the second set were the work of one man, whether John of Antioch, or
Peter Patricius, or some third individual. Still, though not direct
quotations from Dio, they are regarded as of value in filling out both
his account and that of Xiphilinus. The words are different, but the
facts remain undoubtedly true.

[Footnote 3: This would give Dio a considerably longer life than is
commonly allowed him.]

The _Excerpts Concerning Embassies_ are contained in somewhat less
than a dozen manuscripts, all of which prove to have sprung from a
Spanish archetype (since destroyed by fire) that Juan Paez de Castro
owned in the sixteenth century. Many of the copies were made by
Andreas Darmarius. The first publisher of these selections was Fulvio
Orsini (= Ursinus), who brought them out at Antwerp in 1582. As their
name indicates, they are accounts of embassies sent either by the
Romans to foreign tribes or by foreign tribes to the Romans. Some of
them are taken from Cassius Dio; hence their importance here.

Now it was the custom of the earlier editors to arrange the (early)
fragments of Dio according to the groups from which they were taken:
(1) the so-called Fragmenta Valesia (pickings from grammarians,
lexicographers, scholiasts), edited by the same Henri de Valois above
mentioned; (2) the Fragmenta Peiresciana (= Excerpts Concerning
Virtues and Vices); (3) the Fragmenta Ursina (= Excerpts Concerning
Embassies); and finally, in the edition of Sturz[4] (4) Excerpta
Vaticana (= Excerpts Concerning Judgments and the now rejected
"Planudean Excerpts"). The above grouping has been abandoned and a
strictly chronological order followed in all the later editions,
including Bekker, Dindorf, Melber, Boissevain.