Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, information access, and more
Searching for “scholia” in Google or Google books is disappointing. But try searching at Archive.org! This search, http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=scholia, gives a huge list!
Did anyone know there were scholia on Suetonius, Vitae Caesarum? I certainly didn’t!
UPDATE: Oh bother. The “scholia” on Suetonius is merely a modern set of comments in Latin, not ancient scholia!
I was writing yesterday about scholia, mainly with reference to Greek scholia. But then it occurred to me to wonder what there was by way of Latin scholia.
A search online quickly revealed that, as with ancient Greek literature, the scholia is mainly attached to poetry and drama. Two exceptions I came across were Lucan’s Bellum civile and the Bobbio orations of Cicero. But otherwise it was poets and dramatists all the way.
I found myself reading an interesting article on the scholia of Juvenal. The author argued that the scholia cannot belong to the period immediately after Juvenal, since they make crashing mistakes, such as not recognising Corbulo as the famous general of Nero, but instead supposing it is a noun referring to fat people! The logic is good, and the inference, therefore, is that they belong to the period in the 4th century when interest revived in the literature of the early empire.
This has important consequences. We know very little about Juvenal himself. Old biographies are attached to the scholia. But it must be questioned whether these have any real historical value, and whether they are older than the scholia, or merely compilations of hearsay from the Constantinian period or later.
It is interesting that few of the scholia have been translated. Many scholia are text-critical, and to understand them it is necessary to know Latin, or Greek, as the case may be. Naturally there seems little need to translate, what only those equipped with the language can follow. But others are historical, and have no such need. We could usefully have more translations, I think.
All the same, the expansion of Google books makes it possible, for anyone with a little Latin, to explore a field that few could access. One of my favourite books is the old Loeb edition of Juvenal. This discusses the scholia in the introduction, but I never dreamed that people like me might have access to these. As of today, I know better.
Homer and other poetical texts were used in school rooms during the classical period, and after. Inevitably this led to a need for explanation of unusual or obsolete words, summaries of books, and explanations of mythological events — the same sorts of things that modern students seem to require in order to read Jane Austen or Shakespeare.
Ancient texts were written on papyrus rolls or scrolls. These had narrow columns, and narrower margins. It was possible to place a letter or symbol in the margin, but little more, although we do have examples of attempts to write in margins. Consequently these explanations had to be written in separate rolls.
These commentaries were composed early in the classical period, and continued to be composed and compiled throughout antiquity. They often consisted of a series of entries, beginning with the word or words under discussion, or the beginning of the line of poetry concerned, or the start of the first line of a passage, followed by the comments. These comments would often include comments from older commentators, often separated by “allws” (“alternatively”).
Inevitably such commentaries could swell to a considerable size, and might therefore be epitomised in turn, and then the epitome augmented. Copyists might feel able to change the comments, far more than with a normal literary text. Many of the commentaries are lost, subsumed into subsequent compilations of comments, but a considerable number survive.
In the Hellenistic period, at the museum of Alexandria, the staff worked on the text of Homer and other classical texts, producing considerable quantities of commentary on textual and other issues. None of this material has survived directly, as stand-alone commentaries — our earliest extant commentaries are 2nd century BC — but they are quoted again and again in subsequent compilations.
The invention of the modern book form — the parchment codex — made a considerable change to the practice in this area. A codex could contain considerably more text than a papyrus roll, and nearly all codices have wide margins. It was therefore perfectly practicable to take material from commentaries and write it in the margin; and this practice seems to have become endemic at some period between the 4-6th centuries AD, and continues down to the end of the Byzantine period of Greek texts.
These marginal comments are known as “scholia”, although in some branches of classical studies the term is also applied to the stand-alone commentaries, which, after all, contain the same sorts of material and are usually the sources of the scholia.
The “old scholia” were soon supplemented by Byzantine scholia. These themselves were often based on older sources, directly or indirectly, and therefore can preserve ancient opinion about ancient texts.
