Latin
Allen
12 . 31 - 41
44515
2 v.

PREFACE

I have only a few things to premise regarding the Gellian manuscripts. For when I had inquired by my own efforts—based on the extensive critical apparatus of Hertz's larger edition—what ought to be determined regarding the kinship and lineage stemma family tree/genealogical descent of manuscripts of the books, and when I had compared this with what that man (whose labor on Gellius it is superfluous to praise and ambitious to wish to imitate) had collected in his most ample preface, I was not in the least surprised to find that almost everything had already been occupied. It is self-evident that all who run in these fields will arrive at the same goal, and nothing is subtracted from the foundations of his reasoning by the additions which Fr. Kuhnoriginal: "Fr. Kuhn" refers to Friedrich Kuhn, a scholar of the period. compiled from Hertz's notes. Therefore, although I might seem to be doing what has already been done if I propose the same conclusions I reached with him, I will nonetheless explain in a few words how the Gellian books are connected to one another and what ought to be thought of each, so that I may serve the convenience of those who, having used this edition, might feel aggrieved to be constantly referred back to another's commentary. Those who dwell upon these questions will easily perceive the few and minor points where I believe my own judgment to be better than Hertz's, or—to speak more modestly—where he did not fully resolve the matter.

Because the work of Gellius, on account of its excessive length, had been divided by booksellers into two highly unequal parts, it happened that the eighth book perished between the age of Macrobius and the ninth century, though its chapter summaries lemmata headings or summaries of content were preserved in inferior manuscripts; for the same reason, because those two severed limbs of the writer did not return into one body until the fourteenth or fifteenth century, we must speak of each part separately.

Fleckeis. ann. suppl. XXI Leipzig 1894 p. 1 sqq.