forty-five (save the two above noted) seem to have been extant in
their original forms at least as late as the twelfth century. Which
end of the already syncopated composition was the first to go the way
of all flesh (and parchment, too,) it would not be an easy matter to
determine. It is regarded by most scholars as certain that Ioannes
Zonaras, who lived in the twelfth century, had the first twenty-one
and the last forty-five for his epitomes. Hultsch, to be sure,
advances the opinion[1] that Books One to Twenty-one had by that time
fallen into a condensed form, the only one accessible; but the
majority of scholars are against him. After Zonaras's day both One to
Twenty-one and Sixty-one to Eighty suffer the corruption of moth and
of worm.

[Footnote 1: Iahni Annales, vol. 141, p. 290 sqq.]

The world has, then, in this twentieth century, those entire books of
Dio which have already been mentioned,--Thirty-six to Sixty,--and
something more. Let us first consider, accordingly, the condition in
which this intact remnant has come down to the immediate present, and
afterward the sources on which we have to depend for a knowledge of
the lost portion.

There are eleven manuscripts for this torso of Roman History, taking
their names from the library of final deposit, but they are not all,
by any means, of equal value. First come Mediceus A (referred to in
this book as Ma), Vaticanus A, Parisinus A, and Venetus A (Va) of the
first class; then Mediceus B of the second class; finally, Parisinus
B, Escorialensis, Turinensis, Vaticanus B, and Venetus B, with the
mongrel Vesontinus, which occupies a position in this group best
designated, perhaps, as 2-1/2.