On Medical Matters

PRAEFATIO Preface

Ludovico Anguillara and Ioannes Manardus also compared manuscript copies, which seem to have been received from the Marciana Library in Venice. For it possesses several manuscripts, not of great value, which is also sufficiently clear from those authors.

Goupylus used two Parisian manuscripts, of which Salmasius 47 praises one, and Montfaucon 48 describes it, attributing it to the ninth century. For my part, I have received a few readings, not to be held in high regard, from both this one and one of the Vatican manuscripts.

IX.

Concerning the editions.

The first edition, which Aldus Manutius arranged at Venice in 1499, has been seen by few and consulted by none, which, although almost incredible, is nevertheless very true. The copy I myself possess is neat and clean, has few errors, and has accents placed much more expertly than in the later ones; it contains very many excellent readings, which Saracenus finally divined.

The next is what they are also accustomed to call the second Aldine, and which Saracenus, since the first edition was completely unknown to him, marked with the name of the Aldine (as if it were the only one). Franc. Asulanus, the brother-in-law of Aldus, managed it, with the help of Hieronymus Roscius, a Paduan physician, who is said to have corrected the text and reviewed it from a collation of manuscripts. It was produced at Venice in 1518 in a sub-square format. It departed entirely from the Aldine text, which it nowhere cites, nor did it mention sources; it changed many things and relegated seen-to-be-spurious items into an appendix, where

47) Plin. exercit. p. 254.
48) L. c. p. 43.