The last Roman of Gaul, Sidonius Apollinaris, has a new website dedicated to him! It doesn’t come up in a Google search, strangely, but is here:
Contents include an excellent bibliography, and there are also links to some of the items.
Tag: Information access
From my diary
I spent some time today reading the online French translations[1] of the poems of Sidonius Apollinaris. I was very struck by the way that the poet appeals repeatedly to the works of the early empire, to Horace and Sallust and Varro and Tacitus. I saw no mention of any later writers, indeed.
This evening I found myself wondering whether the Loeb edition and translation, Sidonius. Poems and letters, tr. W. B. Anderson, Harvard, 1936, was actually out of copyright in the USA. (Anderson died in 1959, I learn, so his work won’t come out of copyright in the European Union until 2029, by which time most of us will doubtless be dead). I suspect that it is. Copyright at that period was for 28 years, and could be renewed for a further 28 years. But I found no evidence that it had been renewed.
The situation is complicated, for works between 1923 and 1964, by the “copyright restoration” for foreign works that followed the US signing of the Berne convention in 1994. A fascinating paper by Peter B. Hirtle[2] discusses this subject, and makes the following, startling statements:
It has long been assumed that most of the works published from 1923 to 1964 in the US are currently in the public domain. Both non-profit and commercial digital libraries have dreamed of making this material available. Most programs have recognized as well that the restoration of US copyright in foreign works in 1996 has made it impossible for them to offer to the public the full text of most foreign works. What has been overlooked up to now is the difficulty that copyright restoration has created for anyone trying to determine if a work published in the United States is still protected by copyright. …
This paper has demonstrated that it is almost impossible to determine with certainty whether a work published from 1923 through 1963 in the US is in the public domain because of copyright restoration of foreign works.
What idiots our politicians are! What knaves the publishing lobbyists must be, to cause so much nuisance for so little gain for anyone, including themselves!
All the same, I tentatively conclude, after reading Hirtle’s paper carefully, that Anderson’s translation of the poems of Sidonius Apollinaris is indeed now in the public domain in the USA.
I have also been reading a paper discussing whether Sidonius actually criticises Majorian, in carmen 5, the Panegyric for Majorian.[3]. There is a long section in the panegyric in which a polemic against Majorian is placed in the mouth of Pelagia, wife of the deceased Aetius. Perhaps this does reflect the nervousness of the Gallo-Roman supporters of the unfortunate emperor Avitus towards the military newcomer Majorian. Desperate times, suspicion everywhere, harsh punishments for speaking the wrong thing, supporting the wrong candidate for the throne, while the empire fell apart … such times make men adopt whatever shifts they can.
Does it matter now? Well, only inasmuch as parallels might be drawn for later history. The assassination of Majorian in 461 by his own prime minister, the sinister Ricimer, made the fate of Gaul — to become France — certain. The western empire itself had only fifteen more years to live. And Majorian himself lives now only in the portrait drawn of him by Sidonius, partly in the panegyric, but more in the letters.
Yet … Majorian does indeed live in that portrait. He failed to save the Roman state. Probably no-one could have done so at that stage.
Yet, because of the words of Sidonius, we, fifteen centuries later, are discussing him.
UPDATE (20/7/2012): I find that vol. 1 of the Loeb, which includes all the poems, is in fact online at Archive.org, here.
- [1]At remacle.org.↩
- [2]Peter B. Hirtle, Copyright Renewal, Copyright Restoration, and the Difficulty of Determining Copyright Status, D-Lib Magazine 14.7/8, 2008. Online here.↩
- [3]Philip Rousseau, Sidonius and Majorian: The Censure in “Carmen” V, Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Bd. 49, H. 2 (2nd Qtr., 2000), pp. 251-257. JSTOR url: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4436579 ↩
UK government promoting open access to research it funds?
The UK government has done something or other, according to The Register. But it’s not as clear as one might like:
Universities will be provided with funding to ensure that their academics’ research papers are made more widely available, the government has said.
The government broadly backed recommendations contained in a report by the Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings in its policy aimed at supporting ‘open access’ to research.
