On Agriculture and On Farming

are: for the remainder of the book is missing. The integrity of that codex can be understood from the fact that many great stains immediately covered this final book: they did not spread so freely while the former [manuscript] was still extant, or if they had intruded more aggressively, they could have been restrained. Deprived now of that protection, I do not know what to do: for although I can consult many manuscripts, I have no reliable guide in whom I can place my trust: that one, however, used to aid me often in difficult matters. But we have suffered an even greater loss, for an ancient writer on agriculture, if this book had been able to escape the injuries of time, would have been preserved together with it: and we would have another, which we still possess, in a more emended form, I believe. Furthermore, in the Various Readings published in 1553, he mentioned the same codex twice (book 31, ch. 23 and book 32, ch. 11). After Victorius, I have not found any mention of the codex made by anyone, nor does any memory of it exist in the catalog of the manuscripts of the Florentine library of Saint Mark made in 1768, in which nearly nine hundred manuscripts, which were then remaining there, are described.

An example of the first edition, with annotations in the handwriting of Politian, from which its readings are mostly known after the book itself perished, is now in the public library of Paris. In this, Politian wrote these things regarding the codex he collated after the books of Varro: original: "Contuli ego Ang. Politianus hos, ac Varronis rerum rusticarum libellos : cum uetustissimo codice : ex Diui Marci, Florentina bibliotheca : sic ut ne ea quidem, non ascriberem si qua deprauatiora uiderentur. hoc enim nobis emendandi nouos codices institutum placuit : nequid ex nostro temere adiceremus, neu quid omitteremus, quod in antiquioribus exemplaribus inuenissemus." "I, Angelo Politian, have collated these booklets of Varro on rustic affairs with a most ancient codex from the Florentine library of Saint Mark: in such a way that I did not fail to record even those things which seemed somewhat corrupted. For this principle of emending new codices pleased us: that we should not rashly add anything of our own, nor omit anything that we had found in the older exemplars. If earlier librarians had approved of this principle, they would certainly not have left so much trouble and labor for posterity. Therefore, wherever we have applied our judgment, while leaving behind some traces of the ancient reading, we have left to each its own freedom. Farewell, reader: and consider this labor of mine as a good deed. Florence, on the very day of the Bacchanalia, MCCCCLXXXII [1482]: the second year, that is, of our public professorship: when we were lecturing on Ovid’s Fasti and Cicero’s Rhetorical books Ad Herennium: and dictating the rudiments of the Greek language to the youth of Florence." Furthermore, towards the end of the third book, ch. 17, 4, after the word tubicinam graecum Greek trumpeter, regarding the defect of the codex, where the end of the book