On Agriculture and On Farming

Extremely faint text, possibly due to bleed-through or fading. The translation reflects the reconstructed context of the period.

...would have helped as much as they could regarding the diversity of the reading, when I understood that this, too, would not lack its own readers in this category who are well-instructed in every kind of learning.

Otherwise, I did not wish to change the writing of the archetype except when it was certain by sure proof that it was faulty; even if I often seemed to be able to be prompted to do so when an emendation was not sufficiently ready. But where the faults of the actual writing could not be amended without error, I left those, too, in the archetype just as they were. I either noted the conjectures or, as the nature of the passage demanded, added them in the annotation; the rest, which seemed to need reduction to the common reading, I have brought into my commentary, after having reserved another way. Meanwhile, I hoped this would be the fruit of an edition of this kind, which does not show by mere ostentation whatever is presented by the various words of the writers, but, with the proper meditations of the editor removed and the obscure writing of the most ancient copy proposed, would prepare the way for true discourse.