Palimpsests (in Greek παλίμπηστος; a word formed from πάλιν, again, and ψέω, I wipe, cleanse, or rub), is a term applied to a manuscript, from its having been twice cleaned or twice prepared for writing. The name has been supposed by some etymologists to be derived from the obliteration or erasure of the original writing; but it is rather founded upon the re-polishing (ψέω), or re-preparation for writing, of the parchment or other material on which the original had been written. It is easy to remove the traces of writing from parchment by rubbing it with pumice-stone or some similar substance, especially if the writing be of some antiquity; and if the surface be afterwards smoothed and polished, no one, by merely looking at it, would suppose that it had ever been written on. The practice of thus preparing parchment and other writing materials a second time for use existed among the ancients; and the material so re-prepared was known by them under the same name of palimpsest; but they also applied that term to leaves or books which were so prepared that one writing could easily be expunged to make room for another, and which were used by authors for correcting their works or submitting them to revision. In this sense palimpsests are mentioned by Cicero, Plutarch, and Catullus. Cicero (Ad Familiares, vii. 18) praises the frugality of his friend Trebatius in writing upon a palimpsest, but at the same time playfully expresses his wonder as to what may have been the original writing, which could have been of less importance than the letter for which it had been displaced; and Catullus (xxii. 5) ridicules a bad author for not writing his works at first on palimpsests, but entering them at once, crude and uncorrected, in fine and costly books. In a word, the palimpsest alluded to in these and similar ancient authorities was one of the devices to supply the place of the modern slate or scribbling-book, and served the same purpose as the wax tablet (tabula cerata).

There seems little doubt, however, that, besides this temporary expedient, the practice of preparing parchment or papyrus a second time for permanent use, and of writing short pieces, and even entire books, upon such material, was well known in classic times, not only among the Greeks and Romans, but also among the Egyptians. (Wilkinson's Egyptian Antiquities, iii. 151.) But when it is remembered that, except the charred papyri of Herculaneum, and the funereal rolls of the Egyptians, no actual remains of the writing of the ancients have reached our time, it need hardly be said that no palimpsest re-written in the classic period has yet been discovered.

The palimpsest manuscripts which have proved so valuable a mine for the research of modern scholars are of more recent date, and had their origin in the dearthness and scarcity of writing materials from the seventh century downwards. During the early Roman empire, the comparatively abundant supply of papyrus from the Egyptian market precluded the necessity of having recourse to what was, at best, the tedious and clumsy process of re-preparing the material already used; and from the time when Theodoric the Great, in the beginning of the sixth century, abolished the duty on the importation of papyrus, the scribes and copyists of the West confined themselves in great measure to its use, except for more solemn and important documents. But at a later period, when the complete division of the empire rendered the intercourse with the East at once difficult and irregular, the old expedient was revived; and as, in the anarchy consequent on the successive occupations of Italy by its barbarous conquerors, the ancient arts and manufactures fell into decay, and the home production of parchment became exceedingly limited, it came to pass at last, when the Saracen conquest of Syria and of Egypt deprived Europe entirely of the papyrus, that the art of cleaning and re-preparing parchment already written upon furnished almost the only writing material sufficiently cheap for the uses of the less opulent copyists of the West. And hence it is that the practice of copying upon re-prepared parchment, if we are to judge from the specimens which have reached our time, came into use at a somewhat earlier period in the western division of the empire, where the want of the papyrus was earlier felt. Re-written Latin manuscripts are met with which appear to have been re-transcribed so early as the eighth, and even the seventh century; but in the Greek palimpsests the second writing commonly dates no earlier than the eleventh, and even the twelfth or thirteenth century. It has commonly been supposed that this practice of the mediæval scribes was the occasion of a vast and reckless sacrifice of ancient manuscript; and many writers have ascribed to the demand which it occasioned, coupled with the imputed indifference, and even hostility of the period towards ancient learning, that wholesale disappearance of so many Greek and Roman classics which modern scholars have to deplore. But the palimpsest manuscripts hitherto discovered furnish little evidence of any intentional destruction of perfect ancient writings. All the remains of Greek and Roman literature contained in the very largest palimpsests which have been deciphered, or which are known to exist, are in so miserably mutilated and fragmentary a condition, as to suggest, in most instances, the belief that, when broken up for the purpose of being re-used, the originals were already imperfect, and perhaps cast aside as useless. Bruns' palimpsest of Livy contained only a fragment of the ninety-first book; the re-written manuscript of Pliny's Natural History, discovered by Mone, has but a small portion of a few of the early books; Pertz's Granus Licinianus is but a scrap; and a palimpsest of St. Jerome's Commentary, mentioned by Mone (Lateinische und Griechische Messen, 162), contains parts of no fewer than seven different works. Even the larger and more important palimpsests deciphered by Mai,—the Cicero De Republica, the Plautus, and the great palimpsest of the historians,—are all unhappily in such a state of imperfection, as to make it impossible to suppose that the copies of the original authors on which the transcriber laid his hand were other than fragments, already of little value from their defective condition. Some palimpsests, indeed, are made up of miscellaneous fragments from isolated leaves of different writers, seemingly little better than the refuse of some book-shop or library.

But, whatever may have been the condition of the originals which were selected for re-transcription by the mediæval copyists, even the fragments of ancient writing which they have thus been unconsciously instrumental in preserving... ing are unquestionably of deep interest, and in many cases of great value, for the modern cultivators of ancient learning. With the profound and far-seeing critical sagacity which distinguished him, Montfaucon (Paleographia Graeca, p. 233) early called attention to the fruits which might be expected from a careful examination of these buried treasures; nor has the exploration (although it has not resulted in the recovery of any complete work of antiquity) disappointed his expectations. The labours of the learned in this department have already resulted in many great discoveries, and have given promise of many more. Some invaluable fragments of ancient works, believed to be entirely lost, have already been recovered; and the hopes which may fairly be entertained of future acquisitions from the same source will best be estimated by a short account of what has actually been effected within the present century.

The value of ancient manuscripts has long been rightly appreciated; and hence in every part of Europe they have been collected at great expense, and preserved with the utmost care. For some time after the invention of printing it was indeed thought that, when the contents of a manuscript had been copied, and multiplied by means of that invaluable art, the original was rendered useless. But, as different manuscripts of the same work often vary in particular readings, it was soon found necessary to examine and collate a number of them, in order to ascertain the preferable readings; and without this previous care, conjoined with critical discrimination, a new edition of an ancient work would not now be well received by the learned. Such, then, is the most direct and obvious use of ancient manuscripts; which, when duly collated, furnish the means of restoring texts that had been corrupted or mutilated in the course of frequent transcription.

