On Agriculture

noted. But beyond those things which were inscribed from the codex in the annotations of Victorius, the edition itself also provides a testimony of the ancient writing that is not to be despised. For wherever new readings were received into it, which are neither found in the copies edited before nor were noted by the editor as having been found by his own conjecture, it is to be believed that these were sought from the codex, provided that the credibility of Victorius is confirmed by the authority of other books. Furthermore, both Victorius and Politian had a codex that was mutilated in its final part. For after these words III 17, 4 tubicinam graecum, which both noted were the final words in the codex, the rest were not read at that time, but had perished due to the parchment being cut away.

Of the manuscript books which were transcribed by the Italians from the Marcian codex in the fifteenth century, the one most accurately expressed from the archetype of all those I have seen is the Laurentianus 51, 4, a paper manuscript, which contains the three books of Varro, but has the third book at the end mutilated in the same way as it was read in the archetype itself by Politian and Victorius. Of the same kind, but written more defectively, is the Caesenas codex of the Malatestian library 24, 2, a parchment manuscript, in which the books of Varro were written after the books of Columella and Cato. For in this one too, the third book was first written up to those words at which the Marcian codex ended; afterwards, by the same hand, though at a different time, the parts that were missing were added at the end of the book. In an earlier time, when the archetype was complete, the Paris codex 6884 A was transcribed from it, the oldest of all the codices that now survive. For it was written in the thirteenth century or even towards the end of the twelfth century, and it contains three books of Varro along with Cato’s book On Agriculture. In the first writing, many things were corrected, partly by the same scribe and partly, it seems, by another hand, but at about the same time; others, however, were corrected in later times either in the words themselves or were added in the margins. Closely approaching the age of the Paris codex is the Medicean or Laurentianus 30, 10, which contains, after Vitruvius’s books On Architecture, Cato’s book On Agriculture and the books of Varro.