Greek Palaeography

if he should approach abbreviated writing without being skilled in the forms of abbreviations, he must needs guess; but if he should happen upon arcane letters and the signs of the arts and disciplines, he will undoubtedly be brought into a state of helplessness unless he consults our alphabets.

We have endeavored to remove all these difficulties to the best of our ability: we have presented examples of all types of writing with explanations; we have exhibited the signs of the arts and honorable disciplines, the greatest part of which had not yet, so far as I know, been read. As for the base and dangerous arts and their signs—namely those that pertain to apotelesmatics, or judicial astrology, trickery, and divination—we have either touched upon them cursorily or judged that they should be neglected entirely. Furthermore, in the entire sixth book, we have treated of Greek Diplomatics as much as was permitted by those very meager remains of Greek diplomas which survive in the parts of the West; in this, we have dealt primarily with Neapolitan and Sicilian diplomas, nine of which we have edited.

To these, as was appropriate, we have prefixed everything that pertains to the instruments of writing, to the form of books, and to the scribes, or calligraphers. In this section, we have enumerated the names and the age of about three hundred calligraphers, first in chronological order and then in alphabetical order, as they are found in the subscriptions themselves, which we have rendered word for word. Indeed, in these notes, many things occur which are very opportune for the knowledge of history and chronology, as every learned man will admit. For scribes, in notes and subscriptions of this kind, not only annotated the year, the indiction, and usually the hour at which the writing had ceased, but often added the names of the Emperors and Patriarchs of that time. If anything of greater moment happened, they usually recorded it in letters; sometimes they mentioned the places where the work had been transcribed; they did not neglect to write down, from time to time, the more notable deeds of famous men of that time, etc., which any studious person may observe.

In addition to this, because, as the nature of the work undertaken demanded, we have repeatedly annotated many things that pertain to various disciplines, the greatest part of which had hitherto been unknown and untouched; and because we have also brought forth very many Greek words which had either not been observed in lexicons, or had been explained only cursorily and perfunctorily, or had been accepted otherwise than was proper; we have prepared a most copious index at the end, where all these things are reviewed most accurately. Nor, I hope, will it be in vain for those who do not begrudge consulting a table of this kind often.

These things it seemed good to premise in summary concerning our Palaeography. But because, in such a forest of things and such a varied subject matter of information, it is scarcely possible to guard against something escaping the diligence of the writer, it seemed good to retract here certain things worthy of greater light, and also to propose to the studious reader other things that had been omitted, and this in the same order we have maintained throughout the whole work. Afterward, however, we thought it would not be useless to adorn this work with a review of all the Greek libraries of every age that we happen to know of; and we judged the matter not to be foreign to our purpose.