[Footnote 20: The fraudulent character of the alleged discovery was exposed in masterly fashion by Ludwig Traube in his "Palaeographische Forschungen IV," published in the _Abhandlungen der K. Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften_, III Klasse, XXIV Band, 1 Abteilung, Munich 1904.]
[Footnote 21: Cf. E.T. Merrill, "On the use by Aldus of his manuscripts of Pliny's _Letters_," in _Classical Philology_, XIV (1919), p. 34.]
But it may be objected that a clever forger possessing a knowledge of palaeography would be able to reproduce all these features of ancient manuscripts. This objection can hardly be sustained. It is difficult to believe that any modern could reproduce faithfully all the characteristics of sixth-century uncials and fifteenth-century notarial writing without unconsciously falling into some error and betraying his modernity. Besides, there is one consideration which to my mind establishes the genuineness of our fragment beyond a peradventure. We have seen above that the leaves of our manuscript are so arranged that hair side faces hair side and flesh side faces flesh side. The visible effect of this arrangement is that two pages of clear writing alternate with two pages of faded writing, the faded appearance being caused by the ink scaling off from the less porous surface of the flesh side of the vellum.[22] As a matter of fact, the flesh side of the vellum showed faded writing long before modern time. To judge by the retouched characters on fol. 53r it would seem that the original writing had become illegible by the eighth or ninth century.[23] Still, a considerable period of time would, so far as we know, be necessary for this process. It is highly improbable that a forger could devise this method of giving his forgery the appearance of antiquity, and even if he attempted it, it is safe to say that the present effect would not be produced in the time that elapsed before the book was sold to Mr. Morgan.
[Footnote 22: That the hair side of the vellum retained the ink better than the flesh side may be seen from an examination of facsimiles in the Leyden series _Codices graeci et latini photographice depicti_.]
[Footnote 23: That the ink could scale off the flesh side of the vellum in less than three centuries is proved by the condition of the famous Tacitus manuscript in Beneventan script in the Laurentian Library. It was written in the eleventh century and shows retouched characters of the thirteenth. See foll. 102, 103 in the facsimile edition in the Leyden series mentioned in the previous note.]