But, on a more minute examination of a certain class of manuscripts, it appeared that some of them might have a value hitherto unsuspected, by supplying more ancient copies than were previously known, and even furnishing portions of important works which were supposed to be entirely lost. These were manuscripts in which the attempt to obliterate some more ancient writing, in order that the parchment might be again used to receive another work, had been so far ineffectual that traces of the ancient writing still remained discernible, and capable of being partially or entirely deciphered by the patience and ingenuity of literary explorers. Certain manuscripts of respectable antiquity were thus found to conceal others several centuries older, and frequently of much superior interest and value. The number of such manuscripts, or portions of manuscripts, which existed in the several great libraries of Europe must have been very considerable. One of the earliest editions of the Clementine Constitutions (1476) was actually printed on palimpsest parchment. Many have been preserved in our own time; and a fresh impulse has been recently given to the zeal of the learned by the interesting discovery, that many of the long-neglected manuscripts of the churches and monasteries of the Levant are of the same palimpsest class. The character and appearance of different palimpsests differ very considerably. In some the ancient writing has been so imperfectly effaced, whether by washing, or by rubbing with pumice-stone or some similar substance, that the more modern writing interferes but little with the distinctness of the original; so that it may be deciphered by a practised eye, or at least can be so far revised by certain simple applications, and by exposure to the light, as to be read with little difficulty. In others, however, in which, besides the sponge and the pumice-stone, the scraping-knife had been freely used, it is only by the use of very powerful chemical agents, which shall be described hereafter, and by the aid of strong lights and lenses of considerable magnifying power, that the contents can be discovered. In some palimpsests the modern scribe has exactly preserved the form of the ancient sheet, and has divided its pages in the same manner; but, more commonly, the new writing exhibits an entire disregard of the order of the original. Sometimes, where the original page was divided into two or three columns, the modern matter is written over them all in one unbroken line; sometimes the original sheet is folded double, or even cut in half; sometimes the page is turned upside down; sometimes the new writing runs diagonally across it; sometimes (most perplexing of all) it follows closely line for line, and even letter for letter, the tracks of the original, so that the characters blend and run into each other, and the distinction between new and old is only discernible from the uncertain test of the different colour of the inks, or of the diversity of the form of the characters. These difficulties are tenfold exaggerated where the characters of the original were minute, and where the modern writing is of the same size and in the same language. We shall see examples hereafter in which the original has been twice written upon; and others in which, if we reckon corrections, no fewer than four different writings are found in the same palimpsest.

In the ages which immediately succeeded the invention of printing, the attention of scholars was so engrossed by the numberless manuscripts of ancient authors which abounded in all the great centres of learning, that the hidden stores of palimpsest literature were unobserved or disregarded. But so soon as the first harvest, so to speak, had been gathered in, and men began to prize even the gleanings which had escaped the early labourers, the value of these buried treasures did not long remain unnoticed. It is true that, as has been already observed, all the palimpsests hitherto discovered have been but fragments, and that a large proportion of them consist of works previously known in a much more complete form. But it will be seen, nevertheless, that, even already, several of those which have been deciphered have contributed to fill up a very considerable gap in the lost literature of the ancient world; and even those which contain works already known and published have this important advantage for the purpose of criticism, that they supply copies of these works earlier by several centuries than the very earliest of the original manuscripts of the same works already in existence. The immense importance of this circumstance, especially for the uses of the biblical critic, it is impossible to overrate.

The fruits which may yet be anticipated from the full development of these curious and interesting researches will be best understood from a short history of the successes which have been already obtained. For the sake of clearness, we shall consider—first, Sacred palimpsests; and, secondly, Palimpsests in profane literature.

I. By far the most important relics of the first class are Biblical palimpsests.

The first described biblical manuscript of which any important use was made appears to have been Codex Ephremi, or Codex Regius of Paris. The more modern writing in this manuscript contains certain works of St Ephrem the Syrian, in Greek; the more ancient seems to have contained the whole of the Old and New Testament, in a character and style of Greek writing which Dr Tischendorf of Leipzig assigns to the fifth century. Of this manuscript there are 209 leaves remaining, 145 of which belong to the New Testament, and comprehend nearly two-thirds of the entire text; but the leaves appeared to the first explorers so miserably confused and misplaced, and with so many chasms of various kinds, that sometimes scarcely a word could be deciphered in a whole leaf. Nevertheless, the difficulties occasioned by these defects and mutilations have not deterred critics from endeavouring to make the most of the Codex Ephremi. It was first observed and examined by Jean Bolivio, from whom Küster obtained several important readings, which he inserted in his reprint of Mill's Greek Testament in 1710; and Wetstein afterwards, at the instance of Bentley, collated with great diligence all that it contains of the text of the New Testament. Griesbach considers this as the most ancient manuscript collated by Wetstein; and there can be no doubt that the readings thus obtained confer a particular value on his edition. For a long time, however, nothing of real importance was done in the work of deciphering it; but at last, in 1834-5, M. Hase, by the use of a chemical preparation known by the name tinctura Giobertina, succeeded in reviving the ancient writing to a degree far beyond the expectation of the first explorers; and in 1840-1 Dr Tischendorf devoted himself to the task of preparing for publication the New Testament fragments, which he finally accomplished in 1843. In 1845 he completed the work by the addition of those fragments of the Old Testament which are contained in the palimpsest. An additional source of the interest and the value which attach to this curious palimpsest is the circumstance that, previously to its being turned to its modern use by the transcriber of St Ephrem in the thirteenth century, the original had undergone three distinct corrections, by different hands and at remote intervals, in the sixth, ninth, and eleventh or twelfth centuries; most of which corrections are still distinctly traceable, and supply an interesting practical commentary on the history of the text.