A thorough introduction to the subject, and what commentaries and scholia exist for classical Greek texts, with references, can be found in Eleanor Dickey’s Ancient Greek Scholarship, which I thoroughly recommend and which is the source for these remarks. She also details how to read a critical edition, the Latin abbreviations used, and gives exercises in how to read and translate scholia. And the book is very cheap as well! Anyone with an interest in the subject should buy one.
I am amused to see Cramer editing various scholia in the 19th century. We have discussed his work before, in this blog, in the context of catena-commentaries. The connection between the two is perhaps something that should be explored.
The New Testament is the word of God, and the basis and of a Christian’s daily walk with Christ. It is our SatNav in the motorway network of life. May we always turn to it before we get to Spaghetti Junction!
The church that we see in the NT is (a) mostly Jewish (b) based on local congregations, but with an emotional loyalty to the apostles in the Jerusalem Church (c) not blessed with bishops and priests.
Very often, when we come to read the Fathers — especially the apostolic Fathers — our motivation for doing so is that we want to know what happened next. I would myself always refer people first to Eusebius Church History, in the excellent Penguin translation by G. A. Williamson, for answers to that, not least because he quotes verbatim otherwise lost early sources. Then I would recommend the reading of the apostolic fathers, and then all 10 extant Fathers writing before 200 AD. Such a course of reading gives one a mastery of the data not to be obtained in any other way, and really takes very little time. The whole lot could be skim-read in a week during the evenings.
But I suspect that many of us cannot help feeling that the Church (with a capital C) that we see in those works is a very different animal to that which we find in the New Testament. All these bishops, for one thing, look markedly unapostolic, and they look ever less apostolic as they swell in importance (and self-importance, sadly) in the years after Cyprian.
Indeed already, ca. 215 AD, Tertullian has cause to criticise one bishop as a “veritable pontifex maximus, a bishop of bishops”, who has ventured to take on himself the right to forgive adultery and fornication on application at his office! (De Pudicitia, 1). Tertullian suggests that the letter issuing this instruction should be posted where it will be of most use to those affected, namely in the red-light district, outside certain temples, or over the doorways of brothels. When one modern editor commented, “Churchmen have not liked Tertullian; they praise him with reservations,” it is perhaps passages like this that explain why. Another bishop is accused by Tertullian of violating the Scantinian law, which prohibited sodomy.
But it is less the abuses of the church in late antiquity that trouble us, so much as a sense that the organisation looks little like that which we see in the bible, and the literature emanating from it equally so. I think the impression is a valid one, and deserves consideration. Why is this the case?
Of course for a Roman Catholic the answer is that the New Testament does not concern itself primarily with such matters, but that the apostles appointed bishops and set up the organisation to take things forward. No doubt there is truth in this, and certainly the texts witness to such appointments. Whether the prelates of late antiquity such as Cyril of Alexandria were quite what Peter and John had in mind may, I think, be legitimately debated.
But there are other factors. Much of second century Christian literature — I exclude the apocrypha and the scribblings of heretics — consists of apologetic literature directed to an uncaring pagan emperor and casting itself in whatever form the author thought might gain a hearing. Other portions consist of anti-heretical literature. The NT contains neither, and these together give a quite misleading impression. If we exclude these, we are left with a selection of letters, more or less, mostly from the apostolic fathers.
These are far more like the NT than we might imagine. 1 Clement deliberately harks back toPaul’s letters to the Corinthians. The letters of Ignatius may be troubled by docetists, but their relation to the NT is also obvious. The Didache is not a letter, but is both Jewish and refers to apostles and prophets.
We must also remember that 99% of literature written before 200 AD is lost. What we have is largely a matter of accident. The large quantity of apologetic literature is the produce of a single accident. In the 10th century Archbishop Arethas of Caesarea was interested in early Christian apologies, and got one of his toadys to give him a book with a whole load of them copied into it. That book has survived, and thereby influences our perceptions. Other collections doubtless might have been made at that time; but since no-one was interested in copying such old and out-of-date texts, they perished.
