from which _Π_ and _B_ descend, being earlier than _Π_, must have been a manuscript in majuscules, written in Italy, since that is unquestionably the provenience of _Π_. There were, then, by this supposition, _two_ ancient majuscule manuscripts of the _Letters_, most closely related in text--veritable twins, indeed--that travelled from Italy to France. One (X¹) had arrived in the early Middle Ages and is the parent of _B_ and _F_; the other (_Π_) was probably there in the early Middle Ages, and surely was there in the fifteenth century. We can not deny this possibility, but, on the principle _melius est per unum fieri quam per plura_, we must not adopt it unless driven to it. The history of the transmission of Classical texts in the Carolingian period is against such a supposition.[46] Not many books of the age and quality of _Π_ were floating about in France in the ninth century. There is nothing in the evidence presented by _Π_ and _B_ that drives us to assume the presence of two such codices. There is nothing in this evidence that does not fit the simpler supposition that _BF_ descend directly from _Π_. The burden of proof would appear to rest on those who assert the contrary. _Π_, therefore, if the ancestor of _B_, contained at least as much as we find today in _B_. Some ancestor of _B_ had all ten books. Aldus, whose text is closely related to _BF_, got all ten books from a very ancient manuscript that came down from Paris. Our simpler stemma indicates the presence of one rather than more than one such manuscript in the vicinity of Paris in the ninth or the tenth century and again in the fifteenth. This line of argument, which presents not a mathematically absolute demonstration but at least a highly probable concatenation of facts and deductions, warrants the assumption, to be used at any rate as a working hypothesis, that _Π_ is a fragment of the lost Parisinus which contained all the books of Pliny’s _Letters_. [Footnote 43: See above, p. 44, n. 2.] [Footnote 44: “Zur frühen Ueberlieferungsgeschichte des Briefwechsels zwischen Plinius und Trajan,” in _Wiener Studien_ XXXI (1909), p. 258.] [Footnote 45: See above, pp. 21, 41.] [Footnote 46: See above, p. 22.] Our stemma, then, becomes, _P_ (the whole manuscript), of which _Π_ is a part. | | _P¹_ / \ / \ _B_ \ _F_ [Sidenote: _Evidence from the portions of BF outside the text of Π_]