Page:Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus - Volume 1 - Farquharson 1944.pdf/46

 peculiar to A, 21; Book xii, common errors 17 to 20, individual to P, 21, to A, 80. Are we to suppose that A is a better witness in Book xii than in Book i, since this increase of error shows, by hypothesis, a greater simplicity and therefore a nearer correspondence with the truth? Finally, if A is to be considered analogous to certain manuscripts (Kb, Ac) of Aristotle, we ought to be able to point to some remarkable restorations of an old text which are derived from A's mistakes. But, so far as the modern editions go, there is not a single case of such restoration which is not based upon an error common to P and A.

A different explanation is clearly possible, viz. that A is the work of an inexact scribe reporting (perhaps at secondhand) an earlier state of the text, whereas P's report of the same earlier text is generally more correct. In short, that P is the more credible of the two witnesses. There is nothing here to prevent a critic from preferring on intrinsic grounds a reading he finds in A to one in P; only, if the readings are equally possible intrinsically, the balance of probability is on the side of P. A study of the text, even in Schenkl, shows that, in fact, the present revised vulgate is far closer to the editio princeps than it is to A. P is not only more complete, but is in details far more accurate than A.

As to the archetype of A, Polak, who made a close study of this manuscript, concluded that it was probably copied from an eleventh- or twelfth-century manuscript, in which the words of the original scriptura continua were already separated, the breathings and accents supplied, and the sentences distinguished. If this view be adopted, then P cod. also must have been derived from a minuscule of that date; behind this our manuscripts do not point. Polak gives some instances of misreading, as he supposes, of an uncial text, but nearly all, if not all, of these can, I think, be explained on the hypothesis of a minuscule xxxviii