Valerius Maximus: Memorable Deeds and Sayings

(Alexander) kindness, in the other king's (Darius) groom cunning; at least the common editions have this epiphonema exclamatory summary better: summa quoque in alterius regis equisone calliditas 'the greatest cunning also in the groom of the other king'. Here too Kempf was led into error by the reading of the Bernese manuscript being not accurately transcribed; for what he says 'add. summa quoque corr. A' 'added: also the greatest, corrected by A', is only partially true; for those words were indeed added, but added in an erasure, from which it follows that something else had been written by the first hand, not nothing. Moreover, from the space, it appears that no more than six or seven letters were erased, since the second hand, so as not to write anything outside the line, added those words thus: sūmaqq. Since this is so, either the supplement of the second hand should have been admitted by Kempf or a lacuna should have been indicated.

Regarding the passage 7, 7, 1, in which it seems very doubtful what Valerius wrote, Kempf edited it thus: 'Atque [ita] ut ea ordine, quo proposui, exequar' 'And [so] that I may execute them in the order which I proposed', with no discrepancy of reading from B noted. His writing seems to be worse than that of the others, since it has ita ut ea ordine qua p., and yet this also provides some use; for it is understood that the scribe changed the gender (ea ordine qua), and did not take ea for the neuter plural.

To 7, 7, 2 (p. 583, 14 ed. K.) Kempf added these things in the critical commentary: 'in] in rasura D, om. CEF, u. cū margo A' 'in] in erasure D, omitted by CEF, see "cu." margin A'. No one will divine what he who is said to have added this in the margin to the word in wanted, although the matter is very simple. Namely, in the margin to the word centumuiros 'centumviri' (a board of judges), so that it is indicated in the codex itself by a sign, it is written: 'u. cu.', i.e., the uetus old (Paris) manuscript has cū, as likewise a little above (p. 583, 9 ed. K.), which Kempf omitted, it is added to the same word and is also read in both places in the Vatican codex of Paris.

8, 1, Damn. 2 Kempf edited: 'Ac Scipioni quidem maximus fortunae fulgor, Gaio autem Deciano, spectatae integritatis uiro, uox sua exitium attulit' 'And indeed for Scipio the greatest splendor of fortune, but to Gaius Decianus, a man of proven integrity, his own voice brought destruction', with no diversity of reading added from B. But since from the writing in B, whose first hand has 'maxim**', corrected to 'maxim'', it is understood that the reading of the last syllable has been changed, there will be those, I think, who would prefer to read maximae fortunae fulgor 'greatest splendor of fortune'.

A graver error is to be noted in the passage 8, 2, 1,