The Birthday Book (De Die Natali)

Therefore, I reviewed the writer's words as diligently as possible according to the codices DR, and I preserved their readings as religiously as could be done; however, in those passages—which are not few—where they are corrupt, I strove to find the truth by following their traces with cautious emendation. But if a certain emendation had been made either by me or by someone else, I did not hesitate to accept it, provided that those things which were restored by conjecture were expressed in italic letters. Where nothing certain could be found, I placed a dagger symbol before the reading of the codices. If, indeed, this effort has resulted in Censorinus now appearing more intact—and certainly he has been made far different from how he was read before—that is primarily the merit of Carl Lachmann. For he not only shared many excellent emendations with me while I was preparing to edit Censorinus, but he also took upon himself the duty of correcting the page proofs, and while performing it, he corrected not a few things more rightly than I had done.

Having thus emended the writer's words, I subjected them to the variety of the Haverkamp edition, so that it might immediately appear what had been changed in this edition. In the commentary, however, I reviewed all the various readings of the codices DR, so that I would omit nothing knowingly and willingly. Therefore, if anything is read differently now than it exists in the Haverkamp edition, and nothing from the codices is noted, hold it for certain that it is read in DR just as it is written by me. I have not brought forward all the readings of the remaining codices, and at the beginning indeed...