Finally, and by no means least, we must consider the question of translation. Most of us will read this pre-200 literature in stilted older translations, often written by men in the Oxford Movement and steeped in ecclesiasticism. There is quite a gulf between these and a modern NIV, and still more a Good News Bible. This again fosters a sense of distance, which is purely accidental.
I suggest, therefore, that our picture of the early church in the first century should really follow New Testament lines. As time goes on, things change; but probably more slowly than we realise. I doubt that Polycarp, who died ca. 155, knew of a church other than that founded by John the Apostle. I have my doubts that Irenaeus, writing ca. 180, did so, although things were very clearly changing.
Change is inevitable, and so is a return to God. That is the nature of human beings, and it is the history of the church also. But I do not think we should be troubled if we find something very ecclesiastical in our reading. Think instead of the house churches that must have continued, where no member never wrote a line that has reached us, but in which the early Christians actually worshipped.
I’m not really all that interested in ancient astrological texts. What I am very interested in, tho, is that we should have access to ancient literature, whatever it may be. And it’s really quite hard to access to stuff when you don’t know it exists!
The technical works of antiquity are just as much part of the heritage we receive as the literary works of history or biography or philosophy or theology. Indeed in some ways they are more significant. It was the technical works that the Moslems had translated into Arabic by their Christian servants such as Hunain ibn Ishaq in Baghdad in the 10th century. It was these same works that naturally made their way to Spain, and so into Latin during the middle ages. A textbook on how to do medicine, how to build walls, how to do military tactics, how to divine the future — this is hard knowledge of a kind that even a barbarous age can respect.
I’ve been reading a 1977 article by David Pingree entitled Antiochus and Rhetorius. It highlights some of the peculiar features of the transmission of technical works. Such works are peculiarly liable to acquire additions, subtractions, and revisions.
There is a simple reason for this. You go to Tacitus to read about the history of the first century. But you go to Antiochus of Athens because you want to draw up a horoscope. And if you find Antiochus’ work is a bit unsatisfactory in some respect, you’re quite liable to write notes in the margin of your copy, or to produce a shortened version of the useful bits, or whatever. You don’t care so much about Antiochus. It’s what he has to say that matters. You’re only interested in whether the book helps you do that horoscope or not.
Pingree starts by referring us to Franz Cumont, a man who did more for the weirder stuff than almost any other. Apparently in 1934 he wrote a paper on Antiochus d’Athenes et Porphyre, AIPhO 2 (1934): 135-56. (Wonder what “AIPhO” is!) Cumont reckoned that Antiochus lived between 100 BC and 50 AD, and might be the same as Antiochus of Ascalon, although Pingree points out that Cicero and the others who talk about the latter never suggest he was an astrologer.
Pingree then goes on to discuss the various epitomes of Antiochus’ works, and to state his purpose in the following interesting way:
Antiochus apparently wrote two major works on astrology: an Isagogika known to us from Epitome I (see the discussion on pp. 205-6) and from the (unacknowledged) plagiarisms in Porphyrius’ Isagoge, and a Thesaurus which was one of the sources of Epitome II, from which are derived Epitome IIa and the first part of Epitome III. From Epitome III are derived Epitomes IIb, IIIa, IIIb, and IIIc; and Epitome IV drew upon the same source that was used in the latter half of Epitome III. Of all these epitomes only Epitome IIb bears the name of Rhetorius, but scholars have generally associated his name with all of the works mentioned above except for Epitome I.
This seems very involved!
The object of this paper is to eliminate the confusion that has been created regarding Antiochus and Rhetorius, and to establish a program for editing Rhetorius that may seem unusual to a classicist, but that is necessary in the editing of Greek astrological texts.
The manuscripts cannot be relied on to preserve the original compositions of ancient authors; Ptolemy’s Apotelesmatika is virtually the only such text that seems to have survived relatively unscathed by the “improvements” of scribes, though the variant readings of Hephaestio of Thebes and of “Proclus” indicate that even its text is not completely pure. It is of the utmost importance for understanding the history of the transmission of the texts and the history of Byzantine scholarship in astrology that the various epitomes of each work be carefully distinguished and separately edited.
