The manuscripts used by Jacoby for the first ten books of the Antiquities are as follows:
A. — Chisianus 58, 10th cent.
B. — Urbinas 105, 10th-llth cent.
C. Coislinianus 150, 16th cent.
D. — Regius Parisinus 1654 and 1655, 16th cent.
E. — Vaticanus 133, 15th cent.
F. — Urbinas 106, 15th cent.
C and E also contain Book XI.; F contains only I.-V.
The MSS. used for Book XI. and those for the Fragments of XII.-XX. will be listed in Vol. VII.
A and B are by far the best of the MSS.; the others are all late, and some of them, especially C and D, contain numerous interpolations. The editio princeps was based on D. B was first used by Hudson, but he contented himself with giving its readings in his notes. The translators Beilanger and Spelman were prompt to adopt most of the good readings of B, and many were taken into the text by Reiske. Ritschl was the first to make a comparative study of A and B. As a result of his first investigation, based on insufficient evidence, he was inclined to rate A much higher than B; but later he showed a better appreciation of the good readings found only in B, and concluded that a sound text must rest upon a judicious use of both A and B, — a conclusion in which Jacoby heartily concurred. Kiessling based his edition on B so far as possible.
The individual symbols of the late MSS. appear very infrequently in Jacoby’s (and the present) critical apparatus, since these MSS. are rarely of any service in establishing the text. An occasional good reading found only in the margin of D (Dmg) may have been entered by R. Stephanus himself; in any event such readings are evidently based on conjecture rather than on the authority of any manuscript.