The Extant Greek Works of Apollonius of Perga, Vol. II

Of those 25 manuscripts, I collated the entirety of codices 1, 5, and 11; I personally inspected the others, except for codices 6, 9, and 21, for which what I know I owe to the benevolence of learned men who are in charge of the Marcian, Turin, and Wolfenbüttel libraries. Now let us see about the relationship of these manuscripts.

Vat. 203 That codex 2 depends on V Vatican Codex Gr. 206 is apparent from the most certain evidence from figure II, 32, p. 248; for there, in the hyperbola AB in codex 2, N is placed before A, which has no place here; for there is no need at all for a letter in the figure in that place, nor, if there were a greatest need, should it have been N, but M. The origin of this error is immediately evident from V; for there that figure is described in the margin in such a way that it passes into the words of Apollonius, and the upper terminus of the hyperbola AB falls by chance before the letter v in tōn of the on p. 248, 10; hence the letter N crept into the figure. Although this alone suffices to demonstrate what we want, I will also bring forth other evidence. For on p. 8, 5, instead of pros towards, codex 2 has pros hē towards the (the hē was later deleted), which arose from that accidental little line of codex V, about which see the critical note. p. 376, 6: ΛΞΖ 67] corrected from ΛΞΘ 69, in such a way that Θ was not entirely deleted, V; ΛΞΘΖ 697 codex 2. p. 390, 6: ΗΞ 860] corrected from ΗΓ 83, with the letter ξ added to Γ in V, ΗΓΞ 8360 codex 2. And indeed, almost all the most obvious errors of codex V are found in codex 2, such as the dittography erroneous repetition of words p. 214, 5. Nevertheless, I explained on p. V that something useful for the recension can be sought from it.

Vat. 205 Since in codex 3 there is exactly the same arrangement of figure II, 32 as in codex 2, it also depends on V; and that it was transcribed from V itself, and not from codex 2, these places most especially show:

Codex 3 also has the note on p. 267 brought from V, whereas in codex 2 it is omitted and the figure is replaced in its own place.

p. 448, 17: ΘΔ 94] Δδ 4... V, Δ followed by a lacuna of 1 letter codex 2, ΑΔ 14 codex 3. And so the ratio of the figure in V led the scribe of codex 3 into the same error. Moreover, Ioannes of Otranto, who wrote both this codex and codices 4 and 15, held the office of "restorer" of Greek books under the Pope from the year 1535 to 1550, as is apparent from those things which Müntz collected regarding the salary paid to him in The Vatican Library in the XVI Century, pp. 101—104. And so, since codex V was in a very bad state (p. IV), he must be thought to have transcribed it for his duty so that it would not perish from use. And this is that "apograph" transcription which is cited in the notes in the margin of V by a recent hand, such as on p. 2, 15 "because of the pros euplō good sailing towards etc. from an apographon eikonikon accurate/faithful copy"; for thus is codex 3 (ekplō sailing out is more correct in codex 2); cf. besides in Serenus (ed. Halley):