Complete Works of Lactantius, Vol. II

Baehrens used his own collation, while Riese used both his own and that of Loew. I have followed their apparatus in this edition, except that for certain passages where Baehrens and Riese do not fully agree—mostly due to the silence of the former—I obtained certain testimonies, which were kindly provided to me by St. Haberda and P. Vignolo, the prefect of the Verona library. For those places where the reading is now established with the help of these men, I have added the notation sic meaning: thus/exactly as written. I occasionally wished to remove all doubts regarding certain readings of codices A and C by adding this same sign.

C The Leiden Vossianus Codex Q. 33, of the 10th century, exhibits The Phoenix on leaves 73r–75v among many writings of a varied nature. Henr. Keil accurately described the codex in Grammatici Latini III, 389 ff. Nicol. Heinsius had already used it in emending the poem. I collated it after it was most generously sent to Heidelberg by Nicolaus du Rieu.

The number of codices more recent than these three is very great. For the poem is read separately in many miscellaneous codices and was very frequently attached by scribes to the rest of the works of Lactantius during the 14th and 15th centuries. But although some manuscripts of the former type were already written in the 11th or 12th century, not even these can be considered sources of true memory, as they either depend on the Verona or the Vossianus codices, or are greatly corrupted and interpolated. Nevertheless, in certain places, the codices of the lower and lowest Middle Ages provide certain or probable emendations by learned men, which have even been received into editions. The editors of Lactantius, Buenemann (p. 1503, note b) and Lenglet (Vol. II, p. IV), or the editors of The Phoenix, Burmann (in his edition of Claudian, p. XXX), Martini (pp. 18 ff.), Leyser (p. 3), Riese (p. 191), Baehrens (p. 248), and Goetz (loc. cit., pp. 324 ff.), either mention or provide readings from these more recent codices. I also had the collations of the Paris codices 9568 (11th c.) and 8091 (12th c.) made by Andr. Laubmann, and the Madrid codices 13, 6 (12th–13th c.) and 14, 27 (15th c.) (cf. Hartel, Library of Latin Patristic Works in Spain I, pp. 279, 291) made by Loew, which Goetz kindly sent to me.