This is interesting, not least because it has not happened. Traditions that involve this sort of complexity tend to deter editors.
He then goes on to review the evidence for Antiochus himself. Most of Porphyry’s Introduction (to the Tetrabiblos/Apotelesmatika of Ptolemy) is borrowed from Antiochus. But Porphyry only mentions him by name once, in chapter 38, where he mentions two methods of determining the position of the moon at conception; that of Petosiris, and that of Antiochus. Hephaistio of Thebes (Apotelesmatika II, 1, 2-6) does the same and also calls Antiochus an Athenian:
In the case of the Moon, others have different things to say. Antiochus the Athenian says that the following method lays claim to some truth. (tr. Robert Schmidt, 1998, vol. 2, p.2)
At two places in chapter 10 of book 2, Hephaistio says Antiochus and Apollinaris agree in essence with Ptolemy:
Ptolemy sets out these matters in a perfect and wondrous manner, but let there be an illustration of what he has said. The Moon is marking the hour in Taurus at the 25th degree, and none of the benefics either trines or squares or regards the Moon in any other way; Aphrodite, who has the rulership of Taurus, chances to be in the domiciles or bounds of Kronos or Ares. The native having this will of necessity go unnourished; and both Antiochus and Apollinarius are in agreement with these [matters]. (p.22)
and
Next Ptolemy says, “But if the rays of the malefics bear on the places preceding the lights while those of the benefics bear on the succeeding places, the child that has been exposed will be taken up again and will live. And if then it should be configured, etc.” We must do an exegesis of this, since both Antiochus and Apollinarios say nearly the same things. (p.25)
Pingree suggests that these indicate that Antiochus is probably after Ptolemy, then, although I don’t quite see the logic. He also mentions the Anonymous of 379 which refers to Antiochus, together with Vettius Valens, Antigonus and Heraiscus as writing on the power of the fixed stars. In addition Firmicus Maternus, writing in the mid-4th century in his Mathesis II 29:2, quotes Ptolemy and Antiochus.
From this he concludes that Antiochus wrote in the second half of the second century. The logic, evidently, is that Ptolemy has to be before, while Porphyry, ca. 300, must be after. This does not seem very firmly established to me.
He then adds that Antiochus, in the Isagogika, references Hermes, Timaeus and Nechepso-Petosiris as authorities. The citations from Hermes look like the sort of thing that Dorotheus of Sidon was coming out with in the mid first century BC, while Nechepso-Petosiris he has already dated as early first century. No contradiction there, as Pingree remarks — but surely these all suggest an earlier date than 150-200 AD?
Interestingly Antiochus is used as an authority in Arabic astrological texts from the 9th century on, together with Dorotheus and Vettius Valens; a combination of authors already found in a 6th century source used in epitome III, which itself was used for epitome IV. Pingree infers that the 6th century source was translated into Arabic.
He then proceeds to analyse all these sources, coming finally to the conclusion:
An edition of Antiochus need include only Epitomes I, II, and IIa, together with the fragments in Arabic.
The remainder he ascribes to Rhetorius.
“Epitome I” contains the remains of the Isagogika. It is found in ms. Parisinus graecus 2425 (15th century), folios 232v-237v, where it forms chapter <62> of book 6. It has been printed as CCAG vol.8 part 3, p. 111-18. Pingree gives a table of contents, and remarks on the many passages which are also found in Porphyry. The text is incomplete in this, the unique surviving manuscript. The heading in the manuscript is “book 1 of the summary of the Isagogika of Antiochus”. There are 28 chapters, the last of which is incomplete. There may have been further chapters, and clearly there should be more than one book.
