A sudden rush of emails has arrived. I can only conclude that the summer is over, people are returning to their bulging email inboxes, and dropping emails to me. Apologies to anyone that I have not yet replied to!
One of the most interesting came from a mathematical gentleman interested in the calculation of the date of Easter. He had found a 2006 page with an English translation of material by Dionysius Exiguus, and emailed me some interesting and difficult questions. Part of the difficulty was that I didn’t actually remember anything about that page, after almost twenty years! I ended up hunting through old emails, and writing a preface explaining what it is, which I placed here. I also tracked down the Latin text used, that of Rodolphe Audette of Laval University, Canada, uploaded some time before 2000, and long since gone. I placed a copy here. I did expand the æ and œ ligatures, however. I really ought to revise the preface, which I started to translate and then gave up!
The research materials for a post on a certain Philo of Carpasia are gathered, and all I have to do is write it. I’d never heard of the chap. But it seems that he was a bishop in Cyprus, appointed by Epiphanius of Salamis, and the author of an extant allegorical commentary on the Song of Songs. The commentary is real; the information about his biography is frankly sketchy.
I hope that everyone enjoyed their summer. It is now time to start booking for winter breaks!
Roger: Very interesting. Thanks for making this available. My site now also has text with T.D. Barnes’ translation of Eusebius’s earlier work on the date of Easter (https://www.fourthcentury.com/eusebius-on-the-solemnity-of-easter/), a text for which you also posted an earlier translation. In the near future we hope to add similar pages for Hippolytus’ and Anatolius’ works as well. The subject seemingly received more attention in the early church than it does today.