The seven UK Research Councils will provide universities that establish ‘publication funds’ with grants in order that the organisations can pay publishers an ‘article processing charge’ (APC) to publish their work.
Erm, this sounds complicated. Why not simply require that government-funded work is open access? No open access, no funds?
“Where APCs are paid to publishers, the government would expect to see unrestricted access and use of the subject content …”
… Under the policy wholly or partially publically funded peer reviewed research papers will be required to be published in journals that comply with its open access policy and detail information such as how the “underlying research materials such as data, samples or models can be accessed”.
Wow. Complicated. And:
Willetts said that the government was happy to enable publishers to put embargoes that restrict access to content in certain circumstances. He said publishers should be able to protect the value of their work where their funding is not mainly reliant on APCs but that length embargo periods may not be justified in the public interest.
“Embargo periods allowed by funding bodies for publishers should be short where publishers have chosen not to take up the preferred option of their receiving an Article Processing Charge,” Willetts said.
Um, “embargo periods”?
It sounds very complicated, and expensive for the tax payer.
Let’s hope that underneath all this verbiage is a clear simple commitment that the tax payer should not pay for material which the tax payer cannot access.
UPDATE: It seems that I am not alone in being sceptical about this announcement. Bishop Hill comments:
All scientific research funded by the UK taxpayer is to become open source, according to an article in the Guardian. It seems that academics will be required to pay the fees to make their papers freely available.
Since few journals will solely publish papers by UK academics, this presumably means that the scientific publishers will retain the library subscriptions which are the bedrock of their profits, while gaining a massive windfall in the shape of open access fees for much of their content.
A good day to be a scientific publisher I think.
I suspect so. The Guardian article contains some sensible words by Stevan Harnad:
“The Finch committee’s recommendations look superficially as if they are supporting open access, but in reality they are strongly biased in favour of the interests of the publishing industry over the interests of UK research,” he said.
“Instead of recommending that the UK build on its historic lead in providing cost-free green open access, the committee has recommended spending a great deal of extra money — scarce research money — to pay publishers for “gold open access publishing. If the Finch committee recommendations are heeded, as David Willetts now proposes, the UK will lose both its global lead in open access and a great deal of public money — and worldwide open access will be set back at least a decade,” he said.
The phrase that springs to mind is “crony capitalism”, where the government is in the pocket of the vested interests. Yet this is OUR money being spent!
Tellingly the Register says:
The UK Publishers’ Association welcomed the plans.
Dumbarton Oaks Syriac resources now online
An interesting email:
I write to announce the publication of a new online resource at Dumbarton Oaks aimed at the community of Syriac studies. We have assembled numerous freely available, digitized texts — most notably tried-and-true scholarly instrumenta — and organized them into an annotated bibliography that covers several categories (lexica, grammars, histories of Syriac literature, etc.). We have pitched the site at Syriac students who may not know that they need these resources yet, but will be glad to see them all in one place when they do!
This new resource can be found at
http://www.doaks.org/research/byzantine/resources/syriac
You can read more about our goals on the Introduction page. We hope that this site will be of value to the Syriac community, especially those who do not have access to print copies of these (often rare) resources. We will continue to refine and enlarge these pages, and add new ones as well. Of course, we welcome helpful suggestions, comments, and corrections from the scholarly community.
As a caveat, we understand that some of the Google Books links may be useless to those outside of the US because of Google’s decisions regarding copyright law in various countries. Where available, we have tried to link resources on other reputable sites that do not have international restrictions (such as archive.org). We will continue to try to move our links to such sites in the future.
ICUR – Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae – online
The ICUR series of inscriptions is not one that I have been familiar with. But Lanciani references an inscription set up by the 4th century Pope Damasus over the Archivum, engraved by the artist Furius Dionysius Philocalus. A google search for the Latin text reveals that it was published in De Rossi, ICUR, ii. 151. So I’ve been searching for the volumes since.
The Fourth Century site gives a list of volumes. I’ve added such links as I could find using Google Books and Europeana; but the items really do not seem to be online, despite being pre-1923 and so out of copyright.
