Category: miscellaneous news

I’m currently looking at an English translation of a later part of this long work in Arabic, which has transliterations of Arabic words in the middle of it.  Some Greek words also appear.

Some are interesting: “al kurban” is the offering of the mass, i.e. holy communion.

Another is “al-Ka‘k” – cakes!

I wish I could work out what Egyptian copyright is.  These were all published in Cairo, at a time when Egypt had no copyright law.  I suspect that legally these are either orphan or public domain works.

While working on the first chunk of Eusebius, I saw a list of kings in Babylon.  There was quite a different between the lengths of the reigns in the German edition (Karst, 1911) and the Latin one (Petermann, 1870-ish).  The former was based on a photographic copy of E, the main manuscript; the latter on two hand-written copies of it in Venice.   If the numbers could vary that much in one generation, there must be real questions about all of the numerals.

I suspect that I am not the only person who has found the old version 2 layout of the 38-volume Ante-Nicene, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers collection at CCEL rather easier to use than the new, improved, but very much more awkward version 3?

I today found that the v2 version has vanished from CCEL.  Fortunately I had a mirror of it, and I have uploaded it to

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers2

I hope it is useful.  It’s all public domain, so use as you will.  A cdrom of it, plus the additional patristic translations which I have online, is also available:

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/all_the_fathers_on_cd.htm

As a lad, I used to wargame ancients using the Wargames Research Group rules; indeed a metal 1/72 scale Seleucid army still resides in the loft of my house somewhere.  This week I came across an old-fashioned hobby shop, which is a rare thing indeed these days.  On the shelves were wargaming figures, in plastic, 1/72 scale for a vast range of ancient armies.  These were all by Hat Industrie, whose list is here with photographs.  Persians, Carthaginians, Late Romans, all in sets of 20-50 figures — I would have killed for these as a boy! 

Postscript, 21st May: I went back today and found the shop gone, as if it had never been.

I had an email from Dominique Gonnet at the Sources Chretiennes, asking if I had a copy of the OCR program Anagnostis.  I’d never heard of it, but this turns out to be an OCR utility for Greek which can handle Ancient Greek! 

Of course I want one!  But I was quickly put off, by the unbelievable price-tag of 585 euros for the ‘pro’ version — almost £400 or $800.  A ‘standard’ version exists for 78 euros, but this doesn’t do ancient Greek, so is useless to us all.  I don’t really think that I can justify spending such a very large sum.  I wonder if anyone else has seen or used this product?  If so, how well did it work?  A trial download is available: but I have not tried this, and I have seen a post suggesting that it doesn’t let you try the OCR!

I’ve also written to the company suggesting that they do an ‘ancient Greek’-only version for our market, for 78 euros. You might like to do the same, if you think that you’d buy such a product.

The 3rd century historian Herodian of Antioch wrote a history in eight books of the emperors from the death of Marcus Aurelius to the accession of Gordian III. The 1961 English translation is now online here. This is out of copyright in the USA, so copy freely if you are based there.

I have found and ordered a copy of F. L. Griffith The Nubian Texts of the Christian Period (1913), which apparently has some 130 pages and contains all texts known at that time. It includes the Miracle of Saint Menas, one of the longest available texts in this language. This text was contained in a manuscript which was purchased by the British Museum in 1908. According to the description by E. A. Wallis Budge, it measures about 15.5 by 110 cm and consists of 8 leaves of parchment in three quires, and is bound in covers of brown leather. This book is out of copyright in the US, so I will see what can be scanned from it.

Postscript. According to Copac, F. L. (Francis Llewellyn) Griffith lived from 1862-1934. The latter is more than 70 years ago, so puts all his books out of copyright in Britain and the EU, as well as in the US.