Ancient Latin Agricultural Writers, Vol. I

...[regarding] the fragments of the writers themselves, which he claims to have collected (though Riccobonus had done the same long before) at the Plantin press in 1599, 8vo. The Commelinian edition of all the rustic writers, issued shortly thereafter, seems to have hindered this edition from being sold. Therefore, Raphelengius ordered the old title to be removed and a new one affixed to the remaining copies, with the notable addition of the Meursian annotations. The new title reads as follows: The Book of M. Porcius Cato on Agriculture, or on Rustic Affairs: increased and corrected in more than a hundred places after the latest edition of A. Popma, by the study and labor of Jo. Meursius. Item: the fragments of the same writer, diligently collected and restored by A. Popma. From the Plantin press of Christoph Raphelengius, 1598, 8vo. That the statement about the Commelinian edition was not made rashly can be inferred from the fact that Meursius is quite unfair to it in the preface, which we provide later in section XIII. I also infer that some copies of the Meursian notes were sold separately, because not only is a new series of pages noted in them, but also because the first gathering of those notes is marked with the letter B: so that we may understand that the title of the booklet with the prefaces was assigned to A. These things may perhaps seem trivial, but since the same play is often performed with different actors, it is important for one who spends time with books not to be ignorant of these crafts. The foundation of the Meursian emendations is the 1521 Basel edition of Cato and Varro, 8vo, which the editor himself does not deny matches the Cologne edition of Gymnicus, and collation itself has taught me as much. Therefore, for example, when at Cato 10.4 he praises XV fifteen oil jars from his own manuscript, which he praises with marvelous accolades, yet that manuscript—