Florus, Epitome of Roman History and Fragment

PRAEFATIO EDITORIS

columns and thirty lines per page, quite diligently transcribed. But since Jahn had noticed that it was 'not always transcribed by the same hand'1) p. V., after weighing the matter more accurately, I saw that these things were written by that corrector B¹ (B¹) who, when the codex was finished by the scribe, painted the numbers of the wars and titles with minium red lead/vermilion and added the inscriptions of the chapters with somewhat darker atramentum ink: the indices of the chapters of the first and second book (codex pp. 53 and 158 sq.), I praef. 1—3 videantur (p. 54), II 1, 1—2 gentium (p. 160), II 29 Sarmatae — pacem (p. 208), II 30, 34—36 tres legiones — causarum patronos (p. 210), II 31 Hec ad — estimanda uictoria fuit (p. 211), II 32, 45—33, 60 recreatus — in profundo (pp. 211—214), which are the final words of the codex. From this it is understood, especially since the letters of the words in causarum patronos were more spaced out than usual and elsewhere the spaces were not filled in as happens in scriptura continua uninterrupted writing without spaces, that the archetypum original/master copy had suffered some decay toward the end, so that the scribe, when he could not make out the faded writing in a few places, left empty spaces to be filled by a more learned and sharp-eyed corrector2) cf. Iahnius p. VI., who was also to add the book indices, the opening words, and the chapter inscriptions. It is added that even in those things which he did make out, he erred much more frequently and gravely than in the upper pages of the codex. Indeed, since the final words of the second book are missing in B starting from opes suas (II 33, 60), although page 214, which is itself the last, is barely a quarter full, it seems consistent that the archetype was so badly damaged that nothing could be made out, or that an entire leaf was lost. Finally, at II 14, 2—8 nisi aut — discriminum (p. 194), a hand transcribed it of the same age as the scribe and corrector, but one which I have not found elsewhere, not even in corrections. Furthermore, besides those things which the scribe changed while writing, B¹ also emended quite a few things, which I have striven to bring forth more accurately than Jahn...