INTRODUCTION
book division; i closed at ii. 3 and, ii began at the present ii. 4. At the close of i. 17, the words: 'Written among the Quadi, on the Gran' appear in the text, followed by a (viz. a', that is, Book i). This appears to be the title of the present ii, which was originally labelled i. We may surmise that the present first Book once stood apart from the Meditations proper, being prefixed as an Introduction or, as some think, intended for an Epilogue. Books ii–xii may thus have originally been separate volumes, a distinct book, with a different purpose.
That the present vii may have once been two Books (in which way the number twelve would be completed) is suggested by a note which has got into the text of the first edition, though missing in A. Book vii, as was remarked above, is at present disordered. After vii. 31 (the end of which is mutilated) follow three chapters labelled: 'On Death', 'On Pain', 'On Glory' (such labels are nowhere else employed by Marcus); then comes a series of extracts from Plato, Euripides, and others, with one or two aphorisms which may be original, vii. 35–51. To this succeed chs. 52–75 in the author's familiar manner of writing.
At ch. 52 init. a marginal note, as Xylander remarks, had crept into the text of P cod. It runs: 'This is not a beginning but is continuous with the chapters above, which preceded the Plato citations (viz. preceded ch. 35).'[1] This would appear to indicate that the original Book ran vii. 1–34 (or 1–31 more probably), 52–75. The evidence of A is perhaps confirmatory. The scribe has left a space of half a line at the end of ch. 51. He begins ch. 52 with a capital, in red, and he found his original obscure.
A more conspicuous case of intrusion will be found at
- ↑ οὑκ ἔστιν ἀρχὴ τοῦτο, ἀλλὰ τῶν ἀνωτέρω τῶν πρὸ τῶν Πλατωνικῶν συναφές Ed. princ. p. 83. The MS. P cod. had Πλατωνικόν, in the text before ch. 35, and it will be seen that this and other glosses appear in the text of the first edition. Not all are in A.
