Prolegomena.

either in the margin (p. 167, 7) or within the very words of Lactantius (p. 13, 16), often in these parts by a third hand (p. 23, 18, at which place Zangemeister noted that "usually" was added by a later Latin hand; in other places he indicates that this later hand is the third corrector, p. 166, 7. 9. 13; 319, 9).

In orthographic matters, the codex often preserved an older method, which Lactantius himself undoubtedly used: wherefore, in the orthographic genre, it was fitting for me to follow the authority of codex B above all else, wherever possible. But the writing is also deformed by many errors, such as those that negligence or ignorance and vulgar speech are accustomed to produce; especially in Book VI of the Institutions, there is such carelessness and levity that one might almost guess a different scribe wrote it. In this edition, where we have not expressed codex B in the writing of the very words of Lactantius, we have proposed the variety of the writing in the critical apparatus, yet in such a way that we considered it sufficient to have indicated certain types once; nevertheless, in those places of other writers which have been preserved by Lactantius alone, such as in the verses of Lucilius, and sometimes in other places where it seemed necessary, we accurately exhibited the varieties of the codex's writing. Furthermore, in the part of the Epitome preserved in this codex, it was impossible not to propose the entire orthographic variety, even with the corrections of the second or third hand: for since the orthography of the Turin codex, which alone contains a far greater part of the Epitome, had to be transcribed most diligently, when we arrived at the latter part also handed down by codices B and the Paris codex P, we could not either omit that accurate description of the Turin codex or neglect the orthographic matters of those other codices, even the lighter ones: if either had been done, the readers would be led into error. Now, to pass from enumerating everything to enumerating certain types, we shall arrange the matter in such a way that those things which are clearly perverse and plebeian, and those which were in use even by the learned in an ancient age (such as adque, adquin, aliut, illut), are not treated separately, but are proposed joined together in alphabetical order. And that we may begin with the vowels, nothing is more frequent than the permutation of the vowel e and the diphthong ae: since this fault occurs most frequently,