as is the case with E_{3} which is merely a bad copy of D_{2} (p. 77), or that scholars cannot agree as to the relationship existing between two manuscripts like F_{2} and G_{3} (p. 77).[164] Nor need we be surprised to find that some of our most peculiar witnesses seem to have remained absolutely childless, while a less valuable race is perpetuated in many copies. The words of Homer—οἵη περ φύλλων γενεή, τοίη δὲ καὶ ἀνδρῶν—may be applied conversely to the leaves to which we entrust our immortality: habent sua fata libelli. The only unfortunate thing is that we are so little able to follow the course of these fates by means of external testimony. [Sidenote: External testimony.] When the Emperor Constantine _e.g._ asks Eusebius to supply him with fifty copies of the Scriptures at once, we cannot but suppose that these became authoritative over a large area. But in which of the classes into which our manuscripts have hitherto been divided are we to look for these now?[165] And conversely if, in another locality, heathen persecution was directed specially against the Bibles of the Christians, this cannot have been without some effect. According to C. Hülsen (_Bilder aus der Geschichte des Kapitols_, Rome, 1899), even the Roman Bishop Marcellinus, with his deacons Strabo and Cassianus, in the year 304, burned, in front of the temple of Juno Moneta, those Gospels which ten years later were made the law of Christian Rome by the Emperor Constantine. These scattered notices must be much more carefully collected and considered than hitherto, and combined with the results obtained from the collation of the manuscripts. [Sidenote: Recensions.] Most of our information with respect to the =recensions= of the Bible comes from the Syrian Church, and is concerned rather with the Old Testament than with the New; but the recensions of the former may throw some light on those of the latter. [Sidenote: Lucian.] (_a_) As the result of their researches, Westcott and Hort have made it very probable, on internal grounds, that a recension of an official nature was undertaken in Syria, perhaps at Antioch, about the fourth century, and that to this recension are due the origin and propagation of that form of the text of the New Testament which was widely disseminated in the Byzantine Empire, now represented in our later minuscules, and made the _textus receptus_ by means of the first printed editions.