Attic Nights

the best. On the contrary, P and V turn out to be better, connected by a tighter bond between themselves, such that I hesitated slightly as to whether that R—which surely carried manifest traces of corruption and interpolation—ought to be entirely discarded from this edition, which had no need for the entire mass of readings. For it changed words for synonyms, such as in the preface (twice), I 11, 10; II 22, 14, 15; III 10, 11; 12, 2; 17, 1; IV 9, 4; VI 1, 3; 18, 11. By transposing words from the middle to the end, it restored a drier flow of words, such as1) I have not repeated these in the apparatus. IV 12, 1 derelictui habuerat [had held as abandoned]; 18, 9 omnis pecunie omnisque praede scriptas esse dixit [he said that all money and all booty had been recorded]; V 6, 8 obsidione sunt liberati [they were freed from the siege]; VI 4, 3 venire sub corona dicebantur [they were said to be sold under the crown/at auction]; and with greater alteration V 12, 5: Neptunus the father and Mars the father and Saturn the father and Janus the father were called jointly, etc., although there is no lack of places where it disturbed the usual order with a contrary whim. It omitted what it did not like, as in I 3, 13, where, after the example of Cicero was suddenly broken off, it added after the words utendum esse nil nisi usque ibi pro verbis arbitror [nothing must be used except right up to there in place of the words I judge] — turpitudo sequatur [let baseness follow]. Similarly in I 15, 13. But it also added things by which it thought Gellius could be corrected and enriched, as in the preface 12, eracliti ad ephesii [to the Ephesian Heraclitus], correctly as to the matter, but from its own genius; just as in V 2, 4 it wrote Alexander instead of the king. Indeed, it clearly demonstrates with what lightness and almost arrogance it moved, in III 10, 3—9 (and 12 sqq.), where, peddling its own learning as Gellius's, it clearly removes genuine words, abhorring that more abstruse knowledge, and refers the reader to Macrobius, not satisfying the duty of a scribe and in vain affecting the glory of a literary man. Nor, indeed, does it have anything to boast about too much. For, being entirely ignorant of the Greek language apart from individual words, it either audaciously changed such statements (and those which are connected with them, which it did not understand by itself) or passed over them with a running pen, usually without even warning the reader. For example, in III 9, it shortened the last paragraph on account of the Greek words φοίνικα phoenix (palm/red color) and σπάδικα spadix (branch/red color) into the three words poeniceo ut dixi tracta ad colore exuperantissimo [pulled, as I said, to the most surpassing color], and in preface 6—8, after siluarum [of the woods], it wrote nothing except examples of the titles (there were infinite Greek words here also).