The next discovery amongst manuscripts of this description was one of a very interesting kind. Ulphilas, bishop of the Goths in the fourth century, is known to have translated the whole Scriptures into the language of that people, who had lapsed into Arianism. For this purpose he invented for them a new character, consisting of letters borrowed chiefly from the Greek. This work, however, had long been lost, with the exception only of the part containing the four Gospels, which is preserved in the University Library at Upsal, in a manuscript called Codex Argenteus, from being written chiefly in letters of silver. But in the year 1755, F. A. Knittel, having been appointed archdeacon of Wolfenbüttel, began to explore the treasures contained in the Augustan Library in that city; and in the course of his researches a palimpsest manuscript of the Origines of Isidorus of Seville was pointed out to him as containing, under that writing, the translation of the Epistle to the Romans by Ulphilas, together with two other Greek fragments of the Gospels. The first of these (known to biblical critics as the Codex Guelphebytianus A) consisted of forty-three leaves containing parts of each of the four Gospels. It is believed to be of the sixth century, and its readings have been highly valued. The second (called Codex Guelphebytianus B) consisted of thirteen leaves containing parts of St Luke and of St John. It seems to be of the same period with the last. Knittel's interest, however, was principally fixed on the fragment of Ulphilas. On examination, it proved that the manuscript did not contain the whole Epistle to the Romans, but only a portion of the latter part, viz., the eleventh and following chapters, as far as the thirteenth verse of the fifteenth, accompanied by a Latin version written in parallel columns, which is in itself of no slight interest, as it is earlier than the revision of the Vulgate by St Jerome. Knittel immediately set himself to work on this curious fragment; and although, from the state of the leaves to be deciphered, the difficulty of the task was great, yet his zeal carried him through; and towards the end of the year 1758 he announced the intended publication by subscription. Various obstacles, however, retarded its appearance till the year 1762, when the laborious decipherer was enabled to publish the whole in quarto, with twelve large plates, accompanied by an account of the manuscript, and copious illustrations of its contents. The diligence of Knittel omitted nothing that could render useful the recovered fragments both of the two Greek manuscripts and of the Gothic version. The latter, in particular, he carefully compared with the Codex Argenteus at Upsal, and ascertained that the Wolfenbüttel palimpsest did not form part of the same, but only of a similar manuscript. From the different fragments he extracted all the various readings. These fragments were reprinted by Busching in 1773, and by Zahn in 1805. But by far the most important contribution to our knowledge of the version was made in 1817 and the following years, by the celebrated Angelo Mai (of whom we shall have occasion to speak more at large under the head of "Classical Palimpsests"), and his friend and fellow-labourer, Count Carlo Castiglione, from five different palimpsests discovered by Mai in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, and containing, under modern transcripts of various authors,—St Gregory the Great, St Jerome, Plautus, Seneca, and the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon,—nearly four hundred pages of fragments of the Gothic version of the Epistles of St Paul, of the Gospel of St Matthew, and some of the books of the Old Testament. All the fragments of this version, from whatever source, were collected into the edition of Gabelentz and Lobe, which appeared in successive parts at Leipzig, from 1836 to 1845; and a complete critical edition has still more recently been published by Dr Massmann (Stuttgart, 1855). The next in the order of time among the biblical palimpsests is that of Dr Barrett of Trinity College, Dublin; an elegant volume (Dublin, 1801), containing a great part of the Gospel of St Matthew, copied from a recension manuscript in the library of that college. This palimpsest appears to have been rewritten in the twelfth or thirteenth century upon portions of much more ancient books. The most important of these, however, was the portion which contained the copy of St Matthew's Gospel, whereof this fragment remained, written in uncial letters; and, judging by the usual marks of antiquity, it seems to belong at least to the sixth century. A part of Isaiah in Greek, and some of the Orations of Gregory Nazianzen, were likewise found in it, but were considered as of less moment. What remains of St Matthew's Gospel is printed on sixty-four engraved fac-simile plates, each representing a page of the manuscript, and containing from twenty-one to twenty-three lines, disposed in a single column, with the text in the ordinary Greek character upon the opposite page. This valuable fragment commences with part of the genealogy, at verse 17, chapter i., and extends, with occasional clauses, to chapter xxvi., verse 71; and it is also represented in an equal number of pages printed in the ordinary Greek character. Copious prologues are prefixed, giving an exact account of the state and characters of the manuscript; and subjoined is a careful collation of the Codex Monfortianus, in the same library, with Wetstein's edition. Unfortunately, however, the text, as printed in the ordinary Greek characters, is by no means a perfectly accurate transcript of the engraved plates; and this circumstance, as well as the defective condition of many of the pages, having created a general desire for the re-examination of the Dublin palimpsest, Dr Tregelles, in 1853, by the aid of active chemical agents devised by more modern manipulators, succeeded in bringing to light "all the older writing, hardly even a letter excepted." It is to be regretted, however, that, in the re-binding of the manuscript since its publication by Dr Barrett, some portions of the ancient writings have been lost, through the efforts of the ignorant workman to give an air of neatness to the volume, by squaring the leaves and paring them to an even edge.

By far the most important discovery in modern biblical

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1 This manuscript is the celebrated Codex Carolinus. Its acquisition by the Wolfenbüttel Library is comparatively recent. But Cardinal Mai ("Classici Antiqui," I. 43) claims it, on the authority of Niebuhr and on intrinsic evidence, as once the property of the monastery of Bobbio, one of the many colonies of the early Irish monks in Italy, Switzerland, Southern Germany, and France. palimpsest literature, is that of the palimpsests comprised in the collection of manuscripts recently collected from the monastic libraries of the Levant, and deposited in the British Museum and the Bibliothèque Impériale at Paris.

In one of these (known as the Codex Nitriensis, from the monastery of St Mary Despina, in the desert of Nitria, whence it was obtained) Dr Cureton discovered (besides a most valuable fragment of the Iliad, of which we shall speak later) forty-five leaves containing fragments of the Gospel of St Luke, over which had been written a Syriac translation of the Monophysite treatise of Severus of Antioch against Grammaticus. The later writing was so heavy and so black, and the erasure of the original had been so successful, that it was exceedingly difficult to decipher it; but it was successfully collated in 1854 by Dr Tregelles, and was prepared by him for publication, had he not been anticipated by Dr Tischendorf in the collection to be described hereafter. These fragments are believed to be of the sixth century, and even of the early part of that century.

Another Syriac manuscript, in the British Museum, examined by him, contains a few palimpsest leaves, which are of extreme antiquity, and the under writing of which consists of fragments of St John's Gospel. The Greek characters resemble very closely those of the well-known Codex Vaticanus; and the Greek original of the palimpsest is especially curious, as having been at least twice written over in Syriac; so that it belongs to the class (of which we shall see two other examples) of thrice-written manuscripts.

No modern biblical editor, indeed, has laboured in the field of palimpsest literature with such perseverance and with such success as Dr Tischendorf. In addition to his re-collations and reprints of almost all the most valuable early editions of the sacred texts, he has, with infinite industry and research, given to the public many most curious and valuable fragments of the Old and New Testaments, collected by himself from palimpsest sources. A few of these are of western origin; but the greater and much more important portion is from the Syriac and Armenian palimpsests of the collection already described. They are for the most part contained in his magnificent publication, Monumenta Sacra Inedita, vol. i., 1855; vol. ii., 1857. The first volume is entitled Fragmenta Sacra Palimpsesta; secundum Fragmenta cum Novi tum Veteris Testamenti ex quinque Codicibus Graecis Palimpsestis antiquissimis superrimis in Oriente repertis. Addita sunt Fragmenta Paulorum Papyroceae, et Fragmenta Evangelistariorum Palimpsesta; item Fragmentum Codicis Frederico-Augustani, nonem primum eruit atque edidit (Enoch, Frst. Const. Tischendorf, Lipsiae, 1855). This most beautiful volume consists of fragments deciphered from seven palimpsests, of which five were brought from the East; one is preserved in the Barberini Library at Rome, and one in the Library of St Mark's at Venice. The first, the modern writing of which is Armenian, contains forty-eight pages of fragments of the New Testament—of the Gospels, of the Acts, and of the Epistles of St Paul to the Corinthians and to Titus. The second, under some Greek lives of saints and a homily of John of Damascus, contains large fragments of the book of Numbers and some portions of Isaiah. The third, in which the modern writing consists of the lives of four saints—Euthymius, Sabas, Abram, and Theodore—in Arabic, contains fragments of Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Kings, and Isaiah; and the fourth and fifth, which were both re-written in Armenian, contain other fragments of the books of Kings. Dr Tischendorf's second volume is entitled Fragmenta Evangelii Lucae et Libri Genesis, ex tribus Cod. Graecis, quinti, sexti, octavi seculi; uno Palimpsesto ex Libyae in Museum Britannicum adrecto; altero celeberrimo Cottoniano ex Flaminis crepto; tertio ex Oriente superrimis Oxonium perlati, Lipsiae, 1857. The most important among the contents of this volume are the fragments of St Luke's Gospel, already referred to as discovered by Dr Cureton in the Codex Nitriensis. They extend to ninety-five pages. The volume also contains fragments of the Gospel of St John, from a palimpsest, re-written, with some hymns of Severus the Monophysite, in Syriac; a few pages of Ezekiel, also from a Syriac palimpsest; and two pages of the third book of Kings, from a palimpsest partly Coptic and partly Syriac.

