Would it really be so difficult to determine how chapter
divisions are marked in all surviving ancient books? The
question of chapter divisions and headings in ancient literary
and technical texts is a long term interest of mine, as anyone
who chooses to look may discover by clicking on the tag at the
end of this post. We find, in later medieval texts, that these
ancient texts are often divided, not merely into books, but also
into chapters, with chapter headings. It does not seem well
known or classified, just how often we find this. Chapter
divisions and titles are a cinderella subject, largely ignored
or treating in passing. In my last post, I looked at what
chapter divisions and titles there were in a renaissance
manuscript of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History. The NH is an
interesting work to investigate, for this subject, since the
author states in the preface that book 1 of the work is a list
of capituli. So we do know that these items existed in the
autograph, whereas we generally have no such certain