You can’t buy 100w lightbulbs here in the UK any more. Apparently some backstairs deal has been done to prevent us buying them and force us to use fluorescents. But for those of us who are getting older, the resulting light means we just can’t read the books! I’m having real difficulty in the evenings in my hotel, and have had to stockpile bulbs for home. If you’re a UK citizen, please add your name to the petition against this nonsense here. I don’t mind those who like fluorescents buying them; but let those of us who need light have it please!
Month: January 2009
Ignoring the credit crunch and why I can’t
The credit crunch has just affected one of my projects seriously. Usually I try to pay for translations that I commission as we go along, at 10 cents a word. That way I get a chunk of translation every week or two, and a small bill which I pay immediately, by cheque or Paypal. At the end we have a ‘sweep-up’ process, and I pay for that at some hourly rate related to the per-word rate. This works well, because it means I can see progress, and nothing nasty happens financially. It’s not much different to buying a CD or two every couple of weeks.
However with the translation of the Commentary on the Nicene Creed of al-Majdalus which I commissioned last year, I agreed to a final bill system. But… a year ago, $2 = 1 GBP. Now $1.40 = 1 GBP; a fall of 30%! Effectively that adds hundreds of dollars to the price, without benefitting anyone! The word in the UK is that the pound will fall further, because the UK government is printing money like fury. No-one in mid-2008 could have foreseen a fall of that size.
Just a thought, if you have some kind of commitment in a foreign currency. Have a plan to handle this kind of situation, agreed with the translator.
I’m going to keep commissioning translations, but cautiously!
Agapius and the Syriac Old Testament
I’m still translating Agapius. In part 1.1, while discussing the length of the lives of the Patriarchs, he performs a calculation based on the Septuagint. He then gives the values from the Jewish Torah, commenting on how the Jews changed the text after Christianity came long. He then says:
The Syriac Torah depends on the Torah (of the Jews), because it was translated from Hebrew after Christianity and the deterioration (of the text).
I’m not sure whether modern scholars are certain of when the Old Testament was translated into Syriac, which makes this testimony interesting.
More fake relics for sale on eBay!
Antonio Lombatti has discovered that you can buy a bit of the “Column of the flagellation” online. I wonder if it’s the same shysters as last time?
Galen and his works
Who cares to read the works of an doctor of the 2nd century AD? Well, it doesn’t matter anyway; you can’t! Not unless you are fluent in Greek at least, anyway. Do we care?
Those of us who have the “Indiana Jones” approach to lost texts and manuscripts cannot fail to find Galen interesting. He’s almost a textbook case of how ancient Greek works reached us, via Arabic. He also has much to say of interest about the way that ancient books were made and traded and forged. Reynolds and Wilson, Scribes and Scholars,1 refer to him frequently, and I’ve summarised a few of the bits. This should whet your appetite!
Ptolemy I sought to fill the library at Alexandria. He borrowed the official copies of the Attic tragedies from Athens, giving a massive deposit, and then chose to forfeit the deposit and keep the books. This is recounted by Galen, 17(1).607. 2 In their eagerness to buy all the books that existed, the librarians were frequently deceived into buying forgeries (Galen vol. 15, p. 105).
Galen attributes the confused state of one of the works of Hippocrates to marginal notes being incorporated into the main text by a copyist (vol. 15, p. 624); in vol. 17 (1) p. 634, he notes how a parallel from another writer had been written in a margin, and incorporated in the same manner.3
Galen also was very close to the text critical maxim that the more difficult reading is to be preferred (Corpus medicorum graecorum 5.10.2.2,p.178, 17-18) where he expresses a preference for old or antiquated words in the text and understands that they would have been changed into something easier if the text had been modified (ibid. 121.17-18).
The Arabic scholars investigated Galen closely, and recent research into Arabic versions has recovered a missing passage from one known text and, better still, proof that an incomprehensible passage in the Greek is because a leaf in an early copy was pulled out and reinserted backwards! The Nestorian translator, Hunain ibn Ishaq, gives a long list of Galen’s works then extant and considers which had been translated into Syriac, which into Arabic, by whom, when, and where manuscripts of the Greek might be found. His method of translation involves collating several manuscripts to deal with damage, a trick he learned in part from Galen himself.4
After the fall of Constantinople in 1204, William of Moerbecke became Latin archbishop of Corinth, and translated into Latin some works of Galen not now extant.
In the 19th century Minas Minoides discovered some lost essays of Galen on Mount Athos, which are today Mss. Paris. sup. gr. 634 and 635.
Interested? I admit that I am. I’d like to see those passages of Galen in English. Indeed I’d like to see that list by Hunain ibn Ishaq.
Sadly no-one has ever been interested in translating Galen. Initially I could only find one work in translation. Then John Wilkins of Exeter University in the UK kindly pointed out to me that some selected works were translated by Peter Singer for the Oxford World Classics series in 1997, but that’s it.
Incidentally the little Oxford World Classics paperback is already out of print, and commanding prices from £31 upwards! This system of making minority-interest texts available in short print run book form with a fierce copyright of life+70 years seems pretty broken to me; the book may exist, but who can read it? Luckily my local library bought it, so I should be able to get it on ILL, and will report back.
Let us hope that Galen will attract more attention, and more of it online.
Notes:
1. 3rd edition, Clarendon Press (1991).
