Month: June 2012

Manuscripts of Quintus Curtius Rufus

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Penguin translation of the History of Alexander the Great by Q. Curtius Rufus tells me that there are 123 manuscripts of this work.[1]  A list is apparently given by Dosson in his Etude sur Quinte Curce, 1887, p.315-356 (online here).

The work was originally in 10 books, but books 1 and 2 are lost.  There are also large lacunae at the end of book 5 / start of book 6, and in the middle of book 10.  All the extant mss. are of French origin.  The extant manuscripts, which date from the 9th century onwards, divide into two classes, one of which exhibits signs of scholarly tampering.  There is also a mass of late mss, virtually unexamined.

Interestingly the work of Quintus Curtius Rufus is not referenced by other extant writers until the 9th century, although passages which suggest the author had read Curtius Rufus — or perhaps his source — can be found in Seneca, Lucan, and Quintilian.[2]

Share
  1. [1]p.1.↩
  2. [2]Dosson, p.357.↩

Why can’t I buy a PDF?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Sometimes I need books.  And sometimes less so. 

I’m about to do something which seems totally unnatural to me.

I’m going to destroy a book. 

I bought it for the purpose.  It’s a cheap modern translation of Quintus Curtius in paperback. 

But I don’t want the paper book at all.  What I want is a PDF, which is searchable, and which I can use for reference.

But I can’t buy one of those.  Nor can I find one on the web.

So … strategy is to buy a paperback, chop it up, feed it through a scanner, and, hey presto, I have a PDF.  Which is what I actually wanted.

Of course I can’t circulate the PDF.  And, under Thayer’s Law,[1] I wouldn’t dream of doing so anyway.

But it would be useful to me to have it, as a reference.

You know, I can imagine a bunch of students doing  this.  And sharing the PDF among them.

So … why can’t I buy a PDF of the thing?

I can buy a Kindle version.  But can I turn that into a PDF?

Perhaps I should experiment…

Share
  1. [1]Bill Thayer is not going to upload an English translation of Quintus Curtius, because QC is used by Latin classes all over the world, and the translation would simply be a way for boys to cheat!↩

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve spent today working on some PHP scripts to work with the new Mithras pages.  It’s slow work, programming, especially when you’ve spent the week at the terminal.  Thankfully tomorrow is Sunday, and I never use my PC on Sundays.  I suspect that a farm near me will be selling home-grown strawberries, and I shall go and see!

I don’t refer all that often to Alin Suciu’s amazing blog on Coptic literature.  Yet another find, this time of portions of the Catechitical Orations of Cyril of Jerusalem, is signalled today.  Alin’s work is a model of how to do an academic blog, with footnotes, downloads of relevant old papers, and everything calculated to stir the interest of the most casual viewer. 

UPDATE: Via AWOL I have learned of the new Loebolus site:

Loebolus is based on Edwin Donnelly’s “Downloebables” , aiming to make all the public domain Loebs more easily downloadable by re-hosting the PDF’s directly, without the need to enter CAPTCHA’s.

You can also download a .zip containing all 245 PDF’s (3.2GB). Or view the code used for generating this site on GitHub.

Marvellous!

I’ve also ordered a paperback copy of an English translation of Quintus Curtius.  There isn’t one online, primarily because Bill Thayer has decided not to upload one.

I have no intention of putting online any translations of Curtius. Precisely because he is such an easy author, he is used as homework material around the world: and I will not undercut the work of thousands of Latin teachers by making it easy to cheat.

Bill is right.  We can all agree not to upload a translation of this author, in the interests of a greater elementary knowledge of Latin in the population in general.

That said, since I found myself with tired eyes trying to translate some of it last week, I will provide myself with a ‘crib’!

It’s quite a testimony to the role that Bill has played in putting classical literature online, tho, that, if he doesn’t do it, it doesn’t get done.

I’ve also stumbled across more excellent work by the PLGO people, in adding more versions of GCS volumes, Fathers of the Church, etc, to the web.  Get them conveniently via this interface.  I learn from their forum that some of the CSCO volumes are appearing at Archive.org, it seems.  No time to get these this evening; time only to run a backup and go to bed.

Share

Mithras and Jerome

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A comment draws my attention to E. H. Henckel, De philtris.[1]  On page 39, there is an interesting statement.

