Note 145 — Chapter II · PLINY’S NATURAL HISTORY
Reading edition
Concerning the MSS see Detlefsen’s prefaces in each of his first five volumes and his fuller dissertations in Jahn’s Neue Jahrb., 77, 653ff, Rhein. Mus., XV, 265ff; XVIII, 227ff, 327.
Detlefsen seems to have made no use of English MSS, but a folio of the close of the 12th century at New College, Oxford, contains the first nineteen books of the Natural History and is described by Coxe as “very well written and preserved.”
Nor does Detlefsen mention Le Mans 263, 12th century, containing all 37 books except that the last book is incomplete, and with a full page miniature (fol. 10v) showing Pliny in the act of presenting his work to Vespasian. Escorial Q-I-4 and R-I-5 are two other practically complete texts of the fourteenth century which Detlefsen failed to use.