- Vol. 1. G.B. De Rossi, Inscriptiones christianae urbis Romae septimo saeculo antiquiores 1, Roma 1857-1861. Preface (only) online here: http://books.google.com/books?id=Muk-AAAAcAAJ (16 pages). Full version here: http://www.mdz-nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn=urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb10211912-7 (619 p.) and http://books.google.fr/books?id=qo1CAAAAcAAJ
- Vol. 2, part 1. G. B. De Rossi, Inscriptiones christianae urbis Romae septimo saeculo antiquiores 2, pars 1, Roma 1888. Preface (only) online here: http://books.google.com/books?id=nKAXAAAAYAAJ (36 pages).
- G. Gatti, Inscriptiones christianae urbis Romae septimo saeculo antiquiores 1. supplementum, fasc. 1, Roma 1915
Oh well. I shall have to go without my inscription, and the witty, modest, yet learned remarks (or otherwise) that I would have written upon it.
UPDATE: I have added another link to vol.1 sent in by a correspondent: thank you! He also points out that Damasus’ epigrams and inscriptions were all published by Ihm in 1895. Archive.org have the book: http://archive.org/details/damasiepigrammat00damauoft. Apparently the inscription I have in mind is on p.58, #57. Sadly I have no time to look now.
Priscilla Throop and the two translations of Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies
The Etymologies of the last writer of antiquity (in the west), the 7th century Isidore of Seville, seem really rather interesting. I’ve been browsing through book 6 at Lacus Curtius, and it has brief but useful notes on all sorts of things. So I began wondering if I could get hold of a translation. It’s much easier to skim read for interesting stuff in English, after all!
Rather to my surprise I find not one but two translations.
First, there is Priscilla Throop’s two volume hardcover version (at Amazon, vol. 1, vol.2, at Amazon.co.uk: vol.1, vol.2), from January 2006, at $28 per volume. It turns out that Mrs Throop self-publishes her translations through Lulu.com, and she has made quite a number of translations of medieval texts, as may be seen on Lulu. There is an Amazon preview of the Isidore, and the opening pages all look very good and professional.
Then there is the single volume by Stephen A. Barney plus a team of translators (Amazon here, at Amazon.co.uk here), published in hardcover by Cambridge University Press for the enormous price of $205 in June 2006, and published in paperback at 20% of the hardcover price — just below the combined price of the two Throop volumes, which is rather mean of CUP — in 2010. It also has an Amazon preview, also looks good. Curiously it advertises itself as the first English translation in the preface. Did the translators not know of the Throop version? Did CUP not know?
There is a Google Books preview of the CUP version here. BMCR seem only to have reviewed the CUP version, here.
Naturally one feels for the underdog, the little guy up against the mighty combine and marketing machine of CUP. But which to choose? If one or the other had offered a download version, I might go for that. But neither does, as far as I could tell, although possibly an electronic version of the CUP one exists through one of their university-online book access schemes.
The Non Defixi blog comments on the two here, and Way of the Fathers also has a post on it. Sadly the CUP version is likely to be quoted by other scholars.
I suspect that the Throop version has been rather more widely purchased by real people spending their own money. Let’s hear it for the little guy!
An online edition of the Derveni papyrus
The ever excellent Ancient World Online blog is indispensible for those wishing to keep aware of what is coming online, and should be in everyone’s RSS reader. Today I learn that an online edition has appeared of the Derveni papyrus, on which I wrote some notes as long ago as 2006.
The Derveni Papyrus: An Interdisciplinary Research Project …
The Derveni papyrus is a most interesting new document of Greek literature. It is perhaps the only papyrus to have been found on Greek soil, and is, if not the oldest Greek papyrus ever found, no doubt the oldest literary papyrus, dated roughly between 340 and 320 B.C. Its name derives from the site where it was discovered, some six miles north of Thessaloniki, in whose Archaeological Museum it is now preserved. It was found among the remnants of a funeral pyre in one of the tombs in the area, which has also yielded extremely rich artifacts, primarily items of metalware. After the exacting job of unrolling and separating the layers of the charred papyrus roll, and then of joining the numerous fragments together again, 26 columns of text were recovered, all with their bottom parts missing, as they had perished on the pyre.
