The annals of Tacitus

APPENDIX ON SELECT VARIOUS
READINGS.
The textual criticism of the Annals of Tacitus, Books I—VI, is
a comparatively simple matter. These books are found in one
manuscript only, and that a good one—the Mediceuts primus, now
in the Laurentian Library at Florence. It was probably written in
about the middle of the ninth century (see C. D. Fisher's edition
in Bibliotheca Oxoniensis). It is generally considered to be the
best as well as the oldest manuscript of any part of Tacitus.
Lost for a very long time, it was found at the beginning of the
sixteenth century in the Abbey of Corvey in Germany, and it was
brought to Rome in 1509 by Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici, afterwards
Pope Leo X, who added it to the Medicean collection, when
it was still in Rome.
In 1515, in obedience to a brief from the Pope, the ' newly
found books ' were published by Beroaldus of Bologna (1472-1518),
nephew and pupil of the far more prolific editor of the same name
(see Sir John Sandys' History of Clansical Scholarship, vol. ii
pp. 86, 108). Beroaldus' editio priticeps purged the text of many
obvious blemishes. Leo, in his brief, forbade the publication of
rival editions for a period of ten years. Yet we find editions pub-
lished at Milan in 1517 and at Basel in 1519. Before the end of
the sixteenth century much excellent work had been done on the
text by Beatus Rhenanus, Muretus, Lipsius, Ursinus, and others.
Lipsius was much helped by the valuable notes of Pichena, which,
published separately at first, were incorporated in a Variorum
edition of 1607.