V

PREFACE.

From this, I began to hope that I could produce an edition that, if not perfect and absolute in every respect, would be much more corrected and less incomplete, and therefore welcome to many learned men. Whatever time remained from my public duties and other obligations, I spent on the commentaries of Proclus, and the fruits of my labor have now been brought forth in print.

The books I used in compiling the work are evident from the explanation of notes that precedes Proclus’s words below. At this point, a few things must be added regarding both the manuscript codices and the form of the text.

All the manuscripts we know of, in which Proclus’s commentaries are read, are certain evidence of having originated from one and the same exemplar, as shown by the lacunae gaps in the text that consumed the end of the commentary on the 36th proposition of Euclid along with the beginning of the next, and the end of the commentary on the 41st along with the commentary on the 42nd and the beginning of the commentary on the 43rd. Variations in words and thoughts also, for the most part, betray such a kinship, born from the various remedies of scribes or correctors for the same error. For there were not lacking those who read these commentaries. There are also very clear traces that the Munich manuscript was revised by a skilled hand, but it is very difficult to judge whether the same person who wrote the codex also corrected it, or whether another reviewed it not long after. In many places, the hand of the corrector hardly differs from the hand of the writer; in other places, paler ink or a stroke of the letters that is either more negligent or more recent seems to betray a later hand. You might therefore surmise that several readers worked on this manuscript, and you cannot now attribute the work of each to individuals. One of them, at least—if not more—a learned man shortly after the codex was newly written, saw some of its errors and corrected them, I am certainly persuaded.