PREFACE.

They judge this very irrationally original Greek: "πάνυ ἀλόγως τοῦτο δοξάζουσιν" until "since it is greatest" original Greek: "ἐπειδὴ μεγίστη ἐστί", we shall say to him [the text] is missing in the manuscript.*)

A third [manuscript] was added, the Nuremberg manuscript, apparently from the 14th century, according to the testimony of Fabricius (B. G. Vol. IV, page 40, edited by Harles). J. Chr. Kappius, the editor of the Aristotelian treatise On the World, had prepared a new edition of Cleomedes and had compared an excellent and clear manuscript from the Nuremberg library with others, but, intercepted by premature fate, he left that task to others. For this reason, it pleased us to resume the work begun by Kappius, in such a way that we worked out a collation of this manuscript as well and consulted it in doubtful passages. Without doubt, it must be ascribed to the family of more recent manuscripts, as several interpolations sufficiently demonstrate, which is why we rarely altered the text based on its authority.

Equipped, therefore, with these resources for emending, and having reviewed the text of Cleomedes—as published by Bakius in 1820 and by C. Th. Chr. Schmidt in 1832, who depends entirely upon him—once and often, we set a double duty for ourselves: first, to express the writing of the Medicean manuscript as much as possible, as it is the oldest of all the manuscripts**) we inspected; second, to remove, as far as possible, the errors born of the negligence of scribes and the corruptions—from which not even that best manuscript is free—with the help of two others. Thus, we dared to bring a remedy to the writer, cautiously and providently, and all other manuscripts,

*) We discussed these matters more accurately in the dissertation titled: On the Life and Writings of Cleomedes. Meissen, 1878. 8.

**) The manuscripts of the Marcian Library, No. CCXIV and CCCVIII, which Bakius (l. l.) assigns to the 11th–12th century, are, like six others that contain scripts?, written in the 14th–15th century.