PREFACE XVIII

Major edition, p. 565 sqq. [from D], exhibit the excellence of the work. However, I have deliberately not repeated here those things that exist in manuscript D, even though they are older, for it is more useful to provide on this occasion the capitulations shaped otherwise, by which the affinity of other manuscripts can be easily recognized and their text conveniently compared. — These Sangallensian periochae summaries, which there is nothing to prevent us from saying are older than the eighth century, do not seem to have been crafted by the scribe of manuscript G himself, for the Bernese manuscript no. 128 (10th century), not depending on this one, exhibits similar ones, so that these two copies seem to have been repeated from a common archetype. But it is probable that they were excerpted from the archetype of G itself because they offer many errors proper to this manuscript. The last chapter (XLVIII) of Book VII, which I will bring forward below on p. XX, I think was born from the fact that the scribe of the archetype had placed the Eusebian excerpt at the end of his copy. — The numbers that I inserted after the individual chapters, e.g., [1 § 4], indicate where each chapter number was placed by manuscript G in the work of Orosius itself, e.g., I 1 from the beginning of paragraph 4. In Book I, chapters 56 and 59, the scribe omitted the numbers in the Orosius text, which, however, there can be no doubt where they should have been inserted. — To have left intact the errors of the author to whom the chapters are owed, and the peculiarities of the scribe and the spelling, especially those which are of no moment at all for restoring the context of Orosius, would have been completely useless. Therefore, I have corrected these trifles almost entirely, though with a cautious hand, and not silently, but with the spelling of the manuscript indicated below. It is inscribed in G on page 5:

Book I ch. 10 tygri — 11 his — eufrate — 17 tracia — 18 rhetia — 25 De spania — 26 thile — 27 haec et meuania usque ad habitantur these and Mevania up to 'are inhabited' added by a slightly more recent hand in a space left empty — 31 cicladibus — 32 sycilia changed by the same hand — promunctoria — 35 barcilone — 38 bachata — 44 illuuiae — 46 dimensione changed by an earlier hand — 47 fetontis — 48 quinquaginta fifty (qu on an erasure by the same hand) — progne — fi//lomela — 50 garimede —