Exhortation to Philosophy (Protrepticus)

by which the good things of eunomia good order and the bad things of anomia lawlessness (p. 101, 17 — 103, 20) were numbered, I decided should be discarded entirely, since they could neither be distributed in order, nor did they sufficiently respond to the matters discussed by Iamblichus, nor did they seem to serve in any way to explain the difficulties of that passage.

Besides Arcerius and Kiessling, others gave effort to correcting the Protrepticus: a certain Anonymous1, Scaliger2, Fabricius (Zeitschr. für die Alterthumsw. 1840, n. 1 sqq.), and Hemsterhusius (ib. 1838, n. 111). I have, however, passed over most of their conjectures in silence (for the Florentine codex has generally healed the faulty readings they had attempted to fix); likewise, I have taken no account of the transcripts, since in neither the Vatican nor the Laurentian LXXXVI, 29—which books I collated myself, although they are by far the best of all the others—did I find any discrepancy of reading that I deemed worthy of mention. But it seems not useless to review all the transcripts as far as they have become known to me to this point.

I. Vatican. Gr. 1028, of the, as I believe, 14th century (cf. Vitelli, preface to Philopon. Phys. p. XV). — II. Laur. LXXXVI, 29, 15th cent. — III. Paris. gr. 1981,

1) The emendations or conjectures of the Anonymous (about whom see Nauck, l.c. p. IV, and also Mus. ital. l.c. p. 468) in the note to pp. 19, 9; 34, 19; 47, 21; 59, 28; 60, 7; 113, 3; 118, 10; 123, 27, I attributed to Vulcanius, deceived by Kiessling’s error.
2) Regarding Scaliger, cf. Nauck, l.c. p. XXIX sq.; Museo ital. l.c. p. 468. I attributed the emendation diabathras gangplanks/ladders (p. 125, 4) to Scaliger with hesitation; for the mark "Sc." or "Scal." is absent, which is added to Scaliger’s conjectures in the Berlin copy of Arcerius.