George Codinus was a 15th-century Byzantine author; Lambeck provided commentary on his works using manuscripts from Paris. from a Royal Parisian manuscript, have for a long time now excited the desires of the learned. In addition to these recently mentioned excerpts of Lydus, which—as we see from Fabricius’s Greek Library, volume 14, page 6—Leo Allatius Leo Allatius (c. 1586–1669) was a Greek scholar and librarian at the Vatican who sought to reconcile the Eastern and Western Churches. intended to publish in his Symmicta A "Symmicta" refers to a published collection of miscellaneous short works or essays., my attention was first drawn by a copy transcribed from the papers left behind by Allatius. This copy was given to me to read by the celebrated and most learned Abbot Marinius Gaetano Marini (1742–1815), a renowned paleographer and Prefect of the Vatican Archives., the Prefect of the Vatican Archives.

As I easily perceived the remarkable value and usefulness of this unpublished work, I eagerly began to compare it with the manuscript codex A "codex" is a manuscript book, as opposed to a scroll. number 177 in the Barberini Library, which contains the same work by Lydus. Furthermore, I consulted the excerpts made by Maximus Planudes Maximus Planudes (c. 1260–1305) was a Byzantine monk and scholar whose summaries preserved many ancient texts that might otherwise have been lost. from the same work, which are held in the Palatine codex number 141 in the Vatican Library. Both of these codices were written in the 15th century, and indeed with great accuracy. The compilations by Planudes, which end with the preface of the work, show that Lydus’s text existed in a much fuller form in the Planudean manuscript than it does today in the Barberini manuscript. The title of the Barberini manuscript—"From the writings of John the Philadelphian" original Greek: "Ἐκ τῶν τοῦ Ἰωάννου τοῦ Φιλαδελφέως"—promises nothing more than excerpts; however, at the beginning of the Planudean compilations, a note in the margin reads: "Of John Lydus" original Greek: "Ἰωάννου Λύδου". Those passages from the Planudean excerpts which are inserted into the text of the Barberini codex (which I present here) in this current specimen have been enclosed in brackets [].“

The Editor followed this same method in the work itself, except that now the faulty readings of the codex...