Philosophical Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Vol. 3

differed at all from that which is seen in the ancient Codex Canonum, which was copied by the order of Rachio, Bishop of Strasbourg, in the year of Christ 787: the knowledge of which codex our colleague Chr. Guil. Koch communicated to the learned world in the Notices et Extraits des Mss. de la bibliothèque nationale, tom. VII, page 173 sqq.

did not at all agree with that which Gellius had used. For while in other codices twenty-five Books are counted, but in others twenty-two 1; in none of those Epistles which are referred to Book XXII in those codices are the words found today which we read cited from the twenty-second book of the Epistles of Seneca written to Lucilius by A. Gellius, Noct. Att. XII, 2. And indeed those words are not read even in our own codex: but surely in this one only twenty Books are numbered, in which all those CXXIX Epistles that have come down to us were contained 2. From which it is reasonable to understand that the words from

1 In that codex, after the example of which the old Roman edition was struck, twenty-five Books were numbered: in the Venetian edition and that of Erasmus, only twenty-two. Muretus then entirely omitted the whole method of distinguishing these Epistles by Books, thinking that no trace of it survived in ancient codices. And indeed, by far most codices, along with our Arg. b. and Arg. c. and the A. edition, are ignorant of it. But in these same, just as in all editions, the individual Epistles are distinguished by their own numbers. And the method of numbering which the manuscript codices and ancient editions use does indeed differ slightly from this which has been commonly received everywhere since Muretus: the cause of which difference is that in the manuscript codices, one Epistle was occasionally wrongly divided into two, and in some codices the series of Epistles was also somewhat changed. However, in our oldest ms. a., no numerical note was added to any Epistle by the first hand.

2 In this codex, between the end of the Epistle which is commonly numbered XCII and the beginning of the Epistle XCIII, these are read, inserted by the hand of the same calligrapher who wrote the rest:

Then before Epistle XCVI, it has it thus:

Similarly, the beginning of Book XVII is marked at Epistle CI. Book XVIII, at Epistle CIV. Book XIX, at Epistle CX. Book XX, at Epistle CXVIII. Finally, at the end of Epistle CXXIV, in which the codex ends, after the last words, infelicissimos esse felices VALE, these are added:

Therefore, the last Epistle which survives today closed the twentieth Book: wherefore it is no wonder that those words which Gellius had cited from Book XXII are not read in these Epistles which have come down to us. Similarly, however, Fabricius in his Bibliotheca Latina, where the writings of Seneca are discussed, noted that there is preserved in the Rhedigerian Library of Wrocław a manuscript codex in which the Epistles of this Philosopher are divided into XX books.