Such are the most remarkable contributions to the original text of sacred Scripture from palimpsest sources. These contributions are in all likelihood but an earnest of what may yet be anticipated; but even these are of a value which only scholars who are acquainted with the limited extent of the ancient sources of biblical criticism now available can fully appreciate. Perhaps, out of all the existing manuscripts of the original texts, the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Alexandrinus are the only ones which exceed in antiquity some of the precious fragments thus unexpectedly recovered. We need hardly add that, unlike most other originals, every scrap of the sacred text, however minute, possesses a value of its own, entirely independent of the context or connection; and, therefore, that no fragment, however minute or however mutilated, can be overlooked by a biblical critic who is animated by the true spirit of his craft.

Of the other sacred palimpsests which have been as yet made public, the most important are a series of fragments of the early liturgies, both of the Greek and of the Latin churches, discovered in the library at Karlsruhe, in a manuscript re-written with St Jerome's Commentary on the Gospel of St Matthew. These interesting remains were published (with a fac-simile) by Francis Joseph Mommsen at Frankfort in 1850 (Lateinische und Griechische Messen, aus dem zweiten bis sechsten Jahrhundert). Many other fragments of the same character—liturgies, sacramentaries, rituals, canons, homilies, &c.—are known to exist. A few of them have been published by the same editor and by Cardinal Mai; and much information on the obscure but important subject of the early liturgies may be expected from a complete and careful examination and comparison of them all.

II. In ancient profane literature the additions from palimpsest sources have been much more numerous and considerable, consisting of large fragments of lost Greek and Roman classics, and of the text, and commentaries on the text, of ancient Roman law.

The first editor of a palimpsest relic of classical literature was Paul James Bruns, the coadjutor of Dr Kennicott in his great work of Hebrew collation. In 1773 Bruns discovered at Rome a fragment of the ninety-first book of Livy, in a rescribed manuscript of the Vatican collection; and in the same year it was published by the discoverer himself at Hamburg, and by Signor Giovenazzi at Rome. The fragment in question, which has been admitted as undoubtedly genuine into the later editions of Livy, contains part of the war with Sertorius in Spain; and the only subject of regret is, that this part is so small. Bruns first visited the Vatican on a mission from Dr Kennicott in reference to Hebrew collation; but having been thus fortunate in the investigation of a palimpsest, he renewed the inquiry in this country, and endeavoured to ascertain the number of such manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. An account of his researches will be found in the Literary Annals of Helvetia, which appear to have been conducted by Bruns during the years 1782, 1783, and 1784. A small portion of the ninety-first book of Livy, which Bruns failed in reading from the manuscript, was afterwards successfully deciphered by Niebuhr, who also supplied some other deficiencies, and published the entire book, together with another Ciceronian fragment, at Berlin in 1820. It remained, however, for another distinguished labourer in the new and interesting field of inquiry which had thus been indicated rather than explored, to surpass all his pre- deceaseors and contemporaries, not only in discovering re- scribed manuscripts, but also in extracting from them works or parts of works which were long considered as irrecover- ably lost. We allude, of course, to the Abate Angelo Mai, doctor of the Ambrosian Library at Milan, afterwards first keeper of the Vatican, and finally (1838) cardinal librarian of the Roman Church, whose researches in this department were so extensive and important that he may truly be called the hero of palimpsests, and the discoverer of a new world of letters. (See Mal.) It was not till the year 1814 that Monsignore Mai made himself known by the partial disco- very of lost works. A year earlier, indeed, he had em- ployed himself in translating a large portion of the oration of Isocrates De Permutatione, which Mystoxides, a learned Greek, had published from a manuscript in the Ambrosian Library more perfect than any of the codices which had been followed by the editors of Isocrates. The quantity thus inserted in the oration increased it by at least one- half; and the same additional matter has since been found in some of the Vatican manuscripts. In publishing this translation, however, Mai modestly continued anonymous. But his name was destined soon to be illustrated by far more important labours.

1. His researches amongst palimpsest manuscripts com- menced with certain hitherto unpublished fragments of three orations of Cicero, namely, those for Scaurus, Tullius, and Flaccus. These orations had been written in a quarto form, but had been partly erased and folded into an octavo size to give place to the sacred poetry of Sedulius. The newer writing was judged to be as old as the eighth cen- tury, and the original to be not later than the second or third. The manuscript had belonged to a very ancient monastery at Bobbio, or Bobbio, in the Milanese, founded by St Columban, who had also formed its library; and in the collection obtained from the same venerable institution the greatest part of the described manuscripts has been dis- covered. "In examining carefully some manuscripts in the Ambrosian Library at Milan," says Mai in his preface, "I observed that one of great antiquity was a palimpsest. This manuscript had belonged to the convent of Bobbio, a monastery in Liguria, situated in the midst of the Apen- nines, which was founded by St Columban in the year 612, and the monks of which obtained considerable reputation for learning as well as sanctity. Gerbert, a Frenchman by birth, who became pope under the name of Silvester II., and attained so much celebrity for learning that he is one of those who, in the rude popular tale, are reported to have sold their souls to the devil, was head of this monastery in the tenth century, and added greatly to the reputation of the place, as well as to the contents of the library. The Cardinal Frederigo Borromeo, who founded the Ambrosian Library at the beginning of the seventeenth century, pur- chased the principal part of the collection at Bobbio and brought it to Milan. Whilst I was examining these manu- scripts," he adds, "I remarked that one, which contained some of the writings of Sedulius, a Christian poet, was a palimpsest; and on looking very closely and attentively I discovered traces of the former writing under the latter." He then read the titles, pro Scauro, pro Tullio, and pro Flacco, and was able, with some trouble, to decipher the whole of the fragments of these three lost orations, written in large and very beautiful characters, each page being divided into three columns. The oration for Scaurus was accompanied by scholia, elegantly written in small letters of a square form; and there were others in characters of a ruder form, but still ancient. These three fragments, to- gether with the scholia (which Mai considers the produc- tion of Asconius Pedianus), were published at Milan, 1814, in one volume 8vo.

