[Footnote 49:  See above, pp. 42, n. 1, and 50, n. 1.]

Thus the evidence contained in the portion of BF outside the text of _{Pi}_ corroborates our working hypothesis deduced from the fragment itself.  We have found nothing yet to overthrow our surmise that a bit of the ancient Parisinus is veritably in the city of New York.

          EDITORIAL METHODS OF ALDUS.

[Sidenote:  Aldus’s methods; his basic text]

We may now return to Aldus and imagine, if we can, his method of critical procedure.  Finding his agreement with _{Pi}_ so close, even in what editors before and after him have regarded as errors, I am disposed to think that he studied his Parisinus with care and followed its authority respectfully.  Finding that his seemingly extravagant statements about the antiquity of his book are essentially true, I am disposed to put more confidence in Aldus than editors have granted him thus far.  I should suppose that, working in the most convenient way, he turned over to his compositor, not a fresh copy of P, but the pages of some edition corrected from P—­which Aldus surely tells us that he used—­and from whatever other sources he consulted.  It may be beyond our powers to discover the precise edition that he thus employed.  It does not at first thought seem likely that he would select the Princeps, which does not include the eighth book at all, and contains errors that later were weeded out.  In the portion of text included in _{Pi}_, P has thirty-two readings which Aldus avoids.  In most of these cases p commits an error, sometimes a ridiculous error, like offam for officia (62, 25); the manuscript on which p was based apparently made free use of abbreviations.  Keil’s damning estimate of r[50] is amply borne out in this section of the text; Aldus differs from r in sixty-five cases, most of these being errors in r.  He agrees with _{sigma}_ in all but twenty-six readings.[51] Aldus would have had fewest changes to make, then, if his basic text was {sigma}.  This is apparently the view of Keil,[52] who would agree at any rate that Aldus made special use of the {sigma} editions and who also declares that p is the fundamentum of r as r is of the edition of Pomponius Laetus.[53]

  [Footnote 50:  See the introduction to his edition, p. xviii.]

  [Footnote 51:  See below, pp. 60 ff.]

  [Footnote 52:  Op. cit., p. xxv:  illis potissimum Aldum usum esse
  vidi.]

  [Footnote 53:  Op. cit., pp. xviii, xx.]