[Aldus and Budaeus compared] It is of some importance to consider what Budaeus might have done to the text of Beroaldus had he treated it to a systematic collation with the Parisinus. Our fragment allows us to test Budaeus; for even if it be not the Parisinus itself, its readings with the help of B, F, and Aldus show what was in that ancient book. I have enumerated above[60] eleven readings of ΠBF which are called errors by Keil, but of which nine were accepted by Aldus and five by the latest editor, Professor Merrill. In two of these (62, 33 and 64, 3), Budaeus, like Aldus, wisely does not harbor an obvious error of P. In two more (62, 16 and 65, 12), Beroaldus already has the reading of P. Of the remaining seven, however, all of which Aldus adopted, there is no trace in Budaeus. There are also nineteen cases of obvious error in the ς editions, which Aldus corrected but Budaeus did not touch. I give the complete apparatus[61] for these twenty-six places, as they will illustrate the radical difference between Aldus and Budaeus in their use of the Parisinus.
Here is sufficient material for a test. Aldus, it will be observed, whether or not he started with some special edition, refuses to follow the latest and best texts of his day (i.e., ς) in these twenty-six readings. In one sure case (60, 15) and eleven possible[62] cases (61, 18; 62, 26; 63, 5, 12, 15, 17 bis, 23 bis; 64, 2, 5), his reading agrees with the Princeps. In four sure cases (63, 4, 22; 65, 15; 66, 9) and one possible one (63, 9), he agrees with the Roman edition; in two sure (61, 12; 66, 11) and three possible (63, 2; 66, 7, 12) cases, with both p and r. Once he breaks away from all editions reported by Keil and agrees with D (62, 6). At the same time, all these readings are attested by ΠFB and hence were presumably in the Parisinus. In two cases (65, 11, 24), we know of no source other than P that could have furnished him his reading. Further, in the superscription of the third letter of Book III (63, 20), he might have taken a hint from Catanaeus, who was the first to depart from the reading corneliae, universally accepted before him, but again it is only P that could give him the correct spelling corelliae.[63]
If all the above readings, then, were in the Parisinus, how did Aldus arrive at them? Did he fish round, now in the Princeps, now in the Roman edition, despite the repellent errors that those texts contained,[64] and extract with felicitous accuracy excellent readings that coincided with those of the Parisinus, or did he draw them straight from that source itself? The crucial cases are 65, 11 and 24. As he must have gone to the Parisinus for these readings, he presumably found the others there, too. Moreover, he did not get his new variants by a merely sporadic consultation of the ancient book when he was dissatisfied with the accepted text of his day, for in the two crucial cases and many of the others, too, that text makes sense; some of the readings, indeed, are accepted by modern editors as correct.[65] Aldus was collating. He carefully noted minutiae, such as the omission of et and iam, and accepted what he found, unless the ancient text seemed to him indisputably wrong. He gave it the benefit of the doubt even when it may be wrong. This is the method of a scrupulous editor who cherishes a proper veneration for his oldest and best authority.
Budaeus, on the other hand, is not an editor. He is a vastly interested reader of Pliny, frequently commenting on the subject-matter or calling attention to it by marginal signs. As for the text, he generally finds Beroaldus good enough. He corrects misprints, makes a conjecture now and then, or adopts one of Catanaeus, and, besides supplementing the missing portions with transcripts made for him from the Parisinus, inserts numerous variants, some of which indubitably come from that manuscript.[66] In the present section, occupying 251 lines in Π, there is only one reading of the Parisinus—a false reading, it happens—that seems to Budaeus worth recording. Compared with what Aldus gleaned from Π, Budaeus’s extracts are insignificant. It is remarkable, for instance, that on a passage (65, 11) which, as the appended obelus shows, he must have read with attention, he has not added the very different reading of the Parisinus. Either, then, Budaeus did not consult the Parisinus with care, or he did not think the great majority of its readings preferable to the text of Beroaldus, or, as I think may well have been the case, he had neither the manuscript itself nor an entire copy of it accessible at the time when he added his variants in his combined edition of Beroaldus and Avantius.[67]
But I do not mean to present here a final estimate of Budaeus; for that, I hope, we may look to Professor Merrill. Nor do I particularly blame Budaeus for not constructing a new text from the wealth of material disclosed in the Parisinus. His interests lay elsewhere; suos quoique mos. What I mean to say, and to say with some conviction, is that for the portion of text included in our fragment, the evidence of that fragment, coupled with that of B and F, shows that as a witness to the ancient manuscript Aldus is overwhelmingly superior to either Budaeus or any of the ancient editors.
Our examination of the Morgan fragment, therefore, leads to what I deem a highly probable conclusion. We could perhaps hope for absolute proof in a matter of this kind only if another page of the same manuscript should appear, bearing a note in the hand of Aldus Manutius to the effect that he had used the codex for his edition of 1508. Failing that, we can at least point out that all the data accessible comport with the hypothesis that the Morgan fragment was a part of this very codex. We have set our hypothesis running a lengthy gauntlet of facts, and none has tripped it yet. We have also seen that Π is most intimately connected with manuscripts BF of Class I, and indeed seems to be a part of the very manuscript whence they are descended. Finally, a careful comparison of Aldus’s text with Π shows him, for this much of the Letters at least, to be a scrupulous and conscientious editor. His method is to follow Π throughout, save when, confronted by its obvious blunders, he has recourse to the editions of his day.
[The latest criticism of Aldus] Since the publication of Otto’s article in 1886,[68] in which the author defended the F branch against that of MV, to which, as the elder representative of the tradition, Keil had not unnaturally deferred, critical procedure has gradually shifted its centre. The reappearance of B greatly helped, as it corroborates the testimony of F. B and F head the list of the manuscripts used by Kukula in his edition of 1912,[69] and B and F with Aldus’s Parisinus make up Class I, not Class II, in Merrill’s grouping of the manuscripts. Obviously, the value of Class I mounts higher still now that we have evidence in the Morgan fragment of its existence in the early sixth century. This fact helps us to decide the question of glosses in our text. We are more than ever disposed to attribute not to BF but to what has now become the younger branch of the tradition, Class II, the tendency to interpolate explanatory glosses. The changed attitude towards the BF branch has naturally resulted in a gradual transformation of the text. We have seen in the portion included in Π that of the eleven readings which Keil regarded as errors of the F branch, three are accepted by Kukula and five by Merrill.[70]
Since Class I has thus appreciated in value, we should expect that Aldus’s stock would also take an upward turn. In Aldus’s lifetime, curiously, he was criticized for excessive conservatism. His rival Catanaeus finds his chief quality supina ignorantia and adds:[71]
“Verum enim uero non satis est recuperare venerandae vetustatis exemplaria, nisi etiam simul adsit acre emendatoris iudicium: quoniam et veteres librarii in voluminibus describendis saepissime falsi sunt, et Plinius ipse scripta sua se viuo deprauari in quadam epistola demonstrauerit.”