"
There was something unusual in the character of the script that made it
hard to read; its ancient appearance even suggested to Aldus a date as
early as that of Pliny himself.
"Est enim uolumen ipsum non solum correctissimum, sed etiam ita
antiquum, ut putem scriptum Plinii temporibus."
This is enthusiastic language. In the days of Italian humanism,
a scholar might call almost any book a _codex pervetustus_ if it
supplied new readings for his edition and its script seemed unusual.
As Professor Merrill remarks:[3]
"The extreme age that Aldus was disposed to attribute to the
manuscript will, of course, occasion no wonder in the minds of
those who are familiar with the vague notions on such matters that
prevailed among scholars before the study of palaeography had been
developed into somewhat of a science. The manuscript may have been
written in one of the so-called 'national' hands, Lombardic,
Visigothic, or Merovingian. But if it were in a 'Gothic' hand of
the twelfth or thirteenth centuries, it might have appeared
sufficiently grotesque and illegible to a reader accustomed for
the most part to the exceedingly clear Italian book hands of the
fifteenth century."
[Footnote 3: _C.P._ II (1907), pp. 134 f.]
In a later article Professor Merrill well adds that even the uncial
script would have seemed difficult and alien to one accustomed to the
current fifteenth-century style.
Pages:
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77