“Epitome II” contains the remains of the Thesaurus. It is found in ms. Florence Laurentian 28, 34 (11th century), on folios 84-93v. Some chapters cover topics from the Isagogika, but others are word for word identical with Porphyry, and one cites Paulus of Alexandria who composed the second edition of his own Isagogika in 378 AD! So this epitome is probably a work of the 5-6th century. It is printed in CCAG vol. 1, p.140-64. There are 53 chapters. A translation by Robert Schmidt (1993) is available from Project Hindsight.
“Epitome IIa” is a rewriting of various chapters of epitome II, undertaken ca. 1375 by the school of John Abramius. Pingree lists five manuscripts, one of which was destroyed in the 1904 fire of the Royal Library in Turin. A further six manuscripts he lists as deteriores. So “epitome IIa” is merely an additional textual source for epitome II.
Returning to Robert Schmidt’s translation of Antiochus of Athens, I have had difficulty relating his statements to CCAG. He writes:
The present translation bas been made from two sets of excerpts edited in the Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum. The first set was excerpted from Rhetorius’ large compendium (no longer extant in its entirety), and Rhetorius had himself made these excerpts from a Thesaurus (or Treasury) of Antiochus. This set of excerpts was edited in Vol. I. p. 149 ff. by F. Boll. Many of the entries in this collection were apparently taken over almost verbatim by Porphyry in his Introduction to the Tetrabiblos.
The second set of excerpts (from Vol. III, p. 107 ff. also edited by F. Boll) is identified as being from the same Thesaurus of Antiochus. However. the sequence of excerpts seems to be broken with apparent excerpts from another works or works inserted. Most of these insertions are attributed to Heliodorus by the modem editor. A few of the sections are of doubtful authorship. We have translated those that the editor has attributed to Antioobus with some certainty.
But there is no work of Antiochus listed on p.107 of vol. 3 of the CCAG. The material he translates is in 9 chapters. And the material he lists for vol. 1 as beginning on “p. 109” in fact begins on p.108. When I have more time, I must try to reconcile these.
UPDATE: The comments on this post are well worth reading. In particular Jose tells us that the “second set of excerpts” translated by Schmidt are in fact found in vol. 7 of the CCAG (not vol. 3) on pp. 107-128. Indeed they are, under the heading, Excerpta ex Antiochi thesauro et ex Heliodoro.
The first set of excepts translated by Schmidt seem to be those on vol. 1 p.140-164: Rhetorii quaestiones astrologicae et Antiochi thesauris excerptae. So Schmidt is indeed translating “epitome II”.
The 15th Idyll of Theocritus describes a festival of Adonis in Alexandria in Ptolemaic times. A commenter has suggested that the ancient scholia on Theocritus might contain more information.
I was not aware of the scholia, but a Google search quickly finds a reference to “Scholia in Theocritum vetera by Carl Wendel”. According to the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, here, Theocritus actually is extant in papyri of the 2nd century and the 5th, as well as the medieval copies, and there are important scholia in the best manuscripts such as Ambrosianus 222. This all leads me to Eleanor Dickey’s Ancient Greek Scholarship, which is the guide to the scholia.
What does she say about Theocritus (p.63)?:
The old scholia, which fill a volume much thicker than that of Theocritus’ own work, derive from a massive composite commentary assembled from at least two earlier works. One was a scholarly commentary dating to the Augustan period, composed primarily by Theon but also incorporating the work of Asclepiades of Myrlea (first century bc); in addition to many of the scholia, the surviving prolegomena and hypotheses have their bases in this commentary. The second major source of the composite commentary appears to be a work independently composed by Munatius of Tralles in the second century AD and containing a number of gross errors. …
These two commentaries were later combined, along with the work of the second-century commentators Theaetetus and Amarantus; it is likely but not certain that the compilation was done by Theaetetus in the second century. From the fourth to sixth centuries a revival of Theocritan studies resulted in some further alterations to the commentaries, but since no scholars later than the second century are named in the old scholia it is likely that no significant additions were made at that period. The scholia as they have come down to us represent a severely abridged version of the original commentaries, which were used by a number of early scholars in their fuller forms. There is thus a significant indirect tradition for the Theocritus scholia, involving Eustathius, Hesychius, various etymological works, and especially the scholia to Vergil. …
The standard edition of the old scholia is that of Wendel (1914 =TLG), which includes material derived from the indirect tradition and the Technopaegnia scholia but omits the papyri and the Byzantine scholia. The latter can be found in earlier editions of the Theocritus scholia, preferably that of Ahrens (1859), in which they are marked with “Rec”; the papyri must be consulted in their original editions. The definitive discussion of the scholia is also by Wendel (1920, with further references)…
and the references to Wendel are:
Wendel, Carl (1914), Scholia in Theocritum vetera (Leipzig; repr. 1966). Standard edition, excellent. [Google books here]
——— (1920), Überlieferung und Entstehung der Theokrit-Scholien (Berlin; Abhandlungen der königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, philologischhistorische Klasse, NF 17, Nr. 2). Indispensible study of Theocritus scholia, including their origins, the indirect tradition, and the Byzantine scholiasts. [Does not seem to be on Google books]
This is why I like this book. It gives you the orientation you need, and tells you where to find the text. What more could an introduction do? and it should certainly do no less.
