I LIBRI XXX-XXXIII DI POLIBIO NEL CODEX PEIRESCIANUS: INTRODUZIONE, TESTO CRITICO E COMMENTO

This Ph.D. thesis consists in a commented critical edition of 15 fragments of Polybius’s Histories from the Books XXX-XXXIII handed down through the Codex Peirescianus (Turonensis 980). The edition is also preceded by two introductory chapters that aim to analyze some palaeographical features of the manuscript that may suggest a plausible dating and establish the nature of the relationships among the various topics of the Excerpta Constantiana and above all with the Suda Lexicon, since a methodical survey on how the lexicographers have obtained many entries or quotations from T (or rather from its draft copies) has not been accomplished so far. The key features of this procedure were identified in the rich and multi-layered paratext of the manuscript, which was intently inspected as regards the section of Polybius but which would deserve a thorough overview extended to every author excerpted in the codex. The critical edition takes into great account these preliminary and methodological conjectures and does not omit to revise and update the bushy bibliography on which the last edition (1904) was based: all this also finds complete explanations in the comment, a companion to the critical text, as much as a stance on the issue concerning the order of the excerpts and the role played by authors such as Livy, Diodorus, and Athaeneus in the constitution of the Polybian text.