2. In the course of the same year Monsignore Mai pro- duced a second volume, containing various fragments of three other orations of Cicero, with some ancient annota- tions and commentaries never before published. The por- tions thus recovered belonged to the orations against Clo- dus and Curio; to that De Ære alieno Milonis; and to the oration De Rege Ptolemaeo. Of the oration De Ære alieno Milonis no other fragment was known until this discovery. These treasures had lain concealed under a Latin transla- tion of the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, and were adjudged by the discoverer to belong to the fourth cen- tury. The palimpsest from which they were discovered had formed part of the collection obtained from Bobbio. The older writing was in very large and handsome charac- ters, but less beautiful than that which contained the frag- ments of the three orations mentioned in the preceding paragraph; and there were only two columns in each page, a circumstance which seems to indicate that the writing is somewhat less ancient. The contents of these two volumes the learned editor afterwards united into one, which he pub- lished in 1817, with corrections of the fragments that had first appeared, and some additional notes and illustrations. The great antiquity of the practice of rescription is suffi- ciently attested by these various fragments of Cicero's ora- tions; indeed it is supposed that the speech for Scaurus was obliterated in the eighth century. But Latin manu- scripts appear to have been more frequently subjected to this treatment than Greek manuscripts, or those in any other language. It is true, that in the "Collection of Greek Papyri from the British Museum," there is an an- cient palimpsest papyrus, in which the original was the en- chorial Egyptian, and the second writing is Greek. But this is a very rare instance; and even of this papyrus, it would be difficult to show that the date of the second writing is earlier than that assigned to the earliest Latin palimpsests.

3. The year 1815 proved very rich in discovery, and gave birth to no fewer than three volumes of unpublished works. One of these is peculiarly valuable and curious, as containing large portions of several orations of Symmachus, in whom, as Mai expresses it, breathed the last inspiration of Roman eloquence. The epistles of this famous orator were the only productions of his pen previously extant; but in these recovered fragments we have a copious speci- men of his eloquence—in two panegyrics on Valentinian, one on Gratian, a gratulation addressed to the father of the orator on his being appointed consul, and parts of several other works of the same kind, making eight in all. Mai likewise deciphered a portion of a panegyric of the younger Pliny which was contained in the same palimpsest, but of which only the various readings are here given. The ori- ginal manuscript is supposed to have belonged to the seventh or eighth century. These interesting fragments were re- printed at Frankfort in 1816 in one vol. 8vo.

4. The same year another very ancient palimpsest was found in the Ambrosian Library, containing all the come- dies of Plautus which have reached us, except four; and a fragment of the Vidularia, a lost comedy, of which all that previously remained consisted of about twenty lines, pre- served by Priscian and Nonius. The ancient writing in this manuscript is exceedingly beautiful, and is supposed to be of the time of the Antonines; the more modern, con- sisting of part of the Old Testament in Latin, is conjectured to be of the seventh century. Mai deciphered a number of various readings, together with about sixty inedited lines belonging to the different comedies; and restored the fol- lowing spirited lines of the Stichus (act i., sc. 5), which had previously existed in an imperfect state:

"Famem fulse suspicio matrem mihi, Nam postquam natus sum, satis nunquam fui: Neque quisquam melius referet matri gratiam, Quam ego matri mea retuli invitisimus."

This, therefore, is an important discovery, not so much on account of what has actually been recovered, as by reason of the expectations which it is calculated to encourage. For if Monsignore Mai found a Latin Bible containing almost an entire copy of Plautus, it cannot be affirmed that any classical author is irrecoverably lost until every Bible in manuscript, and every other writing upon ancient parchment, has been diligently examined. There is no moment at which some important discovery may not be made, provided the labour of scrutinizing parchments be persevered in. That there are many palimpsests in the public libraries of Great Britain, particularly in the Bodleian at Oxford, which is singularly rich in manuscripts, can scarcely admit of a doubt. The number of manuscripts in Spain, and her vast mass of archives, have long been equally famous; nor is it impossible that several lost works, or portions of works, by Latin authors, may yet be found in that country.

Although the search for manuscripts that are directly and obviously valuable may have proved fruitless, yet a very different result may follow when parchments are examined with a view to ascertain whether a lower stratum of writing exists beneath the sterile surface, and whether some of the most precious remains of ancient genius and eloquence may not be covered or concealed by the rubbish of chroniclers and ecclesiastical writers. It is true that much has perished irrecoverably. In the Protestant parts of Europe the most frightful havoc was committed at the Reformation. Huge volumes containing the ancient services abounded in all the churches and monasteries. Most of these had been brought directly from Rome; and in the days when books of this kind were transcribed, it may, by some, have been considered an act of piety to erase profane writings, especially if imperfect, in order to make way for the sacred offices. From the very nature of these books, indeed, there can be little doubt that much ancient parchment entered into their formation; and as they were carefully preserved, exempt from accident or injury, there can be little doubt that in many, perhaps in most of them, there existed under the description the remains of more ancient writings. Wherever they could be found they were consigned to the flames without mercy, in virtue of enactments which enjoined the destruction of all popish books; and inestimable chances of discovery were thus forever lost to the world. But great as was the destruction which took place at the Reformation, enough still remains to warrant the conviction, that were there more Mairs to examine and decipher palimpsest manuscripts, there would be numerous additional and most important discoveries. Who knows but that, in the most paltry and unpromising volume, may be found the works of the most eloquent of historians!—that

Pellibus exiguis arctat Livius ingens?

5. The next discovery effected by Mai, from a manuscript of the same class, was that of the remains of the orator Fronto, who had flourished in the reign of Hadrian. This writer, though by birth an African, was in his day esteemed almost a second Cicero; yet of his writings little more remained than a few scattered sentences, preserved in the works of other authors. Mai, however, by his acuteness and perseverance, was enabled to recover a very considerable portion of Fronto's works, which he published at Milan in 1815, in 2 vols. 8vo, under the title of *M. Cornelii Frontonis Opera inedita, cum Epistolis item ineditis Antonii Pii, M. Aurelii, L. Veri et Appiani, necnon aliorum Veterum Fragmentis.* The contents of the first volume consist of one book of epistles addressed to Antoninus Pius, two books to Marcus Aurelius, and two to Lucius Verus; two books of letters to friends; several letters addressed to Marcus Aurelius, on the subject of the Feriae at Alisium, a town in Etruria; and one to Lucius Verus, in which the orator laments the death of his grandson, one of the children of his son-in-law Victorinus. The second volume exhibits a considerable portion of two books, *De Orationibus,* addressed by Fronto to Marcus Aurelius; parts of various orations and epistles; and also a portion of an address to Antoninus, entitled *De Bello Parthico,* consoling him for the reverses experienced in the Parthian war. Then follow some important fragments under the title of *Principia Historiae*; a few playful prolusions on lighter subjects; and a book of epistles written in Greek. The work is concluded with a collection of all the fragments of Fronto's works which have elsewhere been preserved, and with copious illustrations of those which were then for the first time published. In the palimpsest from which these curious remains were deciphered the more recent writing formed part of the Council of Chalcedon; but the manuscript was unhappily much damaged, and altogether in a very imperfect state. Fronto was a voluminous writer, and composed works upon various subjects, amongst which was an Invective against the Christians. He had a great reputation as an orator, and was accounted the Cicero of his time, although his style, which is said to have united the *siccum* and the *grave,* does not very well accord with such a distinction. The writings of so remarkable a person would, in any circumstances, be an object of interest; but they become doubly curious from having been thus marvellously brought to light.

