Proclus: Commentary on Plato's Timaeus, Vol. II

PRAEFATIO Preface

...tenth quaternion (p. 213, 4 "more common" NR, but p. 213, 9 the second "the" omitted by MR). However, R exhibits no traces of quaternions 15–22: these had therefore perished at the time when codex R was being written, which I said was at the beginning of the 14th century. It follows that codex M (of the end of the 14th century) and the parts of the Riccardianus just defined were not transcribed from the same exemplar. Indeed, an exemplar of codex M was produced with the greatest diligence from the same membranes, not yet torn and lost, long before codex R. The whole quaternions that had perished in the source of the Riccardianus were replaced in R largely from a certain similar codex N, very similar to the Marcian 190: namely, three pages of the first quaternion, the 5th, half of the 6th, the end of the 8th, the 9th, the beginning of the 10th; finally, the entire context of the second book from p. 376/377 (cf. p. XIII). From p. 294, 13 "nature," at the beginning of the 13th quaternion of codex M (M2), it is shown that a Coislinian or a twin of the same book was inserted for the constitution of the Riccardianus—to bring forward a very grave argument of congruence—the lacuna of codex R: for p. 319, 10 "of the fountain-like creators" up to p. 320, 13 "is the end" fell out, which pericope a selection from a text fills folios 275u and 276r of codex C: namely, the scribe skipped folios 275u and 276r while turning the membrane 275r. Nevertheless, I might think of a twin of the Coislinianus not so much because of the corruptions and conjectures obvious in R 1), p. 304, 15... see footnotes in source, as because of the words omitted in codex R with a blank space left 2), p. 316, 2... see footnotes in source; if these lacunae seem less to be rejected to a certain exemplar older than the Riccardian (cf. p. XLVII), but rather to the very source from which the author of the Riccardian recension drew, that source was not C, and no one sees why words very easy to read there would have fallen out if that book had been consulted. Where the agreement of books C and R ends, it is not permitted to circumscribe accurately: