VI

PREFACE.

—247b, the other much more recent, fol. 1a—20b, 99a—114b, 123a—124b, 139a—158b. It appears, therefore, that a sufficiently large part of the old manuscript has perished by the injury of time 1 and, so that the book might not be truncated, it was supplied by a scribe of a more recent age. For this reason, the reliability of the two parts of the manuscript is widely different: the readings that the older part exhibits are generally of great value, while the readings of the more recent part are generally of none. Why? Because they agree with the Paris manuscript 2148 in such a way that the scribe who supplied the Laurentian seems to have copied either this, or its archetype or a copy. This is also confirmed by the fact that the same lacuna gap in the text by which the Paris manuscript is mutilated from p. 394, 4 to 422, 10 is also detected in the Laurentian. Since this is the case, I have arranged for only book VII of the more recent part to be collated by Hugo Tschierschky; the entire older part was collated by the same man, except for the fourth and seventeenth books, which Otto Staehlin of Munich had already examined at my request beforehand.

That great reliance should be placed on the Laurentian manuscript in establishing the text is demonstrated by many passages where it alone preserved the true reading. I will cite as an example: p. 102, 19 διὰ τί why, 111, 17 ἐμήνυσαν they revealed, 112, 20 γ’, 118, 12 αυτοῖς to them, 142, 22 συνήθη accustomed, 150, 24 τούτου of this, 153, 15 θεῖν to run, 174, 2 ἡδονῶν of pleasures, 176, 23 τοῦ κόσμου of the world, 197, 14 ἐνάργειαν clarity, 310, 21 πιλητοῖς felted, 461, 8 ἐκδεξομένῳ receiving, 9 φαντασιωθησομένῳ about to be imagined, 359, 19 ἐκποριούσας providing, 463, 5 μέν πως somehow indeed, 465, 7 ἀπέτεινεν οὖν therefore it extended, 474, 25 ἡ γάρ τοι for truly (likewise Oribasius), 476, 1 ἡ λεπτὴ μῆνιγξ the thin membrane (hiatus is avoided), 479, 10 τό τ’ ὀστοῦν the bone, 482, 4 ἀμφότεραι both, 12 αὐτῆς of it, 19 τινὰ some, 484, 24 τινὰ εἶναι τῆς to be some of the, 492, 10 πάνυ τι quite at all (likewise Oribasius), 20 συνανασπᾷ draws up together (likewise Oribasius), 493, 7 τοσοῦτον so much, 495, 16 οἷον such as, 19 ἃς which.

If you examine the other readings of the Laurentian, you will easily...

1) The scribe himself indicated this loss of leaves on fol. 139a with these words: λείπει ἐν τῷ ἀντιγράφῳ γερμανικῷ φύλλα ιδ ἕως σχήσειν τὸν 14 leaves are missing in the German copy until 'to hold the'. Read: ἕως [πρό]σέχειν τὸν until 'to pay attention to the' (= vol. III p. 859, 15 K), with which word fol. 159a begins. You see that to repair the damage, not fourteen, but twenty leaves were needed.