It would certainly be natural for Aldus to start with his immediate predecessors, as they had started with theirs.  The matter ought to be cleared up, if possible, for in order to determine what Aldus found in P we must know whether he took some text as a point of departure and, if so, what that text was.  But the task should be undertaken by some one to whom the early editions are accessible.  Keil’s report of them, intentionally incomplete,[54] is sufficient, he declares,[55] “ad fidem Aldinae editionis constituendam,” but, as I have found by comparing our photographs of the edition of Beroaldus in the present section, Keil has not collated minutely or accurately enough to encourage us to undertake, on the basis of his apparatus, an elaborate study of Aldus’s relation to the editions preceding his own.

  [Footnote 54:  Op. cit., p. 2:  Ex {sigma} pauca adscripta sunt.]

  [Footnote 55:  Op. cit., p. xxxii.]

[Sidenote:  The variants of Budaeus in the Bodleian volume]

We may now test Aldus by the evidence of the Bodleian volume with its variants in the hand of Budaeus.  For the section included in _{Pi}_, their number is disappointingly small.  The only additions by Budaeus (=_i_) to the text of Beroaldus are:  61, 14 sera] MVDoa, (m. 1) _{Pi}_ serua BFuxi, (m. 2) _{Pi}_; 62, 4 ambulat] i cum plerisque ambulabat r Ber. (ab del.) M; 62, 25 quoque] i cum ceteris {p_}ouq (ue) Ber.; 64, 23 Quamvis] q Vmuis Ber. corr. i.

This is all.  Budaeus, who, according to Merrill, had the Parisinus at his disposal, has corrected two obvious misprints, made an inevitable change in the tense of a verb—­with or without the help of the ancient book—­and introduced from that book one unfortunate reading which we find in the second hand of _{Pi}_.

There is one feature of Budaeus’s marginal jottings that at once arouses the curiosity of the textual critic, namely, the frequent appearance of the obelus and the obelus cum puncto.  These signs as used by Probus[56] would denote respectively a surely spurious and a possibly spurious line or portion of text.  But such was not the usage of Budaeus; he employed the obelus merely to call attention to something that interested him.  Thus at the end of the first letter of Book III we find a doubly pointed obelus opposite an interesting passage, the text of which shows no variants or editorial questionings.  Budaeus appears to have expressed his grades of interest rather elaborately—­at least I can discover no other purpose for the different signs employed.  The simple obelus apparently denotes interest, the pointed obelus great interest, the doubly pointed obelus intense interest, and the pointing finger of a carefully drawn hand burning interest.  He also adds catchwords.  Thus on the first letter he calls attention successively[57] to Ambulatio,