Magnam vim Basilidiani suo Deo ABRASAX (quem Basilides pro summo habebat numine, nomine prorsus fictitio; Sed quod litteris contineret numerum dierum, quos annus habet absolutus: unde & B. Hieronymi suspicio erat, Abraxas esse non alium, quam Persarum Mithram, hoc est, Solem, qui annuo cursu hoc spatium conficit. …

The Basilidians [assigned] the great power to their god ABRAXAS (whom Basilides considered the greatest divinity, under a fictitious name; but because the letters contained the number of days in a complete year: from which also the blessed Jerome suspected that Abraxas was no other than Mithras of the Persians, i.e the sun, which in the course of the year completes this total. …

This is a reference to Jerome’s Commentary on Amos, book 5, ch. 9-10, which may be found amid all the other literary testimonies to Mithras here:

Basilides gives to the omnipotent god the uncouth name of Abraxas, and asserts that according to the Greek letters and the number of the cycle of the year this is comprehended in the sun’s orbit. The name Mithra, which the Gentiles use, gives the same sum with different letters.  (Geden)

Geden’s footnote explains:

I.e. Μειθπας = 40 + 5 + 10 + 9 + 100 + 1 + 200 = 365; Ἀβράξας = 1 + 2 + 100 + 1 + 60 + 1 + 200 = 365.

Numerology attracts a certain kind of mind, and it’s something to be aware of.

Share
  1. [1]Frankfurt, 1590↩

A possible Carthaginian inscription on human sacrifice

Posted on by Roger Pearse

While surfing for more literary references to human sacrifice at Carthage, I happened across a Punic inscription which may be relevant. 

Now treat this with caution.  I have done no literature search.  The author, Bennie H. Reynolds, and the standing of this article, are both unknown to me.  But the publication is from Brill, which gives it a certain standing.[1]

On p.141 we get this (an abbreviated version without vocalisation appears first, and then this):

wayyaliku harabima adonba`al bena garaskin haraba wahamlakot bena hanna haraba `olaša watamaku hemata agraginta wašutu [he]

The generals offered Adonba`al, son of Garaskin the general and Hamlakot the son of Hanna’ the general [as] a sacrifice, then they seized Agrigentum, and the Agrigentines surrendered (made peace)

But the text could also be translated, I gather (p.140), as:

Generals Idnibal son of Gisco the Great and Himilco son of Hanno the Great proceeded at dawn; they seized Agrigentum, and they [the Agrigentines] made peace.[2]

Readers of my last article will, of course, recognise the similarity to the campaign of Hannibal and Himilco against Agrigentum described by Diodorus.

Only specialists in Punic and related semitic tongues could comment usefully on which version is correct.  But it is nevertheless interesting to read of this.

Update: A reader writes to tell me that the inscription in question may be found in the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum,  where it has the reference number CIS, vol. 1, 5510. 

I have also found a paper by J. C. Quinn online discussing the Carthage “tophet” here.[3]  There is also Schwartz’ paper here[4].

Share
  1. [1]Bennie H. Reynolds, “Molek: Dead or Alive? The meaning and derivation of mlk and ###”, in Human sacrifice in Jewish and Christian tradition, ed. K. Finsterbusch &c, Leiden: Brill, 2007, p.133-150.↩
  2. [2]Charles Krahmalkov, Phoenician-Punic Dictionary, OLA 90, Leuven:Peeters, 2000, p.373-4.↩
  3. [3]J. C. Quinn, The cultures of the tophet: identification and identity in the Phoenician diaspora, in E. S. Gruin, (ed.) Cultural Identity and the Peoples of the Ancient Mediterranean, 2011, p.388-413.↩
  4. [4]J. H. Schwartz &c, Skeletal Remains from Punic Carthage Do Not Support Systematic Sacrifice of Infants, PLoS ONE 5(2), 2010.↩

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The migration of my site has worked, and everything seems to be OK bar two things:

  1. I can no longer access the Tertullian.org mail through Demon’s old and obsolete Turnpike software.  That’s because the new site enforces the use of SSH.  I know a workaround; to use stunnel; or maybe I should just accept the inevitable and forward it all to Gmail.  Hmmm…
  2. The counter at the bottom of the pages no longer works.  This is a copy of Count 2.5, a C program, once at the cutting edge of the web — in 1998! — and which hasn’t been updated since 2001.  It compiles, although with errors; but it doesn’t work.  Should I just get rid of it?  But I quite like having it there.  Hmmm….

Update: Got the counter working.  It was just a question of the right (new) IP address.

Share