In the first place, if our six leaves were once a part of a quaternion, the two leaves needed to complete them must have formed the outside sheet, since our fragment furnishes a continuous text without any lacuna whatever. Now, in the formation of quires, sheets were so arranged that hair side faced hair side, and flesh side flesh side. This arrangement is dictated by a sense of uniformity. As the hair side is usually much darker than the flesh side the juxtaposition of hair and flesh sides would offend the eye. So, in the case of our six leaves, folios 48v and 53r, presenting the flesh side, face folios 49r and 52v likewise on the flesh side; and folios 49v and 52r presenting the hair side, face folios 50r and 51v likewise on the hair side. The inside pages 50v and 51r which face each other, are both flesh side, and the outside pages 48r and 53v are both hair side, as may be seen from the accompanying diagram.
From this arrangement it is evident that if our fragment once formed part of a quaternion the missing sheet was so folded that its hair side faced the present outside sheet and its flesh side was on the outside of the whole gathering. Now, it was by far the more usual practice in our oldest uncial manuscripts to have the flesh side on the outside of the quire.[2] And as our fragment belongs to the oldest class of uncial manuscripts, the manner of arranging the sheets of quires seems to favor the supposition that two outside leaves are missing. The hypothesis is, moreover, strengthened by another consideration. According to the foliation supplied by the fifteenth-century Arabic numerals, the leaf which must have followed our fragment bore the number 54, the leaf preceding it having the number 47. If we assume that our fragment was a complete gathering, we are obliged to explain why the next gathering began on a leaf bearing an even number (54), which is abnormal. We do not have to contend with this difficulty if we assume that folios 47 and 54 formed the outside sheet of our fragment, for six quires of eight leaves and one of six would give precisely 54 leaves. It seems, therefore, reasonable to assume that our fragment is not a complete unit, but formed part of a quaternion, the outside sheet of which is missing.
[Original size of the manuscript] In the fifteenth century, as the previous demonstration has made clear, our fragment was preceded by 47 leaves that are missing to-day. With this clue in our possession it can be demonstrated that the manuscript began with the first book of the Letters. We start with the fact that not all the 47 folios (or 94 pages) which preceded our six leaves were devoted to the text of the Letters. For, from the contents of our six leaves we know that each book must have been preceded by an index of addresses and first lines. The indices for Books I and II, if arranged in general like that of Book III, must have occupied four pages.[3] We also learn from our fragment that space must be allowed for a colophon at the end of each book. One page for the colophons of Books I and II is a reasonable allowance. Accordingly it follows that out of the 94 pages preceding our fragment 5 were not devoted to text, or in other words that only 89 pages were thus devoted.
Now, if we compare pages in our manuscript with pages of a printed text we find that the average page in our manuscript corresponds to about 19 lines of the Teubner edition of 1912. If we multiply 89 by 19 we get 1691. This number of lines of the size of the Teubner edition should, if our calculation be correct, contain the text of the Letters preceding our fragment. The average page of the Teubner edition of 1912 of the part which interests us contains a little over 29 lines. If we divide 1691 by 29 we get 58.3. Just 58 pages of Teubner text are occupied by the 47 leaves which preceded our fragment. So close a conformity is sufficient to prove our point. We have possibly allowed too much space for indices and colophons, especially if the former covered less ground for Books I and II than for Book III. Further, owing to the abbreviation of que and bus, and particularly of official titles, we can not expect a closer agreement.
It is not worth while to attempt a more elaborate calculation. With the edges matching so nearly, it is obvious that the original manuscript as known and used in the fifteenth century could not have contained some other work, however brief, before Book I of Pliny’s Letters. If the manuscript contained the entire ten books it consisted of about 260 leaves. This sum is obtained by counting the number of lines in the Teubner edition of 1912, dividing this sum by 19, and adding thereto pages for colophons and indices. It would be too bold to suppose that this calculation necessarily gives us the original size of the manuscript, since the manuscript may have had less than ten books, or it may, on the other hand, have had other works. But if it contained only the ten books of the Letters, then 260 folios is an approximately correct estimate of its size.
It is hard to believe that only six leaves of the original manuscript have escaped destruction. The fact that the outside sheet (foll. 48r and 53v) is not much worn nor badly soiled suggests that the gathering of six leaves must have been torn from the manuscript not so very long ago and that the remaining portions may some day be found.
[Disposition] The pages in our manuscript are written in long lines,[4] in scriptura continua, with hardly any punctuation.
Each page begins with a large letter, even though that letter occur in the body of a word (cf. foll. 48r, 51v, 52r).[5]
Each epistle begins with a large letter. The line containing the address which precedes each epistle also begins with a large letter. In both cases the large letter projects into the left margin.