6. In the meanwhile, Mai was preparing another publication of similar origin, which, in 1816, he gave to the world under the following title, viz., *Interpretes Veteres Virgili Maronis; Asper, Cornutus, Haterianus, Longus, Nisus, Probos, Scaurus, Sulpicius, et anonymus; e Veronensi Palimpsesto,* and about the same time he discovered the palimpsest of the Gothic Bible of Uphilas, his edition of which has been already described among the biblical palimpsests.

7. Mai now entered upon a more enlarged and important scene of action. His distinguished merit in this new field of discovery having obtained for him the notice of Pius VII., he was by that pontiff appointed keeper of the Vatican Library, and speedily justified this preferment by a discovery more interesting and valuable than any which he had hitherto made. In a palimpsest volume, which had formed part of the manuscript collection originally brought from Bobbio, and which contained, in the exterior writing, part of the commentary of St Augustin on the Psalms, he found that the interior or more ancient writing had consisted of the long-lost books of Cicero *De Republica,* the most celebrated of all his works, and of which nothing had been known, in modern times, beyond the fragments preserved in the writings of Macrobius, Lactantius, Augustin, Nomius, and others. This precious volume had been purchased by Paul V. more than two centuries before, with the knowledge that it was a palimpsest, and that it contained part of Cicero's treatise *De Republica,* though, by some strange neglect, it was reserved for Mai to bring its contents to light. It was still in excellent order; the characters were large and plain; and in the leaves which remained there was scarcely a page that could not be deciphered; but many of the pages were wanting; and there seemed reason to apprehend that the same deficiency would often occur in future discoveries, because the work last inscribed might not have been co-extensive with the original writing obliterated, and because, when the volume had been taken to pieces for the purpose of rescription, the whole of the leaves that contained the original writing might not have been put together again, but some of them applied to other purposes, and leaves taken from other works, or of new parchment, inserted in their place. But however this may be, in these invaluable pages a very considerable part of the first and second books of the celebrated treatise in question was found so perfect as to be completely recovered by the labour and sagacity of Monsignore Mai. The portions of the work thus rescued from oblivion were published at Rome in 1821, with copious notes and illustrations, particularly an accurate account of the various chasms occasioned by the loss of original leaves, and accompanied with such a restoration of the four remaining books as could be effected from the less perfect portions of the manuscript, and the various fragments preserved by Sigonius and other critics. A finer specimen of editorial skill, learning, and sagacity is nowhere to be found.

The part of this important treatise which has thus been unexpectedly brought to light, is amply sufficient to give a clear insight into the plan and style of the dialogues, as well as into the characters of the various interlocutors under whose names the illustrious author chose to develop his own opinions. These were, the second Scipio Africanus, and his friend Laelius; L. Furius Philus; M. Manilius, whom Cicero elsewhere praises for his knowledge of the law; Sp. Mummius, the brother of Mummius Achaicus; Q. Elius Tubero; P. Rutilius Rufus; Q. Mucius Scævola; and C. Fannius, son-in-law of Laelius. The introduction to the first book is nearly complete; but that which stamps the highest value on the work is the luminous philosophy of the author on the subject of government and policy, as expounded by Scipio, the principal interlocutor, with unrivalled eloquence and felicity of expression. We now understand the grounds upon which the ancients preferred this to all Cicero's philosophical works; and on the whole, notwithstanding its still imperfect state, it is unquestionably one of the most interesting acquisitions that have been made in the department of classical literature since the original publication of the ancient authors soon after the revival of letters. May we not indulge the hope that eventually other important additions will be made to the invaluable fragment which Mai so laboriously and skilfully brought to light?

8. The zeal and the industry of Mai did not relax from success. On the contrary, soon after the appearance of the fragment of Cicero's treatise De Republica, he gave to the learned world another elaborate publication, containing—

1. Juris Civilis Antejustianae Reliquia inedita; 2. Symmachi Orationum partes; 3. C. Julii Victoris Ars Rhetorica; 4. L. Caecili Minutiani Apulei Fragmenta de Orthographia.

These remains were also recovered from a described manuscript in the Vatican Library, and were, as usual, accompanied by notes, appendices, and illustrative plates.

9. But a much more valuable and generally interesting discovery awaited him. Students of Roman history have long deplored the miserably imperfect condition in which almost all its writers, native and foreign, have come down to our time. Of the works of the Greek writers upon Roman affairs,—Polybius, Diodorus Siculus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Appian, Dion Cassius, Iamblichus, and the writers of the later empire, Dexippus, Eunapius, Menander of Byzantium, &c.—but a very small portion has been saved, and even that in far from a satisfactory condition, whether as to completeness or as to correctness of text. Now, by a rare literary favour of fortune, Mai was enabled, in one single publication, to restore to the world large extracts of each and all these historians, which, both in extent and in historical importance, far exceed all the contributions to their respective texts which, up to this day, had been made since their first publication in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The original of the palimpsest in which these precious fragments lay buried was a sort of commonplace-book, which had been compiled by the order of the learned Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, and in part, indeed, designed and executed by himself. It consisted of extracts from the most eminent authors, arranged under different heads, originally fifty-three in number. Of these fifty-three heads, however, only two were known before Mai's discovery. Every trace of the rest, with the exception of the names of twenty-two, had been lost; and the variety and the value of the selections from the ancient writers which they must have contained are best estimated from the portions which have been recovered. The palimpsest thus brought to light by Mai contained the title Ἱστορία Τριγωνών, Ἡ Sententia; and although, like every other palimpsest as yet discovered, very far from perfect, it comprised a large number of extracts from the lost books of the historians enumerated above. Of the thirty-five lost books of Polybius, for instance (out of forty of which his History originally consisted), the palimpsest supplies copious extracts from all but the last—from the sixth to the thirty-ninth inclusively,—amounting, in the whole, to 100 quarto pages. The gaps in the Historical Library of Diodorus Siculus, of which twenty-six books out of forty have perished, are no less happily supplied. The extracts in the palimpsest commence with the sixth, and extend to the fortieth; making, in the whole, above 130 pages. Nine of the twenty books of the Roman Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus have perished. The Vatican palimpsest contained extracts from them all, to the extent of 64 quarto pages. The fragments of Dion Cassius recovered from the palimpsest are far from filling up the lamentable hiatus in his vast but sadly-mutilated History; but they are by much the most important and most considerable that had hitherto come to light; and they fill no fewer than 100 pages. The recoveries from the other historians are less considerable; but, even in themselves, they are of great value, although, in contrast with the superior extent and importance of the fragments named above, they will be comparatively overlooked. In one word, the appearance of this "Historical Palimpsest" of Mai, as it has been styled, may be regarded as an epoch in the search for the lost literature of Greece and Rome. It appeared, not as an independent work, but as one of the volumes of a vast collection of works in every department of ancient literature, sacred and profane, collected from the unpublished manuscripts of the vast store-house of the Vatican, filling ten immense quarto volumes, and entitled Scriptorum veterum Nova Collectio, 1831–8. The "Historical Palimpsest" was Mai's last great work in that line. Each of the three great collections which he subsequently published,—the Classici Auctores ex Codicibus Vaticanis editi, 10 vols. 8vo, 1828–38; the Speculum Romanum, 10 vols. 8vo, 1839–44; and the Nova Patrum Bibliotheca, vols. i–vi,—contains some interesting fruits of his old spirit of research,—fragments of Lucan, of Juvenal, of Persius, of Gargilius Martialis, and of Aristotle; but their materials are almost exclusively drawn from the unpublished manuscripts of the Vatican.

