Month: January 2012

A 1918 list of English translations from ancient Greek

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This evening I ran across F. M. K. Foster’s English translations from the Greek: a bibliographical survey, Columbia, 1918 (Google books here).  A book of this date ought to be of great interest, in that all the translations listed will be public domain in the USA.  There’s even a good chance that they will be on Google Books or otherwise accessible.

I’m rather enjoying my first browse.  There are many pages of translations of Aristotle, and Euripides, of course.

But how many of us have heard of Aristoxenus of Tarentum? (p. 34 — from where I learn of a translation of his Harmonics).  Not me, that’s for sure.  But his book is here.

Or Artemidorus of Ephesus, better known as Artemidorus of Daldi, a 2nd century AD interpreter of dreams?  All the translations of his book, The interpretation of dreams, are old — 1722 is the last reprint shown.  I could not find it online.

Hyperides, The orations against Athenogenes and Philippides, were translated by F. G. Kenyon in 1893, I see.  There are quite a few versions of Longinus On the sublime — a work that perhaps few of us today have read (not me, again).

The lately discovered fragments of Menander, by “Unus Multorum” were edited and translated in 1909.  I had no luck finding it online, tho.

The list does not look nearly complete to me.  Likewise it omits all except classical Greek.  But the thing was done as a PhD thesis, under the lash, as it were, so perhaps we should not complain!

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Origen update

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There’s not that much more to do on the Origen on Ezekiel book, and the translator has been in touch.  Homily 7 needs revision, which is the next priority.  After that, there’s some formatting changes to homilies 8-14, which is a couple of hours work, plus removing the Greek fragments from the footnotes (as these are now in a much more extensive section by themselves).

We need some proofing done on the Latin text of 8-14, and I’ve emailed a couple of people to ask if they’d do it. 

I also need to go through the existing translation by Thomas Scheck for the same homilies, and highlight any serious deviations for consideration by the translator.

It would be nice to get all this done this week…  No real reason why not.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve been trying to do a little scanning today, but not getting very far.  I have a copy of Michael Bourdeaux’s Patriarch and Prophets : Persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church (1968) here to do.  Interesting he salutes the courage of the people of Czechoslovakia in the introduction — the “Prague Spring” had just been crushed, one imagines.

They say that today is the most depressing day of the year (how encouraging!)  Dark with heavy rain this lunch time — just turning to hail! –, and the high winds are blowing down trees.  There’s something to be said for spending winter in a warm climate every year, you know!

I’m going into hospital later on today, for a small procedure.  I’m told that it is not very risky, but it doesn’t sound much fun.  With luck I won’t know anything about it.  I’d appreciate prayer that all goes well all the same.

UPDATE (4/1/12): just to say that I am out and had the all-clear, and am waiting for the sedation to disappear.  Apparently I shouldn’t drive, use heavy machinery, or make any financial decisions.  Not sure whether blogging is allowed, tho.:)

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The forum of Nerva

Posted on by Roger Pearse

One of the images in Du Perac’s 1575 collection of sketches of Rome is of the forum of Nerva.  Here’s what he saw:

Forum of Nerva, Du Perac, 1575

The Temple of Minerva is at the front left.

From the Murray guidebook of 1843, p.271, I learn that

Paul V (Borghese) took down an entablature and pediment in the Forum of Nerva to build a fountain on the Janiculum,…

A modern map of the imperial forums is here.  This extract shows the forum of Nerva:

Du Perac’s view is looking up the forum, and along the right-hand side of the temple at the top of it.

An 1869 view from here is this:

1869 image of the forum of Nerva

There are a series of images (including Du Perac’s) here.

But … I  gather there may be some confusion between the forum of Nerva and the forum of Augustus?  This site has an image by Piranesi, of what is plainly the same place.

Forum of Nerva, Piranesi, 1756

But the text on the page says “The Forum of Augustus (erroneously called Forum of Nerva)”. 

Finally on Flickr I find this image of what can be seen today.

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Looking back, looking forward

Posted on by Roger Pearse

So, farewell, 2011.  We’re all another year older, if not richer.  And welcome, 2012. 

These are the days of our life, running through the hourglass, never to be seen again.  Let us use them wisely.

Looking back, what did 2011 mean to me?  In no particular order, here are some memories.

It was the year in which the Eusebius book was completed, and put on sale, and proved to be a success.

It was the year in which I attended the Oxford Patristic Conference, and sold a few copies of the book and met a good number of nice people and attended some interesting papers.  The sunlight in Oxford remains with me now.

It was the year in which I discovered Ibn Abi Usaibia, obtained an English translation, and put it online.

It was the year in which I went down to Cornwall in the UK and had some lovely sunny days at idyllic little ports like Mevagissey.

What will 2012 bring?

I cannot say.

I have plans for a trip to Iceland.  I intend to see some friends on Friday that I have not seen in 30 years.  I hope to publish the Origen book.  But much of the year will inevitably taken up with doing the everyday things that Adam’s curse brings on us all. 

We all need to store up good things in our soul, sunshine against the cold times.  Nothing will happen unless we make it happen.  It doesn’t necessarily mean spending a lot of money.  It means taking the time to do what matters.

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The threat of copyright claims to the web

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An article in the Daily Mail today makes grim reading for every website author, if you pay attention and ignore the “eBook” angle:

eBook pirates cash in on Kindle sales boom as thousands turn to rogue sites for cheap downloads

… there are fears that their profits could be hit by a the sheer number of pirate eBooks available to download for free.

Creating pirate copies of published books is simple and can be done using a computer and a scanner in a relatively short period of time, or by converting the file format of a ‘bought’ ebook.

Freely available software which people can download to their home computers is able to convert just about any document file for reading on a Kindle or other ereader.

The Publishers Association issued 115,000 legal threats to websites to stop them offering free pirated books in 2011, a rise of 130 per cent on 2010.

Publishers are in talks with the Government and Google to find ways to combat the trade, which breaches their copyright.

They have asked Google to demote pirate websites to ensure they do not appear at the top of web searches for consumers looking to find eBooks. Pressure is also being put on internet service providers to shut down pirate websites.

The context put on this by the story is the piracy of just-published eBooks.  But the real story, for all of us, is the crackdown on copyright online. 

Remember that the publishers’ lobby has passed law after law that increases the term of copyright to absurd lengths — in the US it’s now about 95 years, in the EU it’s life of the author plus 70 years. 

What the publishers want, then, is the technology which will allow them to enforce all the worthless copyrights on long-out-of-print books, by allowing them to screw over websites that have put material from them online.  Amateur websites like myself will have very little defence against such claims.

The material that I have placed on the web is all out of copyright in the USA, to be the best of my knowledge.  I have always steered clear of doing anything liable to impact the profits of a publisher (although this is mainly because I actually do want those publishers to make money publishing Patristic texts, so that they publish more!)

But I confess all this makes me nervous.   The publishers are “in talks” with government, are they?  Well, website authors won’t be asked to those talks, of that we may be sure!

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