Page:Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus - Volume 1 - Farquharson 1944.pdf/50

 (vii. 66, 67). I have at a few places adopted the same kind of dangerous remedy.

The text which is here printed is frankly eclectic. I do not think it is scientific to restore A's text at the expense of P. I have been guided by intrinsic probability where the evidence differs, with a slight predisposition in favour of P. In certain small details of spelling certainty is quite impossible. The method I have followed may be seen in the course of the notes.

Little of importance for the text or interpretation of the Meditations was published for seventy-five years (1559–1634), although the book was read widely and highly esteemed, as is shown by scholars' references to it in their works and correspondence. Casaubon uses it freely in his notes to Persius; both he and Saumaise cite it in their notes to the Historia Augusta; Canter made two emendations in his Novae Lectiones. Barthius refers to the Meditations frequently in his Adversaria, and he it was who first expressed the view that what has been preserved is merely a collection of extracts from a lost original.

Of close study of the doctrines of Marcus there is, however, no trace in this period, not even in Justus Lipsius' works on Stoicism. Naturally he mentions Marcus more than once, but he nowhere manifests an intimacy with the Meditations, relying upon other sources for the substance of Stoic teaching. It is the same, I think, with Valla and other writers of Stoic-Christian books.

That the Meditations had many readers is proved by its frequent republication, and by the fact that fifty years xlii