Compendium of Learning (Compendiosa Doctrina), Vol. I

VII
PREFACE.

For the sources Nonius used are so varied and multiform, his own character so miraculous and singular, and finally, the number of corruptions propagated in his manuscripts is so great, that no one can sufficiently use the Compendiosa Doctrina unless they have discovered and explored it through the study of many years.

In treating this, how often and how gravely most editors of the fragments have strayed from the truth will be revealed once this book is finally published.

For me, however, thinking on these and such things, my mind was pulled in different directions. On one side, Teubner was begging with all prayers that I should prepare a new edition of the book on the metric of Latin poets, for which copies had once arrived, which indeed it would have been a sin for me to frustrate for any longer; on the other, the studies inflamed toward our Nonius by so many scholars, conspicuous for their erudition, genius, and fidelity, and the desire to satisfy them.

Therefore, having meditated long and deeply, I finally decided to publish the book of Nonius first, with Adversaria critical notes, an Apparatus, and Indices, adding here and there Commentaries, as brief as possible, by which those things that most needed explanation could be clarified in summary, leaving to others the rest of what I might have thought should be said about Nonius.

Now, as to the path and reason we have used in employing the manuscripts and restoring the words of Nonius, furthermore in putting forward or suppressing the conjectures of scholars, and other things pertaining to the art, since we are to expose them most fully in the Adversaria, it will be enough here to have warned that from the second chapter, and more so from the fourth, certain things have been omitted from the dittographies accidental word repetitions of the books, which I thought the readers could easily do without. For instance, it is not reported everywhere about the confusion of e and ae, nor about prepositions assimilated or not assimilated in compound words (which, where they are found complete, know certainly that our writing is supported by the first hand of the previous Lyons manuscript). Furthermore, the corruptions of certain titles, such as Amphitryon, Heautontimorumenos, and Know Thyself original: "Γνῶθι σεαυτόν", have been omitted after chapter I. Otherwise, how these and such things were written in the Lyons book, whose example we are accustomed to follow, will be declared in the Index of authors.

Furthermore, it should be noted here that not everything, but only the most important things, have been excerpted from the Bamberg book. Nor should one conclude from our silence about the dittographies of the Bernese manuscripts, although they have been used most diligently, nor should one assume that those things which are missing have been noted everywhere, especially since the lacunae gaps of both manuscripts have been reported accurately enough by Meylan.