Works
It is on his skill as a reader of palimpsests that Mai's fame chiefly rests. To the period of his residence at Milan belong:
- fragments of Cicero's judicial orations Pro Scauro, Pro Tullio, Pro Flacco, and his In Clodium et Curionem, De aere alieno Milonis, and De rege Alexandrino (1814)
- M. Corn. Frontonis opera inedita, cum epistolis item ineditis, Antonini Pii, Marci Aurelii, Lucii Veri et Appiani (1815; new ed., 1823, with more than 100 additional letters found in the Vatican library)
- portions of eight speeches of Quintus Aurelius Symmachus
- fragments of Plautus
- the oration of Isaeus' De hereditate Cleonymi
- the last nine books of the Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and a number of other works.
- Cicero's De Re Publica, published as M Tullii Ciceronis de republica quae supersunt, Rome, 1822
- Scriptorum veterum nova collectio, e Vaticanis codicibus edita in 1825-1838
- Classici scriptores e Vaticanis codicibus editi in 1828-1838
- Spicilegium Romanum in 1839-1844 (Tomus III, Tomus IX)
- Patrum nova bibliotheca in 1845-1853
His edition of the celebrated Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209, completed in 1838, but not published (ostensibly the ground of inaccuracies) till four years after his death (1858), is the least satisfactory of his labours and was superseded by the edition of Vercellone and Cozza (1868), which itself leaves much to be desired.
Although Mai was not as successful in textual criticism as in the decipherment of manuscripts, he will always be remembered as a laborious and persevering pioneer, by whose efforts many ancient writings have been rescued from oblivion.
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Famous quotes containing the word works:
“There is a great deal of self-denial and manliness in poor and middle-class houses, in town and country, that has not got into literature, and never will, but that keeps the earth sweet; that saves on superfluities, and spends on essentials; that goes rusty, and educates the boy; that sells the horse, but builds the school; works early and late, takes two looms in the factory, three looms, six looms, but pays off the mortgage on the paternal farm, and then goes back cheerfully to work again.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The works of women are symbolical.
We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight,
Producing what? A pair of slippers, sir,
To put on when you’re weary or a stool
To stumble over and vex you ... “curse that stool!”
Or else at best, a cushion, where you lean
And sleep, and dream of something we are not,
But would be for your sake. Alas, alas!
This hurts most, this ... that, after all, we are paid
The worth of our work, perhaps.”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
“Great works constructed there in nature’s spite
For scholars and for poets after us,
Thoughts long knitted into a single thought,
A dance-like glory that those walls begot.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)