NOTES I - ON THE FORMATION OF THE TEXT

Summary

If Lucretius had come down to us with a text as uninjured as that of Virgil and a few other ancient writers, he could scarcely have been reckoned among the most difficult Latin poets. Certainly he would have been more easy to explain than Virgil for instance or Horace; for he tells what he has to tell simply and directly, and among his poetical merits is not included that of leaving his reader to guess which of many possible meanings was the one he intended to convey. Fortune however has not dealt so kindly with him. Not that the great mass of his poem is not in a sound and satisfactory state : in this respect he is better off than many others; but owing to the way in which it has been handed down, his text has suffered in some portions irreparable loss. It is now universally admitted that every existing copy of the poem has come from one original, which has itself long disappeared.

Of existing manuscripts a fuller account will presently be given: let it suffice for the moment to say that the two which Lachmann has mainly followed and which every future editor must follow, are now in the library of Ley den. One is a folio written in the ninth century, the other a quarto certainly not later than the tenth. Large fragments of one, if not of two others, of the same age as the quarto and very closely resembling it are also still preserved, partly in Copenhagen, partly in Vienna.