Page:Dio's Roman History, tr. Cary - Volume 1.djvu/27

 and the first part of that of Marcus Aurelius, had already perished. He divided his epitome into sections each containing the life of one emperor, and thus is of no authority as regards Dio's divisions; furthermore his task was very carelessly performed. The epitome is found in at least sixteen Mss.; but all the rest are derived from one or the other of two fifteenth century Mss., Vaticanus 145 and Coislinianus 320. Besides these two (abbreviated V and C), we have readings from an unknown Xiphilinus Ms. entered in L' of Dio to fill various gaps; but the scribe of L' dealt very freely with such passages.

loannes Tzetzes (twelfth century) in his farrago of historical and mythological stories now entitled Chiliads, from the arbitrary division of the work into sections of one thousand verses each, occasionally cites Dio among his various authorities. But he dealt very freely with his material, and it is often difficult to determine exactly how much of Dio underlies his version. The present text omits a few passages printed with some hesitation by Boissevain. Tzetzes also cites Dio a few times in his commentary on Lycophron's Alexandra. Other writers who are similarly of use in supplementing the epitomes are Eustathius, archbishop of Thessalonica in the twelfth century, famous for his commentary on Homer; loannes Antiochenus, a historian of the seventh century; loannes Damascenus, an ecclesiastical writer of the eighth century; loannes Laurentius