The so-called letter of Aristeas to Philocrates appeared first in print in a Latin translation by Matthias Palmerius of Pisa (Rome, 1471). The editio princeps of the Greek text was not published until 1561, when Simon Schard brought out at Basle a text based apparently on an Italian MS., with a few readings taken from a second (Vatican) MS. The particular MS. which was followed in this earliest edition the present writer has not been able to discover. But there exists in the Library at Basle (MS. O. IV. 10, no. 21 in Omont's Catalogue of Swiss MSS.) a MS. presented to it by Schard, which is beyond a doubt a copy of the Vatican MS. denoted by K in the present text; and a list of readings appended to Schard's edition under the heading ‘castigationes in Aristeam juxta exemplar Vaticanae’ appears to be a scanty selection of the readings of K. Schard's edition was followed by others in the seventeenth century based upon his work; but it does not appear that any fresh collation of MSS. was undertaken. Until 1870 the latest edition of the text was that which Hody prefixed to his work De Bibliorum Textibus, published at Oxford in 1705. This was merely a reprint of the text of Schard, Hody naïvely confessing in his preface that he did not consider the work of collating MSS. of a work of such doubtful authenticity to be worth the trouble.