OF TIBULLUS

Scaliger had three books, of which a copy was made available to him by Jacques Cujas original: "Iac. Cuiacio", prince of the jurists, a manuscript of that recent one note: referring to the period shortly before the invention of the printing press, which, however, he did not think a better one exists today. He also possessed very ancient excerpts, comprising the most potent passages in the manner of an Albean Chrestomathy, by which he testifies he was much aided. Regarding those things which we have advised, see the note at II, 6, 19. But an excellent and most corrected fragment also had been lent to him, from the fourth elegy of the third book to the end of the fourth book, by the same great Cujas, than which he did not remember reading any more corrected ancient exemplar. That book exhibits the true and genuine reading almost entirely, but sometimes it departs completely from the reading of all the others, such that it does not always seem to elevate their authority. See the notes at IV, 1, 175; 200; 5, 10; 6, 16.

Passeratius, in the few notes he wrote upon Tibullus, often mentions readings from an old book, which Broukhusius was also persuaded was his own private one. I, however, cannot yet be induced to believe that he used a book, but rather I understand it to refer to the variants of Statius or another of the earlier interpreters whenever he praises an old book. Certainly, as many of these variants as I have compared, I saw to correspond with one or another book of Statius: except that at I, 2, 79, he brings forward from the book:

Have I violated the divinities of Venus with a great word,

which I have seen mentioned by no one else; just as at I, 3, 2, tuque and you for ipse self.

Janus Dousa the son also professes in his notes that he uses his own old book, but neither from that nor from his own did he bring much into the public sphere to adorn Tibullus.

Janus Gebhardus, when he was composing his observations, had used six Palatine codices, along with excerpts from membranes supplied by Hieronymus Commelinus, but it must be said that he did not conduct himself in that matter with sufficient diligence, nor with sagacity and talent.

The learned man who prepared the Cambridge edition, having used one Laudian codex—from which Broukhusius also had excerpts—a Bodleian one, and variants from the Aldine and the book of Ferrari, brought forward nothing memorable from them.

catchword: Ianus