INTRODUCTION
Already Casaubon refers to 'the opinion of those who have judged that these xii Books are merely excerpts and eclogues from an ampler and more perfect work'. He does not say who these critics were; and, although he occasionally refers to Xylander as though he were one of them, 'excerpts and eclogues' sounds as if he were aiming at Barthius, who held this opinion.
Whether there were others, as Casaubon implies, or not, Barthius[1] had said: 'The Florida or Eclogues, should you use that term, which have reached us from the books of the Emperor Antoninus are heavenly.' Moreover, he continually referred to our present text as 'the Excerpts from Antoninus'.
This opinion he founds upon internal and external evidence. The form of such chapters as the first of Book i he takes to be plain proof of an excerptor's work, where 'neither head nor foot appears'. His external ground is one of which Joly later was to make use, the existence 'in Italy of written exemplars, which are designated Eclogues out of the Book to Himself'. The manuscripts Barthius had clearly not himself examined, for he rests his statement on Conrad Gesner's entry in his Bibliotheca Universalis,[2] but does not cite that entry exactly. Nor does he go closely into the serious question he has raised, being content with a loose comparison of Marcus' work with the Florida of Apuleius.
In 1742 Jean-Pierre de Joly published anonymously Réflexions de l'Empereur Marc-Aurèle Antonin, the whole rearranged by subjects in thirty-six sections. He used the translation of M. and Mme d'Acier. Later, continuing his study and reflecting upon the origin of the Meditations, he published in 1770 a new French
