Natural History

IV

PREFACE

...I have recorded for this reason: so that it might be understood that the resources employed by the first editors, although corrupted in the course of time, nevertheless drew their origin from codices of the older order which we now know, and that very many readings today have been reclaimed—readings which Sillig and more often even Jahn, who used a thin and overly narrow apparatus, had undeservedly discarded. At the same time, it is to ensure that readers, if they happen to find Plinian passages cited from some earlier edition, do not remain at a loss, devoid of counsel, when faced with words now more or less changed. Likewise, I have made it my concern to refer to the principal authors of noteworthy emendations or conjectures, just as Pliny himself (Pref. 21) says that it is a sign of a kind nature and full of honest modesty to acknowledge those through whom you have profited. In this way, the true image of an emendation propagated over four centuries finally shines forth—an image which Sillig obscured with his very frequent mention of Dalecamp—and it becomes manifest how much is owed both to the oldest editors, who strenuously and skillfully made the way passable for those desiring to travel through what was, as it were, an uncultivated forest dense with thickets, such as bristles in the most faultily written codices, and to the admirable erudition and sagacity of Hermolaus Barbarus and Gelenius, who stood as the primary founders of what is called the vulgate text, to omit here what those who followed have subsequently achieved. How much lower are those things which it has been my lot to provide, compared to these, comes to mind as I gaze upon the work now that it is for the most part finished, and I feel that I must above all ask for indulgence if, in a field of letters immense and extended far beyond the purview of a single man, many things have escaped me that were correctly observed by others for interpreting or emending the words of Pliny.

It remains for me to express with a grateful mind in this place the thanks due to Karl Rück and Otto Rossbach, who most kindly assisted my studies, and to the most distinguished men moderating the royal public libraries of Leiden, Vienna, and Dresden, by whose signal generosity it came about that I was permitted to examine the codices sent here with all the care that was necessary.