Readings from a manuscript which once belonged to Rodolphus Agricola and later to Theodore Ryck were well known to and lightly esteemed by the editors of Tacitus from the late seventeenth to mid nineteenth centuries. Ryck cited over 1,200 of them in his edition of 1687. Later the whereabouts of the manuscript remained long unknown, until it was rediscovered by C. W. Mendell as Leidensis BPL 16. B in the University Library at Leiden.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to comment on certain remarks of E. Koestermann, and to examine briefly some passages adduced by K. Wellesley as evidence for the alleged independence of the Leidensis . In a paper in CQ N.S. XV , 299–322, I attempted to demonstrate by various arguments that the readings of L are not such as to support the claim that this manuscript has authority independent of M. Those arguments may be summarized as follows: that the (...) majority of L's readings fall into a pattern of systematic normalization, that they give virtually no help in solving really deep corruptions, that L is particularly unreliable in transmitting proper names, that many readings of L show clear signs of being derived from M, that few of the good readings in L could not have been extracted from the corrupt text of M, and that other fifteenth-century manuscripts of Tacitus contain good corrections, not inferior to corrections found in L. No defender of L has yet, as far as I know, answered the arguments I put forward, and E. Koestermann has not even understood them, for he writes as follows : ‘[Goodyear] legt den Finger darauf, daß die abweichenden Lesarten in L in ihrer Diktion stärker ciceronischen Charakter tragen, demnach eher als Konjekturen zu verstehen seien. Aber dies Argument ist nicht durchschlagend, da die späteren Annalenbücher … eine gemässigtere Tendenz aufweisen und damit näher an Cicero heranrücken.’. (shrink)

Readings from a manuscript which once belonged to Rodolphus Agricola and later to Theodore Ryck were well known to and lightly esteemed by the editors of Tacitus from the late seventeenth to mid nineteenth centuries. Ryck cited over 1,200 of them in his edition of 1687. Later the whereabouts of the manuscript remained long unknown, until it was rediscovered by C. W. Mendell as Leidensis BPL 16. B in the University Library at Leiden.

‘Tiberium Neronem et Claudium Drusum priuignos imperatoriis nominibus auxit [sc. Augustus]’’, i.e. honoured them with salutations as ‘imperatores’’. So I took it in my commentary , supposing argument needless. I must now defend my view against R. Syme, Historia antiqua, Commentationes Louanienses in honorem W. Peremans , p.239. Syme asserts ‘Avoiding a technical term, he [Tacitus] describes the stepsons of the Princeps as invested with imperatoriis nominibus . That is, a grant of imperium proconsular .’’ He adds in a footnote (...) ‘As emerges clearly from Dio 54.33.5 , cf. 34.4 . The matter must be stated firmly, since both Koestermann and Goodyear are totally inadequate.’’ Let me make amends. (shrink)