B UT, it will be asked, how do we know that Aldus used Π rather than some other manuscript that had a very similar text and that happened to have gone through the same travels? To answer this question we must examine the relation of Π to the other extant manuscripts in the light of what is known of the transmission of Pliny’s Letters in the Middle Ages. A convenient summary is given by Merrill on the basis of his abundant researches.[19]
[Classes of the manuscripts] Manuscripts of the Letters may be divided into three classes, distinguished by the number of books that each contains.
Class I, the ten-book family, consists of B (Bellovacensis or Riccardianus), now Ashburnhamensis, R 98 in the Laurentian Library in Florence, its former home, whence it had been diverted on an interesting pilgrimage by the noted book-thief Libri. This manuscript is attributed to the tenth century by Merrill, and by Chatelain in his description of the book. But Chatelain labels his facsimile page “Saec. IX.”[20] The latter seems the more probable date. The free use of a flat-topped a, along with the general appearance of the script, reminds me of the style in vogue at Fleury and its environs about the middle of the ninth century. A good specimen is accessible in a codex of St. Hilary on the Psalms (Vaticanus Reginensis 95), written at Micy between 846 and 859, of which a page is reproduced by Ehrle and Liebaert.[21] F (Florentinus), the other important representative of this class, is also in the Laurentian Library (S. Marco 284). The date assigned to it seems also too late. It is apparently as early as the tenth century, and also has some of the characteristics of the script of Fleury; it is French work, at any rate. Keil’s suggestion[22] that it may be the book mentioned as liber epistolarum Gaii Plinii in a tenth-century catalogue of the manuscripts at Lorsch may be perfectly correct; though not written at Lorsch, it might have been presented to the monastery by that time.[23] These two manuscripts agree in containing, by the first hand, only Books I-V, vi (F having all and B only a part of the sixth letter). However, as the initial title in B is plini · secundi · epistularum · libri · decem, we may infer that some ancestor, if not the immediate ancestor, of B and F had all ten books.
In Class II the leading manuscript is another Laurentian codex (Mediceus XLVII 36), which contains Books I-IX, xxvi, 8. It was written in the ninth century, at Corvey, whence it was brought to Rome at the beginning of the sixteenth century. It is part of a volume that also once contained our only manuscript of the first part of the Annals of Tacitus.[24] The other chief manuscript of this class is V (Vaticanus Latinus 3864), which has Books I-IV. The script has been variously estimated. I am inclined to the opinion that the book was written somewhere near Tours, perhaps Fleury, in the earlier part of the ninth century.[25] If Ullman is right in seeing a reference to Pliny’s Letters in a notice in a mediaeval catalogue of Corbie,[26] it may be that the codex is a Corbeiensis. But it is also possible that a volume of the Letters at Corbie was twice copied, once at Corvey (M) and once in the neighborhood of Tours (V). At any rate, with the help of V, we may reach farther back than Corvey and Germany for the origin of this class. There are likewise two fragmentary texts, both of brief extent, Monacensis 14641 (olim Emmeramensis) saec. IX, and Leidensis Vossianus 98 saec. IX, the latter partly in Tironian notes. Merrill regards these as bearing “testimony to the existence of the nine-book text in the same geographical region,” namely Germany.[27] There they are to-day, in Germany and Holland, but where they were written is another affair. The Munich fragment is part of a composite volume of which it occupies only a page or two. The script is continental, and may well be that of Regensburg, but it shows marked traces of insular influence, English rather than Irish in character. The work immediately preceding the fragment is in an insular hand, of the kind practised at various continental monasteries, such as Fulda; there are certain notes in the usual continental hand. Evidently the manuscript deserves consideration in the history of the struggle between the insular and the continental hands in Germany.[28] The script of the Leyden fragment, on the other hand, so far as I can judge from a photograph, looks very much like the mid-century Fleury variety with which I have associated the Bellovacensis; there can hardly be doubt, at any rate, that De Vries is correct in assigning it to France, where Voss obtained so many of his manuscripts.[29] Except, therefore, for M and the Munich fragment, there is no evidence furnished by the chief manuscripts which connects the tradition of the Letters with Germany. The insular clue afforded by the latter book deserves further attention, but I can not follow it here. The question of the Parisinus aside, B and F of Class I and V of Class II are sure signs that the propagation of the text started from one or more centres—Fleury and Corbie seem the most probable—in France.
