VIII

EDITOR'S PREFACE

ius, who proposed a clear example of true and sincere criticism in the academic booklet 'On correctly performing the critical art in Florus's wars,' published at Göttingen in the year 18701) This commentary was repeated in H. Sauppius's Opuscula selecta, p. 608 sq., in the preface of which I think others also wondered that it was his discovery that ancient writers should be measured against the best possible codex.. However, since he had indicated with only a few examples the path he thought should be taken, other learned men competed to heal other places of a writer badly handled by the injury of time. Most worthy of mention among their number are Franciscus Koehlerus, who in 'Critical observations on Iulius Florus,' a Göttingen dissertation of the year 1865, had already taught before Sauppius that the Bamberg book should be held in somewhat less regard than Iahn had thought; Th. Opitzius, who in the Annalis philologicus CXXI (1880) p. 203 sq. and in the program of the Neapolitan gymnasium of Dresden of the year 1884 diligently and acutely considered many places of Florus; L. Goertzius, who in 'Critical questions concerning Iulius Florus's Nazarian codex, parts II,' which are contained in the Dorpat scholastic writings of the years 1885 and 1886, treated the whole epitome with special regard for Florus’s style of speaking; and finally W. Beckius, in 'Critical and paleographical observations on Florus's epitome of T. Livius,' issued at Groningen in the year 1891, and in a discussion entitled 'On the appreciation of the Leiden Florus manuscripts Voss. 14 and 77,' inserted into the Woelfflinian commentaries (p. 161 sq.), who, almost imitating Florus himself, set before the eyes in tables what he thought about controversial places and brought forward more and more certain things from the codices of the other recension not inspected by Iahn than Graevius and Dukerus did.

But although Goertzius and Beckius, when they had avoided the error of Iahn and Halmius—who edited this Florus at Teubner eleven years after the former—of overvaluing the Bamberg book, on the contrary, they favor the Nazarian too much