More on Antiochus of Athens

With Antiochus we are indeed at the edge of knowledge, or so I infer from the article in the Realencyclopadie, which is meagre indeed:

68) Aus Athen (Hephaistion Theb. II 1 bei Engelbrecht Hephaest. von Theb. 36), Astrolog. von dessen Büchern manches handschriftlich erhalten ist (vgl. Englebrecht a.a.O Fabricius Bibl. Gr. 1 III c. 20).

68) From Athens (Hephaistio Theb. II 1 in Engelbrecht Hephaest. of  Thebes 36), astrologer. Some of his books are preserved in manuscript (cf.  Englebrecht ibid, Fabricius Bibl Gr. 1 III c. 20).

Even the reference to “Engelbrecht” seems obscure.  Fortunately there is an explanation and a download online at the same scholarly astrology site we mentioned earlier, here.

A critical edition of the early 4th century astrologer Hephaistio of Thebes’ Apotelesmatics was published by Engelbrecht in 1887. This edition was superceded by David Pingree’s critical edition of the same text in the mid-1970’s, although since Engelbrecht’s edition is in the public domain we provide it below courtesy of Google Books: Hephaistio of Thebes – Engelbrecht edition

The Pingree edition is a Teubner, Hephaestionis Thebani Apotelesmaticorum libri tres: Apotelesmaticorum epitomae quattuor (1974).  There is a wiki page for Hephaestio of Thebes, which tells us:

The first two volumes of the Apotelesmatics have been translated into English (by Robert Schmidt of Project Hindsight); the third volume … is in preparation.

The Project Hindsight page is here, although how to get hold of the translations is not indicated, and these include extracts by Antiochus of Athens). A table of contents is here for Hephaestio. Schmidt’s translations are unknown to the British research system, which indicates not a single copy of any of them is held in any library in the UK.

Looking at Engelbrecht, p.36 quotes the opening of Hephaisto, book 2, which does indeed discuss Antiochus of Athens.  After an extract (untranslated — why let the peasants read it?) he continues that there was indeed an astrologer named Antiochus of Athens, as the mss. Laurentiani plutei 28, 7 and 28, 34 contain an extract of The Thesaurus of Antiochus.  The Vienna ms. phil. gr. 179 contains something “from Antiochus the Astronomer”; and Vienna phil. gr. 108 folio 342v contains another reference.

All this is all very well… but I wish I could get my hands on Boll’s edition of his calendar!

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