INTRODUCTION
a secluded valley of the Pennine Alps, near the scene of the battle of the Trebia, where Saint Columban founded a monastery at the beginning of the seventh century, and formed a good library containing not only Latin works in Saxon characters but many classical authors in their own script, such as Cicero, Juvenal, Persius, and Fronto. The Fronto Codex was, we may suppose, purchased by Columban in Italy. In the same library there was another book of Fronto's, entitled Cornelii Frontonis Elegantiae Latinae, which was extant as late as 1494.[1] It was lexicographically arranged. Possibly it was one of the works of Fronto mentioned below.
The Vatican volume (No. 5750), contains a Latin version of the Acta of the Council of Chalcedon to nearly the end of the first session, written about the tenth century. The volume contained 292 leaves of which two are missing at the beginning and four at the end.
The Ambrosian volume (E. 147) is larger and had 180 pages of which are now wanting twelve at the opening and sixteen at the close. There must have been a third volume of the Acta, somewhat smaller than the others, possibly of about 230 pages, the whole work thus comprising with the other two volumes about 1000 leaves.
The Fronto part of the Vatican volume, as we have it, is 106 leaves, of the Ambrosian, 282. The thirty--
- ↑ See Raphael Maffaeus Volaterranus, Geogr. iv. ad finem.
