New edition and commentary of the Chronography of 354!

The Chronography of 354 was a physical book, compiled for a late Roman nobleman and illustrated by a famous artist.  It contained 12 sections of practical information like calendars.  It also contained pictures of cities, and of Constantius and Gallus, “our emperors” – which the fall of Gallus later in the year must have made awkward.  The book is lost, but copies of all or part of it survive in various medieval manuscripts.  It was published piecemeal in the 19th century, and I gathered the bits and made them available online many years ago.  My scans of the illustrations have appeared all over the web since, amusingly.

A correspondent writes to tell me that a new edition and commentary has appeared, and is open-access!  You can download the PDFs!

A new open access edition is available:

Johannes Divjak and Wischmeyer Wolfgang, eds., Das Kalenderhandbuch von 354. Der Chronograph des Filocalus, 2 vols. (Wien: Holzhausen, 2014)

vol. 1: Der Bildteil des Chronographen, http://www.oapen.org/search?identifier=512257

vol. 2: Der Textteil,  http://www.oapen.org/search?identifier=512258

Burgess has a detailed critique:

Richard W.  Burgess, “The New Edition of the Chronograph of 354: A Detailed Critique,” Zeitschrift fur Antikes Christentum / Journal of Ancient Christianity 21, no. 2, (2017): 383–415, doi: 10.1515/zac-2017-0020

Thankfully Dr Burgess has placed his article online at Academia.edu here, in which he complains about formatting – not something I care much about.  The editors did publish a one-page response in ZAC, which you can pay DeGruyter $42 for if you so wish (does anyone? ever?  I’ve written to Dr Divjak suggesting he post it on Academia.edu instead.)

This is a great undertaking.  The content of the Chronography means that writing a commentary is a devil of a task.  Minute objections will always be possible.  But let’s recognise that they have performed a considerable service to us all, and even more so in making it accessible online.