The Wendel edition of the Scholia thankfully has an index at the front — so many continental editions of that period make you hunt around –, and the scholia on Idyll 15 are on p.305-317. This material is on the TLG CD, under “Scholia in Theocritum”.
Whether it contains anything of interest to us, tho, my Greek is inadequate to say!
In the updates to my last post, I stumbled across a translation of Porphyry’s introduction to Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos that included an interesting-sounding work by a certain Serapion Alexandrinus, consisting of a short explanation of terminology.
A Google search brings me to this page, which gives the text of the work (from CCAG vol. 8.) plus a translation, all done by Eduardo Gramaglia. That is very useful to have!
We really need a list of astrological writers, with bibliography of editions and translations, online. The nearest we have is this, from Project Hindsight. This tells us about Serapio:
Serapio of Alexandria (of uncertain date, but probably B.C.E.). Not explicitly mentioned by Firmicus, but perhaps belonging to this period. The few surviving fragments of Serapio mostly deal with inceptional or katarchic astrology (that is, electional issues); there is one important fragment that sets out a general strategy for doing such katarchic investigations, and Serapio may have been one of the earliest systematizers of this theory.
Interesting, but a bit short of detail and indications of sources. But in the RealEncyclopadie, vol. 51, cols. 1666-7, I find him as Serapion of Antioch, known to Pliny the Elder (NH ind. IV, V) and Cicero (Att. II. 4, 1). According to the RE, the list of definitions apparently tells us (p.227, l.32) that Serapion wrote in Egypt.
UPDATE: The CCAG vol. 8, part 4, gives Serapionis Alexandrini excerpta on p.225, from codex 82 (i.e. Paris. gr. 2425).
For Sarapion or Serapion Alexandrinus, who perhaps is the same as Serapio of Antioch, a disciple of Hipparchus, or so it would seem, who taught at Alexandria, see Boll, Byzant. Zeitschr., VIII, 1899, p.525. The work from which excerpts are presented here was indeed written at Alexandria, as appears from p.227, l. 32, where he calls the sea as subjected to Aquarius th\n kaq’ h9ma~j qa/lassan; for Egypt according to the most ancient “chorographia”, as it is called, i.e. astrology, is under the dominion of Aquarius (Vettius Valens, p.12, 15, ff, Kroll, etc).
The anonymous work of 379 says that Serapion was before Ptolemy wrote about the appearance of the stars (CCAG, V, 1, p.205, l.17). Other fragments of Serapion may be found in CCAG 1, p.99, p.101; CCAG 5, 1, p.179-180; CCAG 5, 3, p.96.
Not a lot; but something.
I’m thinking of commissioning a translation of Porphyry’s Introduction to the Tetrabiblos of Ptolemy. It’s 44 pages of the CCAG volume 5, and I estimate it’s worth $1,000 to me. The work will require knowledge of the technical vocabulary of ancient astrological texts, so I’ve asked a scholar with knowledge in this area whether he knows anyone who’d be interested and competent. It will be interesting to see if there is.
