Regular readers may recall that Mischa Hooker translated John the Lydian’s four books On the Months for us all a year or two back. The fourth book has 12 sections, one for each month, and we also did the other three books. It’s a mass of 6th century antiquarianism, as the author tries to hold on to the Roman heritage in a world that is fast becoming Byzantine.
At the time, Dr H’s translation was the only one into any modern language. Another English translation did appear soon after, but with very little circulation or impact; and not nearly as good.
But Dr Hooker has not left the work alone. In fact it turns out that he has continued to work on it since, revising his translation and equipping it with a monster introduction and similarly enormous appendix of similar materials. And he has sent a PDF of the revised and combined version to appear here, as a nice little Christmas present for us all.
Here it is:
I’ve also uploaded it to Archive.org here.
I think that there will be further revisions over time. It is really a very learned, very excellent piece of work. But then … see for yourself!
Update 10 Feb 2024: I have retrieved the Word .docx files and uploaded them: John the Lydian 2nd edition
Thank you and Dr. Hooker for this. Is there a list (or would you consider making one) of all the translations you have posted in your blog?
There isn’t a list. Maybe there ought to be!