The Polyhistor

tated. But, if it pleases the gods, the Collectanea collected notes of Solinus are of such a kind that they could not have been completed without Pliny; or was it not permitted for Solinus to draw from the same fountains from which Pliny had drawn his own? I would easily believe that Pliny preceded Solinus by some years, but Solinus could have possessed all the writings of the ancient heroes—which are now almost entirely missing—that Pliny had used, so that it would not have been necessary for him, while writing these things, to read the books of Pliny nor to praise Pliny as an author, a new man who, at that time, had no authority among writers. But they say Solinus borrowed entire sentences from Pliny in the same words. Indeed, both Pliny and Solinus borrowed from M. Cato, Varro, Nigidius, Pomponius, and countless others. But enough of these matters; let us come to those things which we have judged most worthy of note here. They are these: First, in the two ancient codices which we used, from the same library, Julius Solinus had no praenomen first name. Second, in the more recent of them, we found this title:

JULIUS SOLINUS THE GRAMMARIAN, POLYHISTOR,
EDITED AND REVISED BY HIMSELF, CONCERNING THE POSITION
OF THE GLOBE OF THE EARTH, AND CONCERNING INDIVIDUAL
WONDERS WHICH ARE FOUND IN THE WORLD:

Finally, in the same exemplar, two letters are placed before the history itself, whereas in the older book there is only one; both of these are commonly read in printed copies, but they are addressed to the same Autius or Antius, whereas it is necessary that they were written to different people. Therefore, one of them has been restored to its proper addressee, Aduentus, and the other left to that Autius; although we suspect these names are also faulty. For the matter stands thus: Julius Solinus sent these collectanea collected notes first to a certain Aduentus, as he is called in the older book, and wrote to him that letter which begins, "Since also the ears cry out." Which alone, as...