Manilius: Astronomica

Gottingen Library Manuscript Ms. phil. 139 original: "Ms. phil. 139 bibliothecae Gottingensis", the collation of which was made available to me in the years 1890 and 1892 through the kindness of the director of the Gottingen library. Furthermore, Rob. Ellis, a man of great merit regarding Manilian studies, collated the codex in Madrid in 1892 and published his collation (Volumes VII and VIII of the Classical Review, 1893 and 1894); the same man also wrote extensively about the codex in Hermathena No. XIX in 1893. There are a few places where Löwe and Ellis disagree with each other, which I thought ought to be indicated.

However, in order to judge what authority should be attributed to these codices, some things should be added concerning both the Leipzig and Madrid codices. In the writing of the Leipzig codex, three scribes seem to have followed one another (1. from the beginning up to fol. 58, 2. up to fol. 86, then follow three verses written in small letters, and finally the first hand returns); there are large letters and few abbreviations. But these scribes left the work unfinished for the rubricators to complete, who were to add the title, headings, and initial letters in the spaces that had been left blank. They fulfilled their duty in the first book such that they added the title in uncial letters, headings in the designated spaces up to folio 15 before verse 606, and initial letters for individual chapters up to verse 420 (verses 665 and 805 are missing). Iacob and Bechert are mistaken in believing that the title ARATI PHILOSOPHI ASTRONOMICON | LIB. PRIMVS INCIPIT | PRELIBATIO, which appears on an erasure, was inscribed in place of another that had been expunged, the traces of which they believe they have discovered: certain letters are indeed shining through, difficult to read if we listen to Iacob, underneath which Bechert opined that 'astronomicon' lay. Indeed, some letters of verse 21 shine through: 'ad duo templa precor duplici circumdatus aestu' I pray to two temples, surrounded by a double heat, which is the second verse on folio 1^v, but they shine through in reverse order and are therefore more difficult to read. The Cusanus and the one that depends on the Cusanus, V. 1 (Leiden, No. 18), have this same inscription. It is not an unreasonable opinion that the Gembloux manuscript, where a hand of the 16th century has now inscribed C' Mālius poeta C. Manilius the poet on an erasure, also bore the same title. But the Leipzig book has experienced the hand of a corrector, an ancient one indeed, but one younger by almost a hundred years, in almost countless places, so much so that you might believe the uncorrected Leipzig and the corrected Leipzig to be the likeness of two codices that flowed from a different source. That corrector performed his duty throughout the book by marking letters or syllables with dots or small lines to condemn them, and writing his corrections above them (e.g., + cingens girding for tingens dyeing I 582, mittatque and may he send V. 408, etc.).

*) Cf. Zschr. f. klass. Phil. 1893 Nr. 25.