Abstract

By the time his Teubner De Officiis had reached its fourth edition, C. Atzert was running out of hope. So great was the number of the still-accumulating manuscripts ‘ut paene desperaverim in seligendis et ordinandis eis’. In fact, there were hundreds more of which he knew nothing. My own list approaches seven hundred in all, and there will be others lurking still. The present paper aims to impose some order on this vast army.2 It sketches in new detail the interrelationships of the old witnesses to the ξ tradition, and the transition to a twelfth-century Vulgate ; it throws light on the early story of the ξ family; and it makes a start on the task of showing how the f stream, from the twelfth century onwards, fitfully mingled with the Vulgate . It could never have been written without the help of Marina Luttrell and of countless friends and colleagues who provided information about manuscripts I could not see for myself