"Book that has survived to the present day" isn't really how it works unfortunately. (Maybe it will if we manage to recover those blackened scrolls!) What act

"Book that has survived to the present day" isn't really how it works unfortunately. (Maybe it will if we manage to recover those blackened scrolls!) What actually survives are manuscripts which were copied from earlier manuscripts (iteratively). The ones we have are from the middle ages, usually copied by monks. It's very possible that a transcription error was made during this copying. In fact there's a whole field of study trying to second guess what the scribe might have miscopied, studying manuscripts, palimpsests and so on. The British Museum in London has an excellent collection of manuscripts, with many now digitized: https://www.bl.uk/research/digitised-manuscripts/ https://www.bl.uk/research/digitised-manuscripts/ (Unfortunately I can't seem to view the MS at this link, and they don't have Epistulae of Pliny the Younger which contains the two letters about Pompeii)