EXCURSUS II 361 



Codex Parisinus (early thirteenth century), a faithful 

 transcript of a good copy of the Marcian, not mentioned 

 by Vittorio, and the Codex which is called by Keil 

 ** Mediceus " (fourteenth century), and is frequently re- 

 ferred to by Vittorio as '* Semivetus," or " Gallicanus." 

 By the help of Politian's collation, Vittorio's edition of 

 1541, his " Explicationes " of 1542, and the two manu- 

 scripts mentioned, the Archetype has been disentangled 

 from the numerous emendations of Renaissance scholars 

 which, owing to ignorance of Varro's peculiar style, and 

 the fact that they were not made in accordance with any 

 fixed principle of textual emendation are in many in- 

 stances as worthless as they are ingenious. Unfortun- 

 ately, however, the Archetype thus restored to us is full 

 of corruptions, and neither Politian nor Vittorio has 

 given any clue to its probable date — though Vittorio 

 calls it very ancient — or mentions the script in which it 

 was written. It seems probable, however, that the Arche- 

 type was an early Carolingian Minuscule, for (i) Vittorio 

 says that it was older than his other manuscripts longo 

 intervallo; (2) the abbreviations, as we may gather from 

 his *' Explicationes," are few and simple, which is the 

 case with early minusculae, but not with late; (3) the 

 mistakes made are precisely those usually made by the 

 scribes of the ninth and tenth centuries, when copying 

 from earlier minuscule MSS., written in one or other of 

 the so-called national scripts. As an example, ** a " and 

 ** u " are persistently confused in the Archetype — twenty- 

 one cases occur in the three books. Now Alcuin in a letter 

 to Charlemagne refers to the corruptions which arose 

 from the difficulty of distinguishing between them — 

 **possunt quaedam ex his exemplis vitio scriptoris 

 esse corrupta et ' u ' pro * a ' vel etiam ' a ' pro ' u ' 



