Discovery of Cicero's Treatise de UepuMica. 309 



ttudies in the Vatican library, in which I preside through your 

 sovereign clemency, have been encouraged by signal success. — 

 In two re-written codices of the Vatican, I have lately found 

 some lost works of the first Latin classics. In the first of these 

 MSS. I have discovered the lost books De Eepublica of Cicero, 

 written in excellent letters of the best time, in three hundrwi 

 pages, each in two columns, and all fortunately legible. The 

 titles of the above noble subject, and of the books, appear in the 

 margin : and the name of Cicero, as author of the work, is di- 

 •tinctly legible. A composition of the middle ages having been 

 again written upon this MS. the original pages have been mis- 

 placed, and even mutilated; notwithstanding this, a great part 

 remains. The moral and political philosopher, the legislator, the 

 historian, the antiquary, and the lover of pure latinity, will na- 

 turally expect, with impatience, the publication of this important 

 work of Cicero, so long lamented as lost. I shall lose no time 

 in preparing it for press, and in submitting it to your holiness'b 

 inspection. The other re-written codex presents various and 

 almost equally precious works. It is singular that this MS. con- 

 tains some of the same works which I discovered and published 

 at Milan, and I have here found what there was wanting. I per- 

 ceived this at first sight, not only from comparing the subject, 

 but also from the hand-writing, which is precisely the same as 

 that of the Milan MS. 



*' The contents are — I. The correspondence between Fronto 

 and Marcus Aurelius, before and after he was Emperor. This is 

 an instructive, affectionate, and very interesting collection ; the 

 first and second books, containing epistles to M. Aurelius, were 

 published from the Milan MS.; that now found in the Vatican 

 contains the third, and fourth, and fifth books, as well as the 

 supplement to the second, and some other works by Fronto, in 

 Latin and Greek. — 2. The fine commentary of the inedited 

 scholiast on Cicero, begun to be published by me at Milan, and 

 now to be increased by five other orations, with the supplements 

 to those already printed at Milan. — 3. A fragment of an oration 

 by Q. Aurelius Symrnachus, with the supplement of two i)y the 

 same author, already published by mc. — 4. The supplements to 

 the Hoinily,orGothico-Ulphilan Commentary, a portion of which 

 was also found at Milan, together with an essay of Ulphilas. 

 These valuable works mixed into two volumes, which were taken 

 for writing parchment in the middle ages, were sent partly to 

 Rome and partly to Milan, from the convent of St. Coluinbanuf^ 

 at Bobbio. They will now be again united in a Roman edition 

 of them, which I shall lose no time in publishing. I will not 

 m>w request your attention, most blcbsed father, to some other 



fragments 



