Page:Correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto volume 1 Haines 1919.djvu/23

 the important, if rather hastily compiled, notes of a fresh collation of the MS. by the Dutch scholar, Professor Brakman. In spite of Dr. Hauler's keen eyesight and prodigious industry, certain of his restorations do not command complete confidence, especially in cases where we find the other inspectors of the Codex, Mai, du Rieu, and Brakman supporting an entirely different reading.

The original Fronto Codex has two columns of writing to each page, each column containing twenty-four lines of fifteen to twenty-one letters each.

As the Greek in the Codex is written without accents, the MS. must have been produced before the seventh century, and probably in the sixth. The alterations made by the reviser of the copy show that the copyist was a careless one; nor did the corrector notice all the errors. Some letters are given twice over, as if a second exemplar had been used.

A few of the Fronto leaves seem themselves to have had a previous writing on them, and these must themselves have been palimpsests before being xv