PREFACE

Ordered by the Delegates of the Clarendon Press to see to the edition of the text of the plays of Plautus, as close as possible to the best testimony of the manuscripts, equipped with spelling that is as consistent as possible and with the briefest possible annotation, I set this rule for myself: that in the agreement of the Ambrosian manuscript (A) with the so-called Palatine recension (P), I should seek that best testimony, from which I would almost never depart, unless I had convinced myself that both this and that scribe had fallen into the same error. In writing the annotation, however, I proposed to myself that if I had rejected any reading of either recension, or any conjecture of scribes or learned men that seemed likely to be true, it should have a place at the bottom margin of the page. Nor did I find it necessary to enumerate the individual readings of all the manuscripts, not even the principal ones, which still exhibit the Palatine recension; for the investigation of those manuscripts has progressed to the point that one must deal with the archetypal books that have perished rather than with those that still exist. Indeed, I have denoted these archetypal books for the first eight plays (Amphitruo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Captivi, Curculio, Casina, Cistellaria, Epidicus) with these sigla:

P^E, the book from which are derived E (the Ambrosian manuscript I 257 inf., of the end of the 12th century, which contains all eight), V (the Leiden Vossianus manuscript Q 30, of the beginning of the 12th century, which contains the same, with the omission of Amphitruo, Asinaria, Aulularia 1–189, Epidicus 245–end), as well as two manuscripts described from a corrupted copy (P^J): J (the London manuscript of the British Museum Reg. 15 C XI, of the beginning of the 12th century, which contains all eight), O (fragment Otto-

1 Also the corrections (V^2) in the manuscript V came from this source.