V Mount Athos, Vatopedi Monastery Codex Batopedianus 180. Illustrated MS. 382 folios. A good representative of the second family ( BON ), but has only one good reading itself. MRAS had only photographs. Supposedly 382 pages, 28cm x 21 cm. 31 lines per page, 47-52 letters per line. No scholia. Belonged to the imperial library in Constantinople, according to the catalogue of the MSS at Vatopedi. Very ornamented in a way unlike the other MSS. 1335
j Venice, San Marco Library Codex Marcianus 342. Parchment. Copy of I . Fol. 242v says it was finished on 1st December 1470. Written by the monk Kosmas in Rome. Contains the same excerpt as in I from the table of contents of book 15 and the same chapters in the same sequence as in I . 1470
E Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale Français Codex Parisinus Graecus 468. Paper. Copied from j . Likewise has the same chapter orders and excerpt from the summary as I . 16
F Florence, Medicean-Laurentian library Codex Laurentianus Plut. VI 6. Parchment. Direct copy of G . 15
C Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale Français Codex Parisinus Graecus 466. Parchment. Direct copy of G . Once known as the Codex. Rich. Montacutii, used by Vigerus. 15/16
Naples, Bibliotheca Nazionale Codex Neapolitanus II AA 15. Books 1-8 copied from N . Books 9-15 from I or j . [unspecified]
Rome, Vatican Library Codex Ottobonianus 265. Copied from the above, with readings from I or j in the margin. [unspecified]
Rome, Vatican Library Codex Ottobonianus 366. Copied from I or j . [unspecified]
Oxford, St. John's College [Shelfmark unknown]. A late copy of D . [unspecified]
Rome, Vatican Library Codex Urbinas 6. A copy of N . [unspecified]
Rome, Vatican Library Codex Vaticanus 1303. An apograph of N . 15, second half
Leiden, Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit Codex Vossianus 197. Contains only book 9. Related to EI and corrected from the Stephanus edition. [unspecified]
There are thus two classes of manuscript: A , supplemented by H ; and on the other hand BOVND , with B transitional.
There are also substantial citations in Theodoret, Græcarum affectionum curatio (Remedy for the diseases of the Greeks) . These vary between the two families. George Trapezuntios made a Latin translation. The earliest known edition is from Venice in 1470 via Nicolaus Jenson. This seems to be based on I or j . D and E were the basis of the Robert Stephanus edition of 1544.
The process of converting the printed text to HTML was somewhat awkward. Gifford used the format favoured by the Oxford Movement translations of the 1840's, with much use of the margin, and introduced some innovations himself.
The page numbers of vols. 3 and 4 are very small, and Gifford himself ignores them. Instead he placed the page numbers of the Greek in the margin, together with the division of the page into four sections, labelled a, b, c and d, also in the margin. The footnotes appear at the bottom of the page, and use the Greek page number, section, and line number of the printed text. Thus 123 c 11 would be the 11th line after the marginal 'c' following the 'p.123' in the margin.
For an online edition, these reference points would be almost impossible to transcribe. They have been omitted. Instead convention footnote numbers have been created, and linked to the notes which have been necessarily moved to the end. Usually Gifford's ref. is preserved, however.
The majority of the work consists of large near-verbatim chunks copied from pagan philosophers. Often these are now lost, which gives the work its value. Gifford set these in a slightly smaller font-size, so that Eusebius' comments stood out. The citations also are in single quotes. I have been unable to find a format which works online as well, so the citations are in the same size font.
Gifford also placed at the head of each page, in the margin the name of the current philosopher in capitals, and often when a new one was introduced. This has been represented by using [PLATO] etc at the start of a new chunk of text, as seemed appropriate.
The edition is around 1000 pages, and has been very hard to scan. Peter Kirby and I have been discussing the idea for a couple of years, without result. My own attempt to scan book 12 ground to a halt, as the format chosen was too difficult for the time available. The project got off the ground a few months ago when Peter scanned the introduction, and then book 1 with selected embedded footnotes, then 3, 5, and 6. In response I started to work on scanning other books, starting with 2 and 4, evolving a format as we went, and reformatted or added footnotes to his books. Unfortunately we had neglected to keep in touch as closely as we might, and both of us did book 5.
In most books, every footnote has been included. In some of those books done first, some biblical references have been omitted, and this is indicated by the legend 'selected footnotes.' The order of scanning was 1-6, then 15 down to 7. I entered Greek text using the SPIonic font with polytonic accents *; Peter in unicode without accents.
Roger PEARSE
19th July 2003
* Note: all the SpIonic has been converted to unicode with accents. RP. 14th November 2005.
Bibliography