The book, composed near the end of the 5th century B.C., contains the eschatological teaching of a mantis; the content is divided between religious instructions on sacrifices to gods and souls, and allegorical commentary on a theogonical poem ascribed to Orpheus. The author’s outlook is philosophical, displaying, in particular, a physical system close to those of Anaxagoras, the Atomists, and Diogenes of Apollonia. His allegorical method of interpretation is especially interesting, frequently reminiscent of Socrates’ playful mental and etymological acrobatics as seen in Plato’s Cratylus. The identification of the author is a matter of dispute among scholars. Names like Euthyphron of Prospalta, Diagoras of Melos, and Stesimbrotus of Thasos have been proposed with varying degrees of likelihood.
A few years ago The Center for Hellenic Studies made the Greek text of the papyrus available online, as it was published in 2006, © Olschki, Firenze. …
Editio princeps 2006 (Olschki, Firenze)
Unfortunately the “editio princeps” is merely a pointer to the site, and I found this rather confusing.
The announcement relates to some new way of viewing the text online, but it is news to me that the text itself has been online. Indeed, if you struggle through the site, you will find a translation in English at the book of a transliteration of each column, but only for the first six columns. Column 1 is here, for instance.
Useful to have access to, tho.
From my diary
This morning I’ve been poking around the PDF volumes of the Patrologia Graeca. I was trying to find the Lexicon of Photius, in fact.
I’ve not achieved much, because it’s quite hard to work out which volumes contain what. Each volume does contain a table of contents; but you have to download and open the PDF to see it. Some of the volumes are in 1900 reprints, which I can’t access anyway.
It seems to me that someone needs to go through the PDF volumes and type up a table of contents for each, and put it online. There’s only 161 of them, and the task might take a day or two. I was a little tempted myself, in truth.
Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum
The Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum (= Collection of Semitic Inscriptions, abbreviated as CIS) is a series with which few of us will be familiar. The following notes come mostly from the Italian Wikipedia.
The CIS is a series of volumes containing inscriptions in semitic languages written in a “semitic character” (i.e. not cuneiform) and giving them a reference number. The content covers the period from 2,000 BC down to 622 AD, the start of the Moslem period, and is intended to cover material not already included in the similar collections of Latin, Greek, Assyrian and Egyptian materials.
The series owed its existence to a commission headed by Ernest Renan, which proposed its creation to the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres Francais on 17th April, 1867. Each inscription is given as a transcription in Roman letters, with a Latin translation.
The plan of the work was for ten volumes:
-
Phoenician, Punic and Neo-punic inscriptions.
-
Jewish and Samaritan inscriptions.
-
Aramaic inscriptions.
-
Palmyrene inscriptions.
-
Nabatean inscriptions.
-
Syriac inscriptions.
-
Mandaic inscriptions.
-
Primitive Arabic inscriptions.
-
Himyarite inscriptions.
-
Amharic inscriptions.
An appendix was also planned, to contain items from Cyprus, Libya, Lycia, etc.
The work was delayed by the Franco-Prussian war, and by difficulties with the Phoenician types, which had to be redesigned and recast. Finally the first part of the first volume appeared in 1881.
Publication continued until 1961, when it halted. In the end, four parts appeared:
Corpus Inscriptionum ab Academia Inscriptionum et Litterarum Humaniorum conditum atque Digestum.Parisiis: E Reipublicae Typographeo, 1881-1962 Parisiis: E Reipublicae Typographeo, 1881-1962
- Pars 1: Inscriptiones Phoenicias continens (1.1; 1.1 Tabulae; 1.2; 1.2 Tabulae; 1.3; 1.3,4; 2.1; 2.2; 2.3; 2.4; 3.1; 3.2)
- Pars 2: Inscriptiones aramaicas continens (Including: 