The Disorder in P and M of Cicero’s Letters Ad familiares, with a List of Extant Manuscripts

Authors

  • Michael D. Reeve Cambridge University

Abstract

The 15th-century manuscripts of Cicero’s letters Ad familiares are often said to descend from M (s. IX) by way of its copy P (a. 1392), and accordingly the argument was put forward in 2024, with consequences for dating, that any reading also found as a correction of Niccoli’s in P spread from P. Both views are challenged here and the former blamed on a misapprehension of Politian’s about the disorder that he found in the quires of P. When not conjectural, Salutati’s corrections in P are taken back to another copy of M written in northern Italy, Niccoli’s to M itself; Vat. Lat. 1688, hitherto ignored, is shown to be the earliest copy of P, made before all the corrections. For the benefit of anyone who may wish to explore the work done by humanists on a text that captivated them, a lightly annotated list of extant manuscripts is appended.

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Author Biography

Michael D. Reeve, Cambridge University

Michael D. Reeve retired in 2007 from the Kennedy Professorship of Latin, Cambridge, and is an emeritus fellow of Exeter College Oxford and Pembroke College Cambridge. His work on the transmission of Latin texts includes Manuscripts and methods (Rome 2011) and The transmission of Pliny’s “Natural history” (Rome 2021) as well as entries on Cicero and other writers in L. D. Reynolds (ed.), Texts and transmission (Oxford 1983), and many articles and reviews published since 1973.

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Published

2025-06-30

How to Cite

Reeve, M. D. (2025). The Disorder in P and M of Cicero’s Letters Ad familiares, with a List of Extant Manuscripts. Ciceroniana On Line, 9(1), 7–52. Retrieved from https://ojsunito33.archicoop.it/index.php/COL/article/view/12429