The point of the translation is to reduce by one the number of untranslated works of Porphyry. I have some doubts whether the content will be of much interest, but the sum is relatively small, and the enquiry is worth making.
UPDATE: A commenter tells me that it was translated last year by Andrea Laurel Gehrz, An Introduction to the Tetrabiblos of Ptolemy, Moira Press, 2010, here. So I will cancel this commission.
UPDATE: And a second commenter tells me that it was translated again (!) last year by James Holden and published by the American Federation of Astrologers, together with a lexicon of technical terms by Serapio (who?) here:
This book contains a translation of the Introduction to the Tetrabiblos written by famous third century philosopher Porphyry. It is a sort of Astrological Dictionary, defining most of the technical terms used by the Greek astrologers of the Classical Period. The volume also contains a translation of the short treatise on astrological technical terms by Serapio of Alexandria.
About the translator: James Herschel Holden, M.A. is the Research Director of the American Federation of Astrologers and has been especially interested in Classical and Medieval astrological works.
Usefully the comment also gives this list of translations of ancient astrologers, which reviews both volumes:
Holden is technically more correct than Gehrz. The Greek original in fact flows (or so I presume) more or less as Holden has rendered it. … Holden’s translation is not idiomatic to modern English speakers. With Holden’s translation we struggle to understand what Porphyry has (presumably) stated clearly. We are additionally hobbled by Holden’s refusal to fully translate. We are left with “kollesis” as well as the presumably atypical use of the word, “application“. Much of what Holden has translated is very nearly gibberish. We come now to the Gehrz translation, which rings with clarity.
The site is a non-scholarly one. But it is useful to know that a translation exists of Firmicus Maternus’ Matheseos. It is interesting to learn of Dorotheus of Sidon, a 1st century AD verse astrologer, whose work exists in Persian translation! Rhetorius is then listed:
Rhetorius the Egyptian seems to have lived around 505 AD; he compiled a valuable compendium of the works of Antiochus & Porphry, with excerpts from Vettius Valens & some other earlier writers. His book seems to have been entitled, From the Treasury of Antiochus, an Explanation & Narration of the Whole Art of Astrology. A number of chapters are nearly identical to chapters in Porphyry’s Introduction. This probably indicates that both Rhetorius & Porphyry independently borrowed those chapters from Antiochus of Athens.
For Serapio, we get this:
The identity of Seraphio, his dates, are unknown. It is speculated he lived in the first century BC or AD, which is rather vague, and that his book (more like a monograph) was compiled around 1000 AD, perhaps, again, by Demophilus.
Which is a little baffling. Then there are a couple of translations of Manilius (1st c. AD) including the Loeb, and then of Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, one of which is also a Loeb.
I’ve become aware that the 3rd century anti-Christian writer Porphyry of Tyre wrote at least some work on astrology. This seems to be very obscure, tho, and I’m not quite sure what exists. Nothing seems to exist in translation. I did come across a reference to Porphyry, Introduction to Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos (CCAG vol. 5 part 4, 212); but there may be others. The CCAG is the Catalogus codicum astrologorum graecorum — a catalogue of astrological manuscripts, in which the editors have helpfully printed excerpts.
Vol. 5 part 4 is online, and the index at the back reveals what looks like a full text — pages 185-229, no less, 44 pages in 55 chapters. It’s been edited from half a dozen manuscripts, and had been published before back in the renaissance. 5 lines is 43 words = 8.6 words/line, 31 lines a page = 267 words/page, 44 pages = 11,748 words, which at 10c a word comes out at $1,175 to translate … if I knew anyone who was interested and capable in what must require a serious understanding of Greek astrological terminology.
Tempting, tho!
Tom Schmidt writes:
I added 11 new fragments to my page on Papias. I also gave parallel translations from the Syriac and Greek of Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History and Armenian and Greek of Andrew of Caesarea’s Commentary on Revelation among other things as well.
All very useful to us all!