Corpus of Latin Ecclesiastical Writers, Vol. XIX: Works of Lactantius, Part I

is. The letters are what are called uncials: of which Silvestre l.c. gave an excellent specimen. The writing is continuous, except that words are sometimes distinguished either by points (as p. 88, 4 dea. egeria), which occurs rarely and only in the first part of the codex, or by this sign ', which is accustomed to be inserted through the later books of the Institutions, especially in the passages of poets, to signify the ends of verses (p. 442, 8—10. 455, 1 ff. 495, 1 ff. 499, 21. 650, 7 ff.). The scribe separated sentences only in the final part of the codex by the spaces he left in the verses themselves, but he distinguished the chapters of the discourse, sometimes also passages of other writers brought in by Lactantius, but especially the Greek ones, in such a way that he began new lines both at their beginnings and after their ends. Through those places, the lines are also usually shorter from the beginning. There are not many ligatures of letters and they are almost the same as those that occur in other codices of that age; the abbreviations of the script are few, B· and q· for -bus and -que, then the line ¯, by which both the letter m and n are signified: from which ambiguity it happens that in compound words it is doubtful whether the scribe wanted m or n to be understood¹. But this line is found at the very end or near the end of lines, very rarely within the lines. Roman first names are accustomed to be written out in full. In writing the Greek passages, the scribe used red ink, not black, through a large part of the codex. However, that the Greek passages were inserted afterward is shown both by the fact that the spaces are sometimes larger than can be filled by the Greek words, and by the fact that there is even a completely empty space (p. 166, 4). In the Greek script, the form of the letter Δ is memorable: for besides this form, not only is this δ present, but also a third ◊; Zangemeister described it thus. Therefore, since Montfaucon ll. cc. (cf. above p. XIV) also hands down these ◊ δ, I would have thought that they arose in the codex only by chance, when the lines were produced further². In the seventh book of the Institutions, Latin interpretations of the Greek passages were added in the margin by the first hand (p. 625, 6; 626, 6; 637, 1 etc.), very rarely by the same hand in other parts of the codex.

¹ In those places, we have expressed the script of the codex in the critical apparatus.
² Wattenbach, Instruction for Greek Palaeography² (1887), follows Montfaucon in the description of the letters p. 5.