PREFACE.

seem equal, even if I had given my life to it alone, much less while pressed and distracted by other business. Meanwhile, it was necessary for me to stand by my promises at some point; I finally happened upon enough leisure last year to be able to attend to the things pertaining to the completion of this edition; I have therefore accomplished, if not what I wished, at least what I could.

This volume contains the remains of the Aratea of Cicero and Germanicus Caesar, and the entire Metaphrasis of Aratus by Rufus Festus Avienus. In restoring the Cicero fragments to their former splendor, as much as I was able to do, I made use of both the various readings of the editions of the Latin Aratean poems, and the emendations proposed by Grotius in his notes on those fragments, and finally the observations of learned men on the books of Cicero, in which the greatest part of those fragments is interwoven. The fragments of Germanicus presented a far greater difficulty to me, which