TO THE READER, GREETINGS.

We give to you, kind reader, a new edition of Nonius Marcellus, a writer to be commended neither for erudition, nor for judgment, nor for diligence, and one whom the Latin language could easily have done without if he had only praised those authors whose works have reached us. It is a source of wonder that such an unskilled author was cited several times by the most learned grammarian Priscianus Priscian, and propagated through the libraries of better ages, which were weary of copying the best and most useful writers who existed at that time. But after those writers perished through the carelessness of the copyists, the man who was hardly worth reading for his own sake—the same man deservedly obtained the status of being both copied and held in delight, out of respect for venerable antiquity. He preserves more monuments here from the greatest and most ancient writers than any of the old grammarians, and those very significant ones. It was certainly in the interest of the literary republic that these texts exist today and be read less corrupted, a cause that impelled very learned men to labor in competition to correct them; for before...