The learned editors of the Spanish encyclopedia naïvely preface their brief sketch with the following assertion: “no tenemos noticias de su vida.” De Salas was born in 1588 and died in 1654. His edition of Petronius was first issued in 1629 and re-issued in 1643 with a copper plate of the Editor. The Paris edition, from which he says he supplied certain deficiencies in the text, is unknown to bibliographers and is supposed to be fictitious.
To distinguish the spurious passages, as a point of interest, in the present edition, the forgeries of Nodot are printed within round brackets, the forgery of Marchena within square brackets, and the additions of De Salas in italics.
The work is also accompanied by a translation of the six notes, the composition of which led Marchena to forge the fragment which first appeared in the year 1800. These have never before been translated.
Thanks are due Ralph Straus, Esq., and Professor Stephen Gaselee for their kind permission to reproduce the illustrations by Norman Lindsay.
