[1] He did not discover the group Ad Atticum until 1345, when he was more than forty years old. And Voigt and Viertel have shown that the very existence of the Ad Familiares was unknown to him.
[2] Sen., iv., 4
[3] ......... qualis equos Threissa fatigat Harpalyce volucremque fuga prævertitur Hebrum.
[4] Petrarch sometimes applies this method of criticism more wisely and with better results. Cf. Fam., xiv., 1 (vol. ii., pp. 268, 269).
[5] There was no apparatus for the study of Greek at that time. Oral instruction from Greek or Byzantine scholars was the only possible means of access to the great writers of the past. Such instruction was difficult to secure, as Petrarch's efforts and failure prove.
[6] Through the patience and ingenuity of M. de Nolhac.
Of the letters that follow the first four are given for the sake of showing the range and quality of Petrarch's classical scholarship. They are taken, with one exception, from the letters to dead authors, which constitute a large part of the twenty-fourth book of the Familiares. The first is addressed to Cicero.