So it is France that has saved this, the oldest extant witness of Pliny’s Letters, for modern times.  To mediaeval France we are, in fact, indebted for the preservation of more than one ancient classical manuscript.  The oldest manuscript of the third decade of Livy was at Corbie in Charlemagne’s time, when it was loaned to Tours and a copy of it made there.  Both copy and original have come down to us.  Sallust’s Histories were saved (though not in complete form) for our generation by the Abbey of Fleury.  The famous Schedae Vergilianae, in square capitals, as well as the Codex Romanus of Virgil, in rustic capitals, belonged to the monastery of St. Denis.  Lyons preserved the Codex Theodosianus.  It was again some French centre that rescued Pomponius Mela from destruction.  The oldest fragments of Ovid’s Pontica, the oldest fragments of the first decade of Livy, the oldest manuscript of Pliny’s Natural History—­all palimpsests—­were in some French centre in the Middle Ages, as may be seen from the indisputably eighth-century French writing which covers the ancient texts.  The student of Latin literature knows that the manuscript tradition of Lucretius, Suetonius, Caesar, Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius—­to mention only the greatest names—­shows that we are indebted primarily to Gallia Christiana for the preservation of these authors.

{Transcriber’s Note:  Characters that could not be fully displayed are “unpacked” and shown within braces:  {.T}.  Superscript letters are shown as in mathematical notation:  ^{L} The twelve-page transcription retains the page and line breaks of the original text, representing the manuscript itself.  In a few places the authors used V in place of U. This appears to be an error, but has not been changed.}

[TRANSCRIPTION] [A]

{fol. 48r}

LIBER.II.

CESSIT UT IPSE MIHI DIXERIT CUM CO_N_
SULERET QUAM CITO SESTERTIUM SESCE_N_
TIES INPLETURUS ESSET INUENISSE SE EX
TA DUPLICATA QUIB_US_ PORTENDI MI^{L}LIES[1] ET
DUCENTIES HABITURUM ET HABEBIT SI
MODO UT COEPIT ALIENA TESTAMENTA
QUOD EST IMPROBISSIMUM GENUS FAL
SI IPSIS QUORUM SUNT ILLA DICTAUERIT
UALE

[2].C.PLINI.SECUNDI

EPISTULARUM.EXP_LICIT_.LIBER.II.

.INC_IPIT_.LIB_ER_.III.FELICITER[2]

  [Footnote A:  The original manuscript is in scriptura continua.  For
  the reader’s convenience, words have been separated and punctuation
  added in the transcription.]

  [Footnote 1:  L added by a hand which seems contemporary, if not
  the scribe’s own.  If the scribe’s, he used a finer pen for
  corrections.]

  [Footnote 2-2:  The colophon is written in rustic capitals, the
  middle line being in red.]

  {fol. 48v}