A manuscript of Polybius online at the British Library

I’m getting interested in the manuscript tradition of the works of Polybius.  Basically books 1-5 of his history come down to us directly.  Books 6-18 are transmitted by a collection of excerpts known as the Excerpta Antiqua.  Finally there are long quotations in some of the compendia of the time of Constantine Porphyrogenitus.  I have just ordered a copy of Moore’s study on the mss., and will doubtless know more on Monday.

But a google search revealed that one ms. of books 1-5 is accessible at least: British Library, Additional, 11728, written in 1416.  Looking at my Loeb of book 1, I can even read the Greek script (not, for me, by any means to be taken for granted).

I was interested to see that the text was divided into sections, each marked with a red capital letter.  Not, I note, the same ones used in the Loeb!

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