INTRODUCTION
Ambrosian ones, and the editor besides being now more skilful in deciphering the palimpsest, and having taken more pains with his work, the result was more satisfactory. Moreover, the older portion was somewhat improved through a fresh inspection of the MS. by Peter Mazuchelli at Milan, and also because Mai availed himself freely of the critical labours of Niebuhr, Heindorf, and Buttmann on the moiety already published. In their edition of 1816 they had sometimes divined, without seeing the MS., the correct reading, which Mai had missed with it under his eyes.
The old Codex of Fronto must have been dismembered and its leaves mixed with others of the same kind before being used for a second writing upon them. For the two volumes of the Acta Concilii of the first Council of Chalcedon, in 451 A.D., in which the Fronto fragments are found, contain besides the Fronto leaves, which are the most numerous, parts of seven speeches of Symmachus, a portion of Pliny's Panegyric, some scholia on Cicero, Moeso-Gothic notes on St. John's Gospel, fragments of a tract on the Arian Controversy, and a single page apiece of Juvenal and Persius. The monks in using the leaves for a second script have generally turned them upside down. When this is not the case, the writing is more difficult to read.
On the first page of both volumes is found the inscription, Liber S. Columbani e Bobio. Bobbio lies in
