INTRODUCTION
four pages missing from these two volumes would probably have contained about twenty Fronto leaves. As the Fronto leaves are more numerous in the Ambrosian volume than in the Vatican according to the proportion 106286 : 282452, it is likely that in the third volume there would have been a corresponding increase of them. The whole might therefore have contained about 580 Fronto leaves. But the quaternion marks, still visible in the margin of the MS., show that there were at least 4212 quaternions or 680 pages, in the original Fronto Codex.[1] Even if the third volume were forthcoming, we should still be about one-seventh part short of the Fronto Codex. What we have contains something like four-sevenths of the whole work, but some part of this has not been deciphered, and not a little is obliterated for ever.
Dr. Hauler, of Vienna, has been engaged upon the study of the MS. for more than twenty years, and we must wait for the final word on our author until his edition is published. It will certainly revolutionize the text. He has been given unusual facilities by the Italian authorities in his work, and the leaves of the Vatican MS. have been especially washed, cleaned and pressed for the purpose of photographing it in facsimile.
As far as possible the new readings which Dr. Hauler has made public in various periodicals have been incorporated in this work, together with
- ↑ The speeches of Fronto must have been in a separate Codex, if in the Bobbio library at all.
