ny
rate, not more than twenty-five years after his book hunting
expedition we find both copies in Italy. It is strange, furthermore,
that neither of these two ancient copies were used by the fifteenth
century copyists to make the various copies distributed by them, but
that an inferior copy of the Vatican Ms. became the _vulgata_--the
progenitor of this series of medieval copies. One must bear in mind
how assiduously medieval scribes copied everything that appeared to be
of any importance to them, and how each new copy by virtue of human
fallibility or self-sufficiency must have suffered in the making, and
it is only by very careful comparison of the various manuscripts that
the original text may be rehabilitated.

This, to a large extent, Vollmer and Giarratano have accomplished.
Vollmer, too, rejects the idea invented by the humanists, that Apicius
had a collaborator, editor or commentator in the person of C{oe}lius
or Caelius. This name, so Vollmer claims, has been added to the book by
medieval scholars without any reason except conjecture for such
action. They have been misled by the mutilated title: Api... Cae...;
Vollmer reconstructs this title as follows:

API[cii artis magiri- (or) opsartyti-]
CAE[libri X]

Remember, it is the title page only that is thus mutilated. The ten
books or chapters bear the full name of Apicius, never at any time
does the name of C{oe}lius appear in the text, or at the head of the
chapters.

The _Archetypus_, with the book and the chapters carefully indexed and
numbered as they were, with each article neatly titled, the captions
and capital letters rubricated--heightened by red color, and with its
proper spacing of the articles and chapters must once have been a
representative example of the art of book making as it flourished
towards the end of the period that sealed the fate of the Roman
empire, when books of a technical nature, law books, almanacs, army
lists had been developed to a high point of perfection. Luxurious
finish, elaborate illumination point to the fact that our book (the
Vatican copy) was intended for the use in some aristocratic household.

THE EXCERPTS OF VINIDARIUS

And now, from a source totally different than the two important
manuscripts so much discussed here, we receive additional proof of the
authenticity of Apicius. In the _codex Salmasianus_ (cf. III,
Apiciana) we find some thirty formulae attributed to Apicius, entitled:
_Apici excerpta a