The fortune of Greek novel in the modern age is largely connected to the story of the manuscript Laur. Conv. soppr. 627, the only codex that preserves the novels of Chariton and of Xenophon of Ephesus, and an important witness of Longus' Daphnis and Chole, as well as the first four books of Achilles tatius. This essay retraces some of the phases of the use of this codex by humanists, from when it came into the possession of Antonio Corbinelli, whose library was later bequeethed to the Badia of Florence, until its ntrance into the Biblioteca Laurenziana and the damage it sustained at the hands of Courier in 1809. The article evaluates the hypothesis that Tito Vespasiano Strozzi had direct knowledge of the text of Xenophon Ephesius at the time when he wrote the collection of latin elegies entitled Eroticon (1443), and assesses the evidence for the use of the Badia manuscriptby Poliziano in his notes on Catullus (Bibl. Corsin. inc 50F 37), in the I Miscellanea and in the Stanze. There follows a discussion of the thesis of O'Sullivan, who argues, in his recent Teubner edition of xenophon of Ephesos (2005), that Masuccio Salernitano, in composing the thirty-third novella of his Novellino (Naples 1476), on the theme of the apparent death provoked by a drug shows direct knowledge of an analogous incident that happens to the heroine of Xenophon of Ephesus. A detailed analysis of the story by Masuccio which, reworked by Luigi da Porto, had an influence on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, demonstrates, however, that the hypothesis that Masuccio made direct use of the Badia manuscript cannot be sustained. Masuccio was influenced by Boccaccio, who in turn had adapted the theme of the apparent death from sources both ancient, such as The Story of Apollonius King of Tyre, and medieval, such as Marco Polo's Il Milione.
