One orthographic peculiarity is perhaps worth noting: we saw that _B_ did not agree with _{ Pi}_ in the spellings _karet_ and _karitas_.[49] We do, however, find _karitate_ elsewhere in _B_ (109, 8), and the curious reading _Kl_ [.'.] _facere_, mg. _calfacere_, for _calfacere_ (56, 12). This is an additional bit of evidence for supposing that a copy (_P{ 1}_) intervened between _P_ and _B_; _P_ had the spelling _Karitas_ consistently, _P{ 1}_ altered it to the usual form, and _B_ reproduced the corrections in _P{ 1}_, failing to take them all, unless, as may well be, _P{ 1}_ had failed to correct all the cases.
[Footnote 49: See above, pp. 42, n. 1, and 50, n. 1.]
Thus the evidence contained in the portion of _BF_ outside the text of _{ Pi}_ corroborates our working hypothesis deduced from the fragment itself. We have found nothing yet to overthrow our surmise that a bit of the ancient Parisinus is veritably in the city of New York.
[Sidenote: _Aldus's methods; his basic text_]
We may now return to Aldus and imagine, if we can, his method of critical procedure. Finding his agreement with _{ Pi}_ so close, even in what editors before and after him have regarded as errors, I am disposed to think that he studied his Parisinus with care and followed its authority respectfully. Finding that his seemingly extravagant statements about the antiquity of his book are essentially true, I am disposed to put more confidence in Aldus than editors have granted him thus far. I should suppose that, working in the most convenient way, he turned over to his compositor, not a fresh copy of _P_, but the pages of some edition corrected from _P_--which Aldus surely tells us that he used--and from whatever other sources he consulted. It may be beyond our powers to discover the precise edition that he thus employed. It does not at first thought seem likely that he would select the Princeps, which does not include the eighth book at all, and contains errors that later were weeded out. In the portion of text included in _{ Pi}_, _P_ has thirty-two readings which Aldus avoids. In most of these cases _p_ commits an error, sometimes a ridiculous error, like _offam_ for _officia_ (62, 25); the manuscript on which _p_ was based apparently made free use of abbreviations. Keil's damning estimate of _r_[50] is amply borne out in this section of the text; Aldus differs from _r_ in sixty-five cases, most of these being errors in _r_. He agrees with _{ sigma}_ in all but twenty-six readings.[51] Aldus would have had fewest changes to make, then, if his basic text was { sigma}. This is apparently the view of Keil,[52] who would agree at any rate that Aldus made special use of the { sigma} editions and who also declares that _p_ is the _fundamentum_ of _r_ as _r_ is of the edition of Pomponius Laetus.[53]