Philosophical Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Vol. 3

copied from a very ancient codex, in which almost all words would have been connected to one another in the ancient manner and distinguished by no space, which is understood from the fact that in this same codex of ours, even now, in many places the words are not separated from one another, but are thoroughly connected. But what must be lamented again and again is that these parchments contain only about the third part of the Epistles of Seneca. For since the entire work was once distributed into three volumes, the first of which (as I suspect) contained Ep. I to LII; the second, Ep. LIII to LXXXVIII; the third, the remaining from Ep. LXXXIX to CXXIV; in this codex of ours, almost nothing but the final part is contained, and not even this is complete. For the first quire, which had comprised Ep. LXXXIX and the earlier part of Ep. XC, has perished (and I know not whether it was already missing long ago in that exemplar from which our codex was copied). In its place—lest our codex reveal its defect at first glance—has been substituted the first quire of the first volume, copied (it seems) by the same hand and certainly with very similar duct of the pen as the following parts; this contains the epistles of Paul the Apostle and Seneca, which were once in circulation, along with the two prior Epistles to Lucilius and part of the third Epistle, ending in these words: alterum tutius. Sic utrosque, etc., which words are read at the end. Then, indeed, the second quire begins from these broken-off words: renda artibus fecimus. Sufficit ad id natura, etc., which are from Epistle XC. Thereafter, however, all the remaining Epistles, which have come down to our age in other codices as well, follow in a continuous flow. Furthermore, there is no need for me to say more here about the excellence of this codex; how much it has contributed to our amending the common copies of these Epistles will be abundantly understood from our critical Notes. It will not be out of place to warn that there remain in the same codex clear vestiges of an old distribution of Seneca's Epistles into several books; which distribution, having already been in use in the age of Aulus Gellius, was subsequently neglected in most codices, but in others so changed that it