The oldest Paris MS. is in the Bibliotheque Nationale, and is
written on paper of the close of the fifteenth century. Nobody
knows what has become of the MS., which is supposed to have been
anterior to the editions at the end of the fifteenth century, and
was in the library of the Congregation de l'Oratoire, to whom it
was presented by Henri Harlai de Sancy, who brought it from Italy
and died in the Oratory in 1667.

The MS. of Wolfenbuttel (Guelferbytana), used by Ernesti in his
edition, was bought at Ferrara on the 28th of September, 1461;
beyond that nothing is known of it. The MS. in the library of
Jesus College, Oxford, is of the year 1458; the Bodleian, numbered
2,764, is of the century after, though the great Benedictine
antiquary, Montfaucon, in that monument of labour and erudition,
Bibliotheca Bibliothecarum MSS. Nova, is of opinion that it is as
old as 1463; and that in the Harleian collection of MSS. in the
British Museum, also numbered 2,764, stated to date back to 1412,
can scarcely be older than 1440 or 1450, from the diphthongal
writing, first introduced by Guarino of Verona, who died in 1460.
The MS. of Grenoble, written on very fine vellum, and containing
the whole of the Annals, is of the sixteenth century. The three
Medicean, the Neapolitan and the other Italian MSS. are all of
very modern writing. As to the MSS. of Wurzburg and Mirandola, the
former is not to be found, and the latter was not in existence
even in the time of Justus Lipsius.

The four most important MSS. are those known as the First and
Second Florence, the Buda and that from which Vindelinus of Spire
published the last six books. The two oldest are the "Second