The third class comprises manuscripts containing eight books, the eighth being omitted and the ninth called the eighth. Representatives of this class are all codices of the fifteenth century, though the class has a more ancient basis than that, namely a lost manuscript of Verona. This is best attested by D, a Dresden codex, while almost all other manuscripts of this class descend from a free recension made by Guarino and conflated with F; o, u, and x are the representatives of this recension (G) that are reported by Merrill. The relation of this third class to the second is exceedingly close; indeed, it may be merely a branch of it.[30]
[The early editions] As is often the case, the leading manuscript authorities are only inadequately represented in the early editions. The Editio Princeps (p) of 1471 was based on a manuscript of the Guarino recension. A Roman editor in 1474 added part of Book VIII, putting it at the end and calling it Book IX; he acquired this new material, along with various readings in the other books, from some manuscript of Class II that may have come down from the north. Three editors, called ς by Keil—Pomponius Laetus 1490, Beroaldus 1498, and Catanaeus 1506—took r as a basis; but Laetus had another and a better representative of the same type of text as that from which r had drawn, and he likewise made use of V. With the help of these new sources the ς editors polished away a large number of the gross blunders of p and r, and added a sometimes unnecessary brilliance of emendation. Avantius’s edition of part of Book X in 1502 was appropriated by Beroaldus in the same year and by Catanaeus in 1506; these latter editors had no new sources at their disposal. No wonder that the Parisinus seemed a godsend to Aldus. The only known ancient manuscripts whose readings had been utilized in the editions preceding his own were F and V, both incomplete representatives of Classes I and II. The manuscripts discovered by the Roman editor and Laetus were of great help at the time, but we have no certain evidence of their age. B and M were not accessible.[31] Now, besides the transcript of Giocondo and his other six volumes, whatever these may have been, Aldus had the ancient codex itself with all ten books complete. Everybody admits that the Parisinus, as shown by the readings of Aldus, is clearly associated with the manuscripts of Class I. Its contents corroborate the evidence of the title in B, which indicates descent from some codex containing ten books.
[Π a member of Class I] Now nothing is plainer than that Π is a member of Class I, as it agrees with BF in the following errors, or what are regarded by Keil as errors. I consider the text of the Letters and not their superscriptions. 60, 15 duplicia] MVD duplicata ΠBFGa; 61, 12 confusa adhuc] MV adhuc confusa ΠBFGa; 62, 6 doctissime] MV doctissima ΠBFDa et doctissima G; 62, 16 nec adficitur] MVD et adficitur ΠBFGa; 62, 23 quorum] MVDGa qui horum ΠBF; 63, 22 teque et] MVDG teque ΠBFa; 64, 3 proferenda] Doxa conferenda BFu conferanda Π (MV lack an extensive passage here); 65, 11 alii quidam minores sed tamen numeri] DG alii quidam minores sed tam innumeri MV alii quidem minoris sed tamen numeri ΠBFa; 65, 12 voluntariis accusationibus] M (uoluntaris) D voluntariis om. V accusationibus uoluntariis ΠBFGa; 65, 15 superiore] MVD priore ΠBFGa; 65, 24 iam] MVDG om. ΠBFa.
Tastes differ, and not all these eleven readings of Class I may be errors. Kukula, in the most recent Teubner edition (1912), accepts three of them (60, 15; 62, 6; 65, 15), and Merrill, in his forthcoming edition, five (60, 15; 61, 12; 62, 6; 65, 12; 65, 15). Personally I could be reconciled to them all with the exception of the very two which Aldus could not admit—62, 23 and 64, 3; in both places he had the early editions to fall back on. However, I should concur with Merrill and Kukula in preferring the reading of the other classes in 62, 16 and 65, 24. In 65, 11 I would emend to alii quidam minoris sed tamen numeri; if this is the right reading, ΠBF agree in the easy error of quidem for quidam, and MVD in another easy error, minores for minoris—the parent manuscript of MV further changed tamen numeri to tam innumeri. Whatever the final judgment, here are five cases in which all recent editors would attribute error to Class I; in the remaining six cases the manuscripts of Class I either agree in error or avoid the error of Class II—surely, then, Π is not of the latter class. There are six other significant errors of MV in the whole passage, no one of which appears in Π: 61, 15 si non] sint MV; 62, 6 mira illis] mirabilis MV; 62, 11 lotus] illic MV; cibum] cibos MV; 62, 25 fuit—64, 12 potes] om. MV; 66, 12 amatus] est amatus MV. Once the first hand in Π agrees with V in an error easily committed independently: 61, 12 ordinata] ordinata, di ss. m. 2 Π ornata V.
Π, then, and MV have descended from the archetype by different routes. With Class III, the Verona branch of Class II, Π clearly has no close association.
But the evidence for allying Π with B and F, the manuscripts of Class I, is by no means exhausted. In 61, 14, BFux have the erroneous emendation, which Budaeus includes among his variants, of serua for sera. A glance at Π shows its apparent origin. The first hand has sera correctly; the second hand writes u above the line.[32] If the second hand is solely responsible for the attempt at improvement here, and is not reproducing a variant in the parent manuscript of Π, then BF must descend directly from Π. The following instances point in the same direction: 61, 21 considit] considet BF. Π has considit by the first hand, the second hand changing the second i to a capital e.[33] In 65, 5, however, residit is not thus changed in Π, and perhaps for this very reason is retained by the careful scribe of B; F, which has a slight tendency to emend, has, with G, residet. 63, 9 praestat amat me] praestatam ad me B. Here the letters of the scriptura continua in Π are faded and blurred; the error of B would therefore be peculiarly easy if this manuscript derived directly from Π. If one ask whether the page were as faded in the ninth century as now, Dr. Lowe has already answered this question; the flesh side of the parchment might well have lost a portion of its ink considerably before the Carolingian period.[34] In any case, the error of praestatam ad me seems natural enough to one who reads the line for the first time in Π. B did not, as we shall see, copy directly from Π; a copy intervened, in which the error was made and then, I should infer, corrected above the line, whence F drew the right reading, B taking the original but incorrect text.