Breathings and accents were found in various manuscripts of the Bible as early as the time of Epiphanius and Augustine. In our oldest manuscripts they seldom occur before the seventh century. They were inserted by the first hand of the Ambrosian Hexateuch (Swete’s F), which is ascribed to the first half of the fifth century by Ceriani. They seem to have been added to the Codex Vaticanus by the third hand, probably in the twelfth century, and do not always conform to our rules. Augustine, commenting on the rival readings _filiis_ and _porcina_, in Psalm xvi. 14, says: “quod (porcina) alii codices habent et verius habere perhibentur, quia diligentiora exemplaria per accentus notam eiusdem verbi graeci ambiguitatem graeco scribendi more dissolvunt, obscurius est” (ii. 504-5, in Lagarde’s _Probe einer neuen Ausgabe_, p. 40). Similarly, speaking of the difference between ῥάβδου αὐτοῦ and ῥάβδου αὑτοῦ, Gen. xlvii. 31, he says:—“fallit enim eos verbum graecum, quod eisdem literis scribitur sive _eius_ sive _suae_; sed accentus [= spiritus] dispares sunt et ab eis qui ista noverunt, in codicibus non contemnuntur” (iv. 53 ed. Lugd. 1586, cited by Scrivener, i. p. 47). [Sidenote: Abbreviation.] The practice of abbreviating words of frequent occurrence like Θ̅Σ̅, Χ̅Σ̅, Χ̅Σ̅, Α̅Ν̅Ο̅Σ̅ goes back to very early times. So, too, does the use of letters as numerals, Ι for 10, etc. [Sidenote: Divisions.] In dividing syllables the Greek copyists in general observed the rule of beginning each new line with a consonant. A good many exceptions occur however, especially in the Vaticanus, most of which have been corrected by a later hand. These are indicated in the third volume of Swete’s edition of the LXX. A good instance of this is seen in Jer. xiv. 12, where the Vaticanus and Marchalianus both originally had προσ ενεγκωσιν, which in the former is corrected to προ σενεγκωσιν, and in the latter to προσε νεγκωσιν. For examples from the O.T. portion of the Codex Vaticanus see Nestle’s _Septuagintastudien_, ii. 20. Stichometry. Carefully written manuscripts of the Old and New Testaments are provided with a system of stichometry just as occurs in the better manuscripts of the classics, as _e.g._ Herodotus and Demosthenes. In the N.T. it is found specially in those Pauline Epistles that go back to the recension of Euthalius. One of the writers of the Codex Vaticanus has copied, in several of the books of the O.T., the stichometric enumeration which he found in his original, and the numbers show that the manuscript he copied contained almost twice as much matter in a line as the one he himself wrote. See Nestle, _Septuagintastudien_, ii. 20 f.; Lagarde, _Die Stichometrie der syrisch-hexaplarischen Uebersetzung des alten Testaments_ (_Mitteilungen_, iv. 205-208). On the stichometric list in the Codex Claromontanus of the Pauline Epistles (D_{2}), see p. 76.