No one probably feels tempted to deny that our best authority for the text of the Tragedies is the Etruscus, E , but the authority relatively due to the interpolated tradition A is still a matter of dispute. Leo indeed professed to deny all authority to the evidence of A, even where E is manifestly corrupt. But we should be justified in doing this only if the interpolator of A had based his edition on the text of E, and the (...) text of E had suffered no corruptions subsequent to the making of the A edition. That this is so there is not the least reason to suppose. Peiper therefore was right in requiring for his apparatus criticus an account of the pure A text, though neither he nor Richter took the trouble to search out the oldest and best MSS of the A tradition out of the three hundred or more available. (shrink)

‘Der Text der Tragodien des Seneca ist in zwei Rezensionen iiberliefert.Die bessere ist vertreten durch die Haupths. Laur. 37, 13 s. xi/xii.… Zu der schlechteren, stark verfalschten Rezension gehoren die iibrigen Hss., von denen keine iiber die Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts zuriickgeht.’.

A Page of this MS, which however I discovered independently, is reproduced by M. Chatelain in his Paléographie des Classiques Latins, and for an account of the codex I refer to vol. ii. p. 11 of that work. The volume consists of four parts: Juvenal, ff. 1–47; Persius, ff. 48–59; Horace, ff. 60–93; Juvenal, ff. 94–113. This last part contains Sat. i. 1–ii. 66, iii. 32–vi. 437, i.e. two intermediate leaves, the two outside double leaves of the first quire of (...) eight, of 34 lines on a page, have been lost. The quires b and c are disordered. Foil. 94v–97 contain i. 1–ii. 66, ff. 98–105, v. 98–vi. 437, ff. 106–113, iii. 32–v. 97. (shrink)

Having read Prof. Housman's article in the Classical Quarterly of October 1907, it seemed to me worth while, when I was in Madrid last year, to examine the MS of Manilius, Matritensis 31, in those places where Prof. Housman notes that the testimony of Loewe and of Mr Ellis disagree, with the result that I have found Loewe's account of the reading, as given by Prof. Housman, to be correct in all places except the following.