Valerius Maximus: Memorable Deeds and Sayings

PREFACE.

the very learned man many times condemned even those things which do not have the least offense or which at least could be borne, and, having substituted the reading of Paris, thrust upon Valerius things which should not be attributed to the ancient author so much as to the license of the abbreviator. And in this matter, I seem to have demonstrated more clearly than light, even without Halm protesting, with many examples in my New Valerian Questions, which I published in the school book of the Leucophaeus Gymnasium in Berlin in 1866, p. 11 sqq., that he used that epitome not carefully or considerately enough to amend Valerius. For this reason, I did not want to repeat these things in this place.

The Paris Vatican codex, therefore, written most neatly and not defiled by as many copyist errors as even the most excellent books of Valerius himself, if you except a few places, has given us the power to know entirely what the ancient writing of that epitome was.

A completely different situation applies to the other epitomator, a man clearly dull and unlearned, whose Vatican book is stained by so many and such great scribal errors that very often it cannot be guessed even by the boldest conjecture what was written by that abbreviator. This book, after Angelus Mai had inspected it, was examined again by Du Rieu, and by Augustus Wilmanns at the request of Halm; since the most diligent care of that learned man had relieved me of the necessity of examining the codex itself again, I found it sufficient to describe the entire variation of the reading of Halm. I had decided in the beginning to exclude that truly wretched writer entirely from this edition of mine, especially since he covers only the first two books of Valerius and a small particle of the third, and does not have much importance for restoring Valerius. What moved me not to do so were both the pleas of certain friends and the studies of very learned men—Gertz, Eberhard, Novak, and others—recently applied to the amendment of this little work.