Philosophical Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Vol. 2

I continued vigorously to weave the web according to the plan I had begun, when, with this volume all but finished, behold, unexpectedly, letters were sent by the heads of the publishing house whom I just named with well-deserved praise, announcing to them—and thus to me—that permission would be granted, unless I advised otherwise, to use those aids, collected by that most eminent man with the greatest labor and remarkable care, for our own use, so that I would achieve all the wishes I had so often expressed until now. With what joy I was then filled, and how many and great thanks I then gave to these honorable heads, it is needless to say. What more? The heads of the Weidmannian publishing house bought those aids and submitted them to me, the fuller description of which I have destined for the sixth and final volume of the Works of Seneca the Philosopher, with corrections, emendations, and indices added.

» But the publishing management did not wish there to be any limit to the effort and study given to the remaining philosophical works of Seneca, not even in acquiring that treasure at their own expense. For when they learned from the letters of the distinguished Fessler that his Roman and Florentine friends had allowed this task to be imposed upon them—having already accepted a not insignificant part of the honorarium, as it is called, so that they might enter into a partnership for accurately collating the manuscript codices of Seneca's works that are preserved in Rome and Florence—the former of whom, Abbot Santolonius, having collated several manuscript codices containing the letters of Seneca, and having deposited them in the custody of the Vatican Library and left them in Rome, had entrusted a fascicle of those variant readings to a certain Roman friend, while the latter, Bandinius, the most deserving keeper of the Florentine Library, had undoubtedly also left behind a fascicle of variant readings from the manuscript codices of Seneca's works