Chalcidius's Commentary on Plato's Timaeus

Preface.

Originally, upon the advice of my highly esteemed teachers, Professors Dr. Freiherr von Hertling and Dr. M. Baumgartner, I intended to examine the influence of Chalcidius on the Middle Ages from a historical and critical perspective. The topic of the present writing was meant to form the introductory section of that work. However, a closer look at the sources of the Chalcidian commentary brought so much material to light that it appeared desirable to postpone the execution of the original plan to a later time and, for now, to publish the source analysis as a separate work.

Unfavorable circumstances delayed the printing of the work, which had already been completed in the summer of 1899. Since that year, as I have been hindered by my professional duties and have had no opportunity to use major libraries, I ask for leniency regarding the fact that the literature published since that time has not been sufficiently considered.

It was a pleasure for me to find, after my work was already finished, that the new edition of the third volume of Pauly-Wissowa's Realencyklopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft Real Encyclopedia of Classical Antiquity, published in the autumn of 1899, expressed essentially the same view in Gercke's article on Chalcidius that I had arrived at through my own study of the Chalcidian commentary.