Long, however, before Mai had withdrawn from the work Niebuhr, of palimpsest exploration, another labourer of high qualifications, who has been incidentally named already, Niebuhr, had entered the same field of inquiry. The library of the Chapter of Verona had long been famous for the number of the manuscripts contained in it; and it was also known to be remarkably rich in those which related to jurisprudence. In the Verona Illustrata of Maffei, published in 1732, the author had given an index to all the manuscripts, and particularly mentioned several leaves of parchment, some of which treated of prescriptions and interdicts, whilst others contained fragments of the Pandects and part of the work of an ancient juriconsult; "quai codici, se si fossero conservati, niente si ha in tal genere, che lor si potesse paragonare." The leaves in question were afterwards bound up in a small volume, composed of fragments of different manuscripts; and extracts from both were published by Maffei, with a fac-simile of the characters, in his Istoria Teologica. But these curious relics attracted little attention, or rather were altogether forgotten, until the successful researches of Mai had awakened and animated the curiosity of the learned. In the year 1816, Haubold revived the recollection of them by printing at Leipzig a treatise entitled *Notitia Fragmenti Veronensis de Interdictis*, which appears to have attracted considerable notice. In the same year Niebuhr, passing through Verona on his way to Rome, as Prussian envoy to the court of the Vatican, visited the Library of the Chapter, and, during two days which he passed at Verona, took an accurate copy of the fragment *De Prescriptio* et *Interdictis*, and also transcribed another, *De Jure Fisci*. But if this had been all, the labours of these two days, however meritorious, would perhaps have soon been forgotten. Fortunately for letters, however, he examined another manuscript, then numbered xiii., and found that the exterior writing contained some epistles of St Jerome, whilst a more ancient writing appeared underneath. On further examination, Niebuhr perceived that the latter contained the work of some ancient juristconsult; and having applied the infusion of galls to folio 97, he so far restored the characters as to be able to transcribe the portion of the original text therein contained. He then communicated his discovery to Savigny, and with the assistance of the latter, published in a periodical work the specimen transcribed, accompanied with an ingenious commentary, in which he maintained that the manuscript referred to contained the Institutions of Gaius, the great Roman jurist, probably, under Marcus Aurelius, whose person and history have furnished such a theme for speculation to writers upon Roman law; and that the fragment *De Prescriptio* et *Interdictis* formed part of that work.

The result fully established the soundness of this conclusion. Two other labourers were therefore sent by the Berlin Academy of Sciences to work the mine which Niebuhr had thus happily opened; and, having obtained the permission of the Chapter, they transcribed the manuscript almost entirely, only about one-ninth part of the whole, or rather less, being found illegible. The transcript was immediately submitted to the Academy, and the Institutions of Gaius first appeared at Berlin in the year 1820. The manuscript from which this invaluable relic of ancient jurisprudence was recovered consists of 127 leaves, which have been thrice written upon. The more recent writing, which is in uncial characters and of considerable antiquity, contains some of the works of St Jerome, chiefly his epistles, of which there are twenty-six. The more ancient is of two kinds; the one remarkable for its antiquity and elegance, and the other intermediate,—that is, written over the first and under the third or last writing. The former of these is that in which the Institutions of Gaius were written; so that the intermediate kind had superseded the work of the Roman juristconsult, but had, in its turn, yielded to the third and last writing. As to the age of the original manuscript, Niebuhr very early expressed an opinion that it was older than the time of Justinian; and Kopp, judging from the forms of the letters, the contractions, and various other indications, arrived at the same conclusion. It is creditable to the literary curiosity of Germany that the first edition of this work was almost immediately sold off. Blume, who had been concerned in the first transcription, paid another visit to Verona, where he re-examined the manuscript with great care; and the fruits of his labours appeared in the second edition, which was published in 1824. In the following year a third edition appeared at Leipzig, without the notes of Göschén, and with the modern instead of the ancient orthography, which had been religiously retained in the two Berlin editions. Gaius was somewhat late in attracting attention in France, where learned lawyers were once so abundant; but the translation of M. Boulet had the effect of partially awakening the curiosity of his countrymen, by rendering this invaluable relic of Roman jurisprudence more easily and generally accessible.

Niebuhr's contribution to Roman Law was followed up by Peyron, who, from a palimpsest of the Turin Library, published in 1824, *Codices Theodosiani Fragmenta Inedita*, 4to, by Drs Pertz and Gaupp, who printed a portion of the Digest of Justinian, from a Neapolitan palimpsest, at Breslau in 1823.

The reader will be more interested, however, in the history of the classical palimpsests. Dr Fridericus Monse, son of the well-known scholar of that name already alluded to, newly discovered, during the year 1854, in a Benedictine monastery, in Carinthia, a manuscript of St Jerome's Commentary on Ecclesiasticus, the underwriting of which consisted of portions of the first, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and fifteenth books of Pliny. The original is exceedingly ancient. Dr Monse even ascribes it to the second century, and it was not without the utmost difficulty that he was enabled to decipher it. As Pliny's *Natural History* has come down to us entire, the recovery of these fragments is less important than would be a similar discovery of a lost classic; but their value nevertheless will be fully acknowledged by every critical scholar who is aware of the very obscure and seemingly corrupt condition of Pliny's text; and who recollects the light which has been thrown upon the last six books by the new readings from the Bamberg manuscript which Sillig gave in the last volume of his edition of 1831–6. Dr Monse has printed his Carinthian palimpsest in a type nearly fac-simile. (C. Plini Secundi Nature Historiarum Lib. I., XI., XII., XIII., XV., Fragmenta, editid Fridericus Monse, D.Ph., 1855.)

The oriental collection, to the palimpsests of which biblical criticism has been, as we said, so largely indebted, has also afforded some important contributions to classical literature.

In the Codex Nitriensis already described, in addition to the fragments of St Luke deciphered and published by Dr Tischendorf, there was also discovered, under the same Syriac treatise of Severus of Antioch, a second palimpsest, containing large fragments of the *Iliad* of Homer. The original Codex Nitriensis was one of a collection of Syriac and other oriental manuscripts purchased for the British Museum from Mr Pacho. When first examined, it was found to be defective; but fortunately the missing leaves were discovered in a second collection brought from the east by Dr Tatman; and the Codex now contains twenty-three quires (of five leaves each), twelve of which are occupied with the Homeric palimpsest. The whole has been carefully deciphered by Dr Cureton, and published in fac-simile, at the expense of the trustees of the British Museum, in a beautiful volume, entitled *Fragments of the Iliad of Homer, from a Syriac Palimpsest*, edited by W. C. Cureton, M.A., London, 1857. These fragments comprise in all 3873 lines; and although all their contents were previously known, yet their high critical value will be best understood from the circumstance, that the original from which they are printed is more ancient by several centuries than the oldest known manuscripts of the *Iliad*—than the celebrated "Townley Homer," than the "Bankes Papyrus," than the papyrus now in the possession of Mr Harris at Alexandria, and the Ambrosian palimpsest discovered by Mai. As a specimen of palimpsest typography, the book is one of the most beautiful hitherto produced.

