Textus Originalis
DE CODICIBUS LIBRORUM XIII—XV.
Sunt quos apparatu critico collegisse iuvat pulverem codicum: in eis quamquam me neque esse neque numerari volo, tamen aegre fero, quod codices accuratius excutere vel plures adhibere mihi non licuit. Apparatum criticum enim etiam strictiorem reddidissem, si omnibus codicum testimoniis cognitis, quid esset verum, certius discernendi atque, quia plus uno verum esse non potest, plurimas lectionum variarum secernendi potestas data esset. Itaque apparatum criticum a me factum multimodis esse imperfectum non dissimulo; nihilo minus tamen Bergmanni Bezzeli Schneideri meaque opera factum est, ut haec editio, posita in emendata vel prima collatione praestantissimorum codicum ADP, exacta ad codicum aestimationem a nobis primum via ac ratione institutam, denique multis Reiskei Wurmi Hertleini Madvigi emendationibus adhuc neglectis correcta, suis virtutibus non careat. Quare donec aut meliorem codicem indagaveris aut codices a nobis falso aestimatos esse comprobaveris, aliquantum profecisse nobis videbimur. Ac novos codices eosque utiles inveniri aut ex codicibus ab aliis olim inspectis novum quidquam et utile conquiri posse, nemo sine aliqua dubitatione dixerit, nisi cui molestum fuerit legere vel intellegere,
Traduzione
English — scholarly
ARETHE Knowledge Engineering DivisionON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF BOOKS XIII—XV.
There are those who take pleasure in collecting the dust of manuscripts for a critical apparatus: although I neither wish to be nor to be counted among them, yet I bear it with regret that I was not permitted to examine the manuscripts more accurately or to employ more of them. For I would have made the critical apparatus even more concise, if, having become acquainted with the testimony of all the manuscripts, the power had been given to discern more certainly what is true and, because more than one thing cannot be true, to separate out the majority of variant readings. Therefore I do not conceal that the critical apparatus produced by me is imperfect in many ways; nevertheless, through the efforts of Bergmann, Bezzel, Schneider, and myself, it has come about that this edition, based on an improved or first-time collation of the most excellent manuscripts ADP, measured against the evaluation of manuscripts first established by us through a systematic method, and finally corrected by many emendations of Reiske, Wurm, Hertlein, and Madvig hitherto neglected, does not lack its own virtues. Wherefore, until either you have discovered a better manuscript or have proven that our evaluation of the manuscripts is mistaken, we shall seem to ourselves to have made some progress. But that new and useful manuscripts could be found, or that anything new and useful could be gathered from manuscripts once inspected by others, no one would assert without some doubt, unless it were troublesome for someone to read or understand
Commentario Arethe
Sunt quos apparatu critico collegisse iuvat pulverem codicum
Vogel opens with a masterful captatio benevolentiae cloaked in self-deprecation: he distances himself from those who merely 'collect the dust of manuscripts' (pulverem codicum) — a jab at compilatory scholarship lacking analytical judgment — while simultaneously lamenting that he could not examine manuscripts more thoroughly. This rhetorical stance mirrors the Vol. II opening but is more pointed: after three volumes, Vogel feels the weight of acknowledged imperfection in his apparatus. The phrase 'pulvis codicum' is a witty inversion of the dust that literally accumulates on manuscripts in libraries, transforming it into a metaphor for sterile scholarship.
Bergmanni Bezzeli Schneideri meaque opera
Vogel's four-man team for Vol. III: (1) E. Bergmann, who collated codex A (Coislinianus) for this edition; (2) Bezzel, who collated codex A with special attention to orthographic variants; (3) Georg Schneider, the Berlin scholar who published foundational work on Diodorus manuscripts in the Wochenschrift für klassische Philologie (1891); and (4) Vogel himself. This collaborative model — one editor synthesizing others' collations — was standard in 19th-century German Altertumswissenschaft. The 'emendata vel prima collatione' means some manuscripts were collated for the very first time for this edition.
Reiskei Wurmi Hertleini Madvigi emendationibus adhuc neglectis
Four great emenders whose conjectures Vogel adopted for the first time in a critical text: (1) Johann Jacob Reiske (1716–1774), the great Leipzig Hellenist; (2) Christian Friedrich Wurm (1803–1859), specialist in Diodorus; (3) Friedrich Hertlein (1821–1872), editor of Julian; (4) Johan Nicolai Madvig (1804–1886), the Danish textual critic famed for his Adversaria Critica. That their emendations were 'adhuc neglectis' (hitherto neglected) shows how editions can ossify: once Dindorf set a vulgate, decades passed before superior readings were admitted.