Valerius Maximus: Memorable Deeds and Sayings

PREFACE.

prefixed to the Bern manuscript, and in the outer part of the leaf, he supplied those examples of the first book which have perished in all the codices of Valerius, and that fragment of the tenth book, which was considered such, concerning the praenomen first name, from the same Paris codex (cf. my larger edition, p. 79). However, Halm is mistaken in thinking that the hand of this scribe is different from that which added those marginal supplements—not taken from Paris, but, as I taught above, sought from a more complete manuscript of Valerius. For it is most evident that all those additions of both types proceeded from the same scribe, as appears both from the rest of the appearance of the writing, which is not at all dissimilar to the primary [hand], and from the strokes of many letters, such as g, st, y, p, and other abbreviations, which are clearly different from the primary hand, but very similar, or rather, exactly the same in those additions. Therefore, I do not think it was useless, even in this part of my duty, to examine that codex again most accurately.

Beyond those emendations, which I said were transferred from Paris, there remain very few in which any doubt is admitted as to whether they were made immediately by the primary scribe or are owed to another copyist; very few, besides that addition at 1, 1. ext. 4 (p. 13, 7), which Halm (preface p. VII) correctly attributes to a man of the 13th or 14th century, which seem to have proceeded from a more recent scribe, to which I have applied the note m. 3 in my apparatus. But there is no authority for them.

However, the same suspicion that seemed to me to be held concerning the reliability of Halm's collation of the Bern manuscript was also aroused regarding the text of the Vatican codex of Paris, transferred from the editio princeps first printed edition into Halm's copy. For I had noticed that Angelo Mai usually proceeded in describing ancient books in such a way that he would silently correct to his own judgment whatever did not seem sound to him. Therefore, since G. N. du Rieu, who had inspected the codices of Paris and Nepotianus, had uncovered many and very serious errors of his in the Vatican notes (Leiden 1860, pp. 164 and 260), it happened that...