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. 48^r and 53^v) 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. 48^r, 51^v, 52^r).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.

The running title at the top of each page is in small rustic capitals.⁶ On the verso of each folio stands the word EPISTVLARVM; on the recto of the following folio stands the number of the book, e.g., LIB. II, LIB. III.

To judge by our fragment, each book was preceded by an index of addresses and initial lines written in alternating lines of black and red uncials. Alternating lines of black and red rustic capitals of a large size were used in the colophon.⁷

Ornamentation As in all our oldest Latin manuscripts, the ornamentation is of the simplest kind. Such as it is, it is mostly found at the end and beginning of books. In our case, the colophon is enclosed between two scrolls of vine-tendrils terminating in an ivy-leaf at both ends. The lettering in the colophon and in the running title is set off by means of ticking above and below the line.

Red is used for decorative purposes in the middle line of the colophon, in the scroll of vine-tendrils, in the ticking, and in the border at the end of the Index on fol. 49. Red was also used, to judge by our fragment, in the first three lines of a new book,⁸ in the addresses in the Index, and in the addresses preceding each letter.

Corrections The original scribe made a number of corrections. The omitted line of the Index on fol. 49 was added between the lines, probably by the scribe himself, using a finer pen; likewise the omitted line on fol. 52^v, lines 7-8. A number of slight corrections come either from the scribe or from a contemporary reader; the others are by a somewhat later hand, which is probably not more recent than the seventh century.⁹ The method of correcting varies. As a rule, the correct letter is added above the line over the wrong letter; occasionally it is written over an erasure. An omitted letter is also added above the line over the space where it should be inserted. Deletion of single letters is indicated by a dot placed over the letter and a horizontal or an oblique line drawn through it. This double use of expunction and cancellation is not uncommon in our oldest manuscripts. For details on the subject of corrections, see the notes on pp. 23-34.

There is a ninth-century addition on fol. 53 and one of the fifteenth century on fol. 51. On fol. 49, in the upper margin, a fifteenth-century hand using a stilus or hard point scribbled a few words, now difficult to decipher.¹⁰ Presumably the same hand drew a bearded head with a halo. Another relatively recent hand, using lead, wrote in the left margin of fol. 53^v the monogram QR¹¹ and the roman numerals i, ii, iii under one another. These numerals, as Professor Rand correctly saw, refer to the works of Pliny the Elder enumerated in the text. Further activity by this hand, the date of which it is impossible to determine, may be seen, for example, on fol. 49^v, ll. 8, 10, 15; fol. 52, ll. 4, 10, 13, 21, 22; fol. 53, ll. 12, 15, 16, 17, 20, 27; fol. 53^v, ll. 5, 10, 15.

Syllabification Syllables are divided after a vowel or diphthong except where such a division involves beginning the next syllable with a group of consonants.public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@16706@[email protected]#noteI_12" id="tagI_12" class="pginternal"