Ancient Latin Agricultural Writers, Vol. I

...which has always been a renowned arsenal of virtue, learning, and humanity. When Schöttgen had already annotated many readings of this [manuscript], it seemed appropriate, as the opportunity arose, to collate the whole codex anew. We believe that the fruit of this labor of ours will redound to the benefit of Columella and our readers, and we do not repent of it.

VIII. But now we must see who has deserved well of this writer separately. Here I exclude the interpreters, whom we shall later conveniently comprehend in one bundle, as it were. That Petrarch's notes on Columella once existed in the Vatican Library was claimed to have been discovered by Giacomo Filippo Tomasini from the philological journals of his intimate friend Jo. Rhode (Petrarcha Redivivus, c. 7, p. 34). But I fear that that work has perished, or even if it exists, that Columella can be much helped by it. We could have expected more from Peter Needham, who, in editing the Geoponica a collection of agricultural knowledge, declared how much he was capable of in that genre (see Acta Eruditorum Lipsiensium 1724, p. 376); but he, having recently died in the year of the century 32, disappointed our hope, no less than Menagius, who had indicated the same intention in his notes to Diogenes Laertius, p. 54, Wetstein ed. What if this is reserved for the distinguished Abraham Gronovius, who denied me the observations on Columella made by his grandfather—to whom I am accustomed to defer the primacy in this kind of learning—which I knew he had diligently read and corrected, only for the reason that he himself was thinking of bringing them to light. I say: would that such happiness might happen to that most famous man, so that he might one day be able to add the labors of Needham and Menagius to those of his grandfather. Now

5. The edition of Robert Stephanus collated with the old codex of Willem Goes up to Book VIII, c. 8, was in the library of Surenhusius, p. 63, with manuscript notes of the learned Fabricius in his letters.