2. The reference given in S&S — generally bad on references — is 17(1).607., which tells us little; which work of Galen is this? Luckily I have the French translation of S&S, D’Homere a Erasme, translated by Pierre Petitmengin who inserted a good few and elucidates. He gives the reference to the Kühn edition of Galen, Claudii Galeni opera omnia, 1821-33, 20 vols; the ref. is to vol. 17, 1, p.607; I have followed his lead on references above. There is a review of Kühn’s edition in English here. The edition is Greek with a Latin translation, and runs to over 20,000 pages! Vol. 20 is here.
3. S&S describes Galen as the greatest text-critical scholar of his time, and that W.G.Rutherford, A chapter in the history of annotation, London 1905, pp.47-57 is still worth reading.
4. See J.S.Wilkie, JHS 101 (1981), 145-8; S&S has further bibliography.
Isidore of Pelusium – how to number the letters
A cross-reference table of the letter numbers in the manuscripts (used in the Sources Chretiennes edition of the second half) and the letter numbers as found in Migne is now online here.
Evidence for Allectus
The ever-interesting Adrian Murdoch draws attention to the PLRE life of the Usurper Emperor-of-Britain Allectus, which he gives as follows:
Allectus: Augustus (in Britain) 293-296. Rationalis summae rei of Carausius 293: qui (Allectus) cum eius (Carausii) permissu summae rei praeesset Aur. Vict. Caes. 39.41. After Carausius had ruled for seven years Allectus murdered him and took his place, but three years later was defeated and killed by the PPO Asclepiodotus 3 serving under Constantius Aur. Vict. Caes. 39-40-2, Eutrop. IX22, Oros. VIII 25.6, cf Pan. Lat IV 12.15-16.
The list of authorities for our knowledge of a man who ruled part of the Roman Empire for 3 years, between 293-296 AD caught my eye. We have:
- Aurelius Victor
- Eutropius
- Orosius
and maybe a reference in the Panegryrici Latini. That’s it; three references, a century later, and all probably based on a single now lost source. There are coins as well, of course.
I have remarked before on the readiness with which the naive tend to expect contemporary evidence for ancient events. This is an example of what we really can expect.
More manuscripts at Deir al-Suryani in the Nitrian desert
This is an old news story (2006), but I must have missed it. Apparently there are still some 40 manuscripts at the monastery of the Syrians in the Nitrian desert in Egypt. They are, of course, in poor condition. Texts mentioned include Jacob of Serug and the Book of Holy Hierotheos by Stephen bar Sudaili.
Agapius 1.1 online at Archive.org
Archive.org has several volumes of the Patrologia Orientalis, but not PO5 which contains the first part (of 4) of Agapius. Today I uploaded the relevant fascicle of PO5 – the only bit I possess – to Archive.org. It’s here.
I hadn’t realised that we could contribute scanned books. I think that I will start doing so.
Isidore of Pelusium: some newly translated letters
Here are the draft translations that I commissioned of four letters. I don’t know whether any have been translated into English before. Now that I have paid for them, I can share them with you!
After reading the Turner article, it is clear that the letters are numbered 1-2000 in the manuscripts, and the Migne “books” are imaginary. So I’ve given the number in the collection as found in the mss, followed by the Migne book/letter reference. Anyone wanting to look at the Migne Greek can find it here.
35 (1.35) TO THE EMPEROR THEODOSIUS
If you are trying to gain the kingdom of Christ — may persistence unworn away crown this –, and the prize of immortality that God gives to those who administer it honestly, blend authority with mildness and lighten yourself of the weight of wealth by the necessary dispersion of it, for a king is not saved through ample power, nor does he escape the impiety of idolatry by keeping for himself abundant wealth.
310 (1.310) TO CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA
Liking cannot see far ahead, while dislike cannot see clearly. So if you wish to remedy both of these sight problems, do not spout out such vehement statements, instead be more fair in your accusations. Even God All Knowing, before his birth, thought it best out of his love for man to come down and see the boisterousness [1] of the Sodomites, teaching us a lesson in fully inquiring. Many of the people who have come to Ephesus (are) ridiculing you for acting out of personal enmity and not for the doctrine of Jesus Christ. “Here’s this nephew of Theophilus, they say, imitating his way of thinking. Like him, he falls into a rage against the God-loving John, inspired by God, and he desires ever so much to lecture, even though there is a great difference between the people (who are) deciding.”
[1] There should be a better word for this.
1106 (3.306) TO THE BISHOP CYRIL.
Just as the emperor is subject to the laws, the law having a life of its own, so a priest is subject to the laws of the Lord, the canon being untouchable. [1]
[1] The Greek actually says the canon is “apthoggos” meaning that you can’t utter any words of protest against it.
1582 (5.268) TO THE BISHOP CYRIL.
Once the hierarchy used to correct and temper the office of emperor when it stumbled and fell, but now it has fallen beneath it, losing not its own rank, instead possessing ordained men unlike those in our ancestors’ time.[1] Previously when those crowned with a holy office lived the evangelic and apostolic life, naturally the office of emperor stood in awe of the hierarchy, but now it is the hierarchy of the office of emperor. In my opinion, the office of emperor is following its natural course, since it has not intentionally meant to assault the hierarchy, which it reveres like a god, but avenge it of the assaults on it and temper the people not conducting themselves as they should toward it.
[1] Note the euphemism for the not so perfect bishops.
Comments and corrections are welcome!