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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
The last volume of Cicero's Orations, as published in the Oxford Bibliotheca Scriptorum Classicorum, was lately entrusted to me, and will be published in the course of the present year. Meanwhile I desire to record in this paper some of the more important results of my study of the MSS., and, following on this, to indicate several places where our current texts seem to be susceptible of correction and improvement.
page 167 note 1 Halm failed to notice, for example, that it seems to be the same hand that supplied the lacuna in P at pro Balbo § 9 which continues the writing of the text at § 14. This establishes the genuineness of the words rejected by Halm in the earlier section.
page 168 note 1 For instance, de Domo § 67 for Quas iste tum P has Quas is tetum, which B makes into quas is tecum. But this is not in itself a proof of direct copying.
page 168 note 2 The mark of punctuation supplied in P may be seen in the Chatelain facsimile, e.g. before the words Sed uestrae sapientiae and Ex hac copia in pro Caelio § 24; it occurs also in the addition is made by P2 at the end of § 23 in the speech ad Quirites, before the words gratiam et qui rettulit.
page 168 note 3 The Bernensis formerly belonged to Bongarsius, in whose handwriting, at the foot of fol. 97b, this note occurs: huc reg. liber chartaceus in or. de domo sua.
page 169 note 1 Compare de Prou. Cons. § 19, where the writer of P has made a useless repetition of the text: ‘bellum adfectum uidemus et uere ut dicam paene confectum uidemus et uere ut dicam paene confectum sed ita ut.’ Instead of deleting the superfluous words, as he does in similar cases elsewhere, P2 has written in the letters ta above the latter part of the word confectum. (The alternative reading meant to be suggested may have been conflatum.) B reproduces exactly, except that it gives confectatum. Σ, on the other hand, saw that there was something wrong, and after copying as far as confectatum, relegated the rest (uidemus … confectum) to the margin.
page 172 note 1 The construction is not really improved by Lehmann's nihil diceret <esse quod obstaret>: it must have been intended to follow the lines of the more usual qua re hoc ita sit, nihil dico (Dom.) §84; Mil. § 30).