Another, and still more curious fruit of the Syriac palimpsests, and the last which we have to record, was published a few months since at Berlin, from a codex in the

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1 Some slight fragments of Lucan, Seneca, Aulus Gellius, and Hyginus the fabulist, deciphered by Niebuhr; of the *Phaeton* of Euripides, published by Hermann (Leipzig, 1821); of Sallust, Pliny, and Lucan, discovered by Pertz; and a few minor scraps, might also be mentioned; but they do not require any detailed notice. Impress same collection of the British Museum—Gai Grani Liciniani Annalium quo supersunt, ex codice ter scripto Musici Britannici Londiniensis, nunc primum editit Carolus Augustus Fridericus Pertz, Ph.Dr., Berolini, 1857. The palimpsest was first observed, and in part transcribed, by the father of Dr Pertz, the well-known historian and antiquary of that name; but it was not till the year 1856 that the younger Pertz completed the transcript, which appears to have been a task of exceeding difficulty. The codex, as will be collected from Dr Pertz's title, is a thrice-written manuscript; and it differs from the similar palimpsest of the Institutions of Gaius in having its outermost or most recent writing in the Syriac language, and in the most difficult and complex form of the Syriac characters—the cursive letters. The second writing is in Latin, and contains portions of the work of some unknown grammarian (the chapters De Verbo and De Aderbio), of whom we only learn that he flourished between the second and fifth centuries of our era. The lowest and earliest writing is in large uncial characters, and contains portions of five books of the Roman history of an annalist called Gaius Gramus Licinianus, who is named by Macrobius and by the commentator on Virgil Servius, but of whom nothing else is known. The recovered fragments present intrinsic evidence of having been written after the History of Sallust and before that of Livy: they are from the twenty-sixth, twenty-eighth, thirty-third, thirty-fifth, and thirty-sixth books; and they regard a period of great interest, e.g., 509–676. The least incomplete chapters are those which regard the Cimbrian war, the civil war, and the Mithridatic war; but it must be owned that the recovered fragments throw little new light even upon these events. This recovery, nevertheless, is very interesting, both for itself and for the hope which it seems to hold out, that in other quarters which yet remain to be explored, and which at present seem to promise as little for ancient western literature as the long-forgotten monasteries of the Levant, we may yet discover, from some thirce, or even more frequently re-written codex, the most precious of the long-lost treasures of antiquity.

The general appearance and characteristics of palimpsests will best be understood from inspection. There are few of the great libraries which do not possess at least a specimen or two; and even from the fac-similes which accompany most of the palimpsest publications, a very good idea of the original may be formed, especially from those of the Cureton palimpsest of the Iliad, those of Tischendorf, and the small plate of Pertz. In most cases, however, the palimpsest is represented, not in its original form, but in that which it presents after it has been chemically treated for the purpose of being deciphered. Cardinal Mai, in some of his plates, represents both appearances.

The method of manipulating palimpsests, for the purpose of deciphering the ancient writing, depends partly on the condition of the manuscript, partly on the ink in which the original was written. In some, indeed, the ancient writing is quite readily deciphered without any preparatory process whatever; in others, on the contrary, the original is found to have been so carefully and so successfully effaced, that no amount of skill or perseverance will avail to the complete decipherment of their contents.

To comprehend the process of restoration, it must be understood that there were two methods employed by the ancients in effacing the original writing—the wet and the dry. The first consisted in moistening the surface of the parchment, washing it with a sponge, and rubbing it down with pumice-stone. Of the second there were two different forms; either the entire line was scraped away with a broad scraping tool or blade, or the operator followed the course of each separate letter, and obliterated each in succession with the point of the tool. The ink, again, was of three kinds—metallic (which was that commonly used), vegetable, and animal; and as the action of the ink, whatever may have been its composition, was not confined to the surface, it is found that, even after the superficial trace of colour has been partially or entirely removed, its unobserved presence may still be detected by careful scientific treatment.

The first method, and one frequently adopted by Mai, is simply to wash the page with an infusion of galls, and expose it for a time to the action of light and air. This application, in Mai's hands, was in many cases sufficient to restore the buried writing so far that, in good clear light, it could be deciphered by any practised palaeographer.

In other cases, however, the effect of this treatment is to blacken the parchment, and to render both the old writing and the later entirely illegible. M. Peyron of Turin, the editor of the fragments of the Theodosian Code described above, having experienced this effect, adopted a prescription suggested by his colleague Giobert, professor of chemistry in the same university. The parchment is first carefully washed in common water; it is then dipped in diluted muriatic acid, and finally in prussiate of potash. This treatment, which had already been suggested by Blagden in the Philosophical Transactions for 1787, proved entirely successful; and a preparation founded on it is now known by the name tinctura Giobertina. Dr Pertz, in the effort to decipher his palimpsest of Granus Licinianus, was struck by the singular circumstance, that the same mode of treatment did not succeed equally with both sides of the parchment. The chemical agent employed by him was a preparation of sulphuretted ammonia—(his formula is, N₂H₄S, aqua × —), which he found perfectly successful in reviving the characters upon the outer surface of the skin, as this surface, from its hardness and the closeness of its grain, had been but little defaced by the process of rubbing. But the inside of the skin, being softer and looser in texture, and therefore having been impressed to a greater depth by the process, remained almost entirely unaffected by this application. For the inside of the parchment, therefore, Dr Pertz found it necessary to have recourse to the agent already referred to—the tinctura Giobertina,—for which he gives two different formulas,—CyK + 2K, and CyK + CyFe. In deciphering the fragment of Livy, which he published from a Berlin palimpsest (Berlin, 1848), Dr Pertz used a mixture of the ordinary preparation of sulphuretted ammonia and the tinctura Giobertina in equal parts.

Where the ink of the original is a vegetable product (as in the case of a palimpsest of the Gallican Psaltery described by Mone, p. 40), the palaeographers have failed to restore the original writing sufficiently for the purpose of being deciphered. For inks which contain animal substances (as milk or the blood of the cuttle-fish, the ἀκρίς of the ancients), Dr Mone directs that the manuscripts be placed in a close vessel filled with oil, and heated to 400° R.

Much, however, it need hardly be added, will depend on the experience and judgment of the manipulator. Many useful suggestions will be found in the prefaces of Mai and other editors, and especially in F. J. Mone's Lateinische und Griechische Messen; Pertz's Gai Grani Liciniani Annalium quo supersunt; and Fridegar Mone's De Libris Palimpsestis, tam Latinis quam Graecis, Karlsruhe, 1855.