[19.] This is a sign of antiquity. After the sixth century the M or Nstroke is usually placed above the vowel. The practice of confining the omission of M or N to the end of a line is a characteristic of our very oldest manuscripts. Later manuscripts omit M or N in the middle of a line and in the middle of a word. No distinction is made in our manuscript between omitted M and omitted N. Some ancient manuscripts make a distinction. Cf. Traube, Nomina Sacra, pp. 179, 181, 183, 185, final column of each page; and W. M. Lindsay, Notae Latinae, pp. 342 and 345.
[20.] The fraudulent character of the alleged discovery was exposed in masterly fashion by Ludwig Traube in his “Palaeographische Forschungen IV,” published in the Abhandlungen der K. Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, III Klasse, XXIV Band, 1 Abteilung, Munich 1904.
[21.] Cf. E. T. Merrill, “On the use by Aldus of his manuscripts of Pliny’s Letters,” in Classical Philology, XIV (1919), p. 34.
[22.] That the hair side of the vellum retained the ink better than the flesh side may be seen from an examination of facsimiles in the Leyden series Codices graeci et latini photographice depicti.
12 [23.] That the ink could scale off the flesh side of the vellum in less than three centuries is proved by the condition of the famous Tacitus manuscript in Beneventan script in the Laurentian Library. It was written in the eleventh century and shows retouched characters of the thirteenth. See foll. 102, 103 in the facsimile edition in the Leyden series mentioned in the previous note.
[24.] On the subject of omissions and the clues they often furnish, see the exhaustive treatise by A. C. Clark entitled The Descent of Manuscripts, Oxford 1918.
13 [25.] Our scribe’s method is as patient as it is unreflecting. Apparently he does not commit to memory small intelligible units of text, but is copying word for word, or in some places even letter for letter.