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To all the later copies of Celsus is prefixed an index of the several editions, which makes it needless for me to give an account of them. All the older ones, printed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, abound with numberless gross errors, that in many places utterly destroy the construction. These, Vander Linden undertook to correct, and the authorities he used for that purpose are contained in a catalogue annexed to his preface, in which he tells us he has made very few changes from his own conjecture, and none of these, but where the subject evidently required them. In the dedication he says, “Who would imagine, that after the diligent labours of so many illustrious men, as Egnatius, Cæsarius, Constantine, Stephens, Pantinus, Ronsseus, and Rubeus, I should have corrections to make in more than two thousand places?”

As it was proper I should translate from one particular edition, I chose for that purpose Linden’s; or Almeloveen’s, who has followed him almost in every letter; as these are generally esteemed by far the most correct: though it must be owned, that Linden has made many alterations without necessity, and sometimes for the worse. Where the sense was either obscure or inconsistent with the context, I have often been assisted by the more ancient editions. On such occasions I have given my authority and reasons in the notes. In passages where I found a reading in the old copies much preferable to Linden’s, but not altogether necessary upon account of the sense, I have marked it in a note, without adopting it into the next.