PROLEGOMENA Introduction.

from the previous page: ...derived his own wealth of knowledge. It can also be easily understood in certain places that Censorinus neither read the authors whose testimonies he brings forth himself, nor had accurate knowledge of them, but followed another more ancient writer who had used them. Thus he affirms that he read in Plato (p. 24, 15) things which are not read in his books; he confuses Hippo with Hippasus (p. 13, 9), so that it appears that Aristoxenus, whose authority he uses there, was not examined by him; regarding Democritus, he reports something discordant with what other writers hand down (p. 14, 13. 16, 1), where there is certainly room to doubt which person committed the error, and the warnings made about the testimonies of Aphrodisius (p. 57, 5) and Timaeus (p. 63, 5) raise suspicion of Censorinus's error or negligence. It is also strange that Linus (p. 55, 16) is mentioned after Heraclitus; for that seems too subtle, that by this reasoning it is indicated that the poems which were attributed to Linus were composed after the times of Heraclitus. Nor would he have written (p. 18, 12):

"the consensus of all of whom does not deter Euryphon the Gnidian, who intrepidly denies the very thing,"

if he had remembered that Euryphon He is mentioned by Photius from Stobaeus, Bibliotheca cod. 167 p. 115 Bk. was older than almost all the authors he had named. And here it is indeed open that Censorinus primarily indulged in the study which he presents throughout the little book: a sought-after elegance of speech and rhetorical artifice to decorate these little questions (p. 4, 17) selected from philological commentaries, so that they might be worthy of being sent under the title of a birthday gift to a man celebrated with such great praises of eloquence (p. 41, 3). And this elegance, which seems to us excessive and affected, is certainly far removed from the grammatical austerity which one can observe in the fragment cited above.