“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.[4] A contemporary and rival editor, Catanaeus, disputed Aldus’s claims. In his second edition of the _Letters_ (1518), he professed to have used a very ancient book that came down from Germany and declared that the Paris manuscript had no right to the antiquity which Aldus had imputed to it. But Catanaeus has been proved a liar.[5] He had no ancient manuscript from Germany, and abused Aldus mainly to conceal his cribbings from that scholar’s edition; we may discount his opinion of the age of the Parisinus. Until Aldus, an eminent scholar and honest publisher,[6] is proved guilty, we should assume him innocent of mendacity or naïve ignorance. He speaks in earnest; his words ring true. We must be prepared for the possibility that his ancient manuscript was really ancient. [Footnote 4: _C.P._ X (1915), pp. 18 f.] [Footnote 5: By Merrill, _C.P._ V (1910), pp. 455 ff.] [Footnote 6: Sandys, _A History of Classical Studies_ II (1908), pp. 99 ff.] Since Aldus’s time the Parisinus has disappeared. To quote Merrill again:[7] “This wonderful manuscript, like so many others, appears to have vanished from earth. Early editors saw no especial reason for preserving what was to them but copy for their own better printed texts. Possibly some leaves of it may be lying hid in old bindings; possibly they went to cover preserve-jars, or tennis-racquets; possibly into some final dust-heap. At any rate the manuscript is gone; the copy by Iucundus is gone; the copy of the correspondence with Trajan that Avantius owed to Petrus Leander is gone; if others had any other copies of Book X, in whole or in part, they are gone too.” [Footnote 7: _C.P._ II, p. 135.] [Sidenote: _The Bodleian volume_]