Pliny the Elder, the Number LVI and the Colossus of Rhodes

Abstract

Only in Pliny’s Naturalis historia 34, 41 is a number recorded for the years between the dedication of the Colossus of Rhodes and its destruction in the earthquake of 227 B.C. Although all medieval Pliny manuscripts give the number in the Latin numerals LVI, since the 19th century the reading as LXVI was established. The reason for this is the erasure of the letter L before the number LVI in the Codex Bambergensis Msc. Class. 42. A new detailed photograph illustrates, however, that the number LXVI was not in fact written by mistake as LLVI, from which an L was then removed. Rather, the scribe mistakenly wrote the small L of a text word, erased it, and then went on to write the capitals of the number LVI on the roughened surface next to the erased letter.