Book 15
5.12
And on learning this, the emperor decided that the matter should be investigated searchingly through the medium of his council and all his officers. And when the judges had taken their seats, Florentius, son of Nigrinianus, at the time deputy master of the offices,The magister officiorum was a very important official, to whom many of the former functions of the praetorian prefect had been transferred (or shared with the prefect). Along with his many duties was complete charge of the discipline of the palace. See Introd., pp. xxxvii. f. on scrutinizing the script with greater care, and finding a kind of shadow, as it were, of the former letters,For the meaning of apices, see Amer. Jour. of Philol., xlviii. (1927), pp. 1 ff. The word is wrongly translated by Holland, prickes or accents over the letters, and by Yonge, some vestiges of the tops of former words; rightly by Tross, einige Spuren der früheren Buchstaben. perceived what had been done, namely, that the earlier text had been tampered with and other matter added quite different from what Silvanus had dictated, in accordance with the intention of this patched-up forgery.
