The Prodigiorum liber is a collection of extraordinary events drawn from material of Livian origin, probably mediated by an unknown Chronicon, as happens for Eutropius.  The title of the work reads Iulii Obsequentis ab anno urbis conditae quingentesimo quinto prodigiorum liber imperfectus, but (ignoring the word imperfectus, perhaps added by the editor of the editio princeps, an Aldina of 1508) the text contains the prodigia not starting from 249 BC (505 AUC, the year in which the pontifices began to record them), but from 190 through 11 BC: it is probable that an early part of the liber has been lost (Rossbach).  Unfortunately, manuscripts of the text do not survive: the Aldina (which also includes the letters of the younger Pliny and his Panegyricus to Trajan, as well as Suetonius’ de viris illustribus and De grammaticis et rhetoribus) is based on a transcription of a codex that Aldo Manuzio had acquired from Fra’ Giocondo da Verona in 1506; the Dominican monk had discovered a manuscript of Obsequens together with one of Pliny in France at the start of the 16^th c., and had transcribed it, but the exemplar was then lost. The work lacks a preface (a fact that reinforces the hypothesis of an initial lacuna) and bears consular dating and description for every event; the language is terse, and individual prodigia have been combined in brief phrases that seem to give up any linguistic value in favor of a willingness to amaze the reader, who apparently did not need to be of an advanced level. [A. Balbo; tr. C. L. Caterine]