Valerius Maximus: Memorable Deeds and Sayings

PREFACE.

To their talent and sagacity, therefore, are owed the things that are now edited in that epitome more correctly than in Halm's copy.

For Valerius Maximus, who lay neglected by grammarians after the edition of Torrenius issued in 1726, right up to the care of myself and Halm, it happened by a kind of good fortune in these times of ours that philologists of great name devoted much work and labor to restoring his books: I pass over Halm himself, who certainly deserved best of him; I pass over Foertsch of Naumburg, who restored many things most correctly in those three parts of his Valerian Emendations; I pass over the critique of the Halmian edition by Eberhard 1) In Zeitschrift für Gymnasialwesen 1866 p. 155 sqq. and what Wensky of Wrocław ingeniously emended in his Conjectures on Valerius Maximus 2) Published separately from the program of the Gymnasium of St. Matthias, Wrocław, 1879., or what has been published here and there in the annals of philologists after Halm for the amendment of this writer: indeed, in 1871 and 1873, the man of immortal memory, Io. Nic. Madvig, discussed most learnedly in his Adversaria Critica Critical Adversaria/Notes over a hundred places in Valerius and, with the keenness of wit he possessed, applied the most successful medicine to reduce to health the wounds inflicted upon this writer, which were for the most part either detected by himself or already known by others, but despaired of.

At about the same time, his most excellent student, instructed with similar learning and sagacity, M. Cl. Gertz of Copenhagen, in his Critical Symbols on Valerius Maximus 3) Published in Tidskrift for Philologi og Paedagogik, Copenhagen 1873, fasc. 3 p. 260 sqq. Having learned late that this booklet was also published separately in Copenhagen, I cited in my commentary the page numbers taken from those annals., treated many more places, both of Valerius himself and of the epitomators, in such a way that he brought a certain new light to a great number of them.