Valerius Maximus: Memorable Deeds and Sayings

not to be scorned by one intending to emend the examples of Valerius, although the part which is preserved in the Vatican codex number 1321 is teeming with the foulest vices of every kind. Du Rieu also examined this book again and, as he himself writes in the aforementioned location on page 260, brought it to light after a fresh examination of the codex. Thinking that even his care should not be sufficient given such a wealth of errors, I easily obtained from Augustus Wilmanns, when he recently went to Rome, that he would read the codex again for my sake. Anyone who wishes to compare the readings transcribed by him with the supplementary readings provided by the learned Dutchman will readily agree with me that he did not act in vain.

But to approach the codices by which the examples of Valerius themselves are preserved, although not in their entirety: among them, the Bernese codex, as it precedes the others in age, is today confessed to hold the first place among all that exist in terms of the excellence of its readings. Although Carolus Kempfius has already described it accurately, I must also set forth a few things regarding the overall form of the book, for it has certain properties to which a critic must diligently attend. The codex itself seems to have been written at the end of the ninth century. But apart from the scribe who wrote the whole thing, three other hands are seen in the book, not differing much from one another in their style of writing, and all displaying great age. The first and oldest of these corrected several errors which the primary writer had committed in transcribing, and in a few places, it supplied individual words or entire lines omitted by the former from the very exemplar, as it seems, from which the Bernese was copied, partly in the context of the words and partly in the margins. Yet he himself also omitted certain things¹, which, since they are read in their inferior locations, Kempfius already correctly warned on page 87, that although all codices return to one common source, the family of inferior ones—which almost never has better readings than the Bernese except in very few places—did not flow from this one.

¹ To the places which Kempfius brought forward must be added 4, 7, Ext. 1, where the words eidem caput suum subiecerat post habuerat had submitted his head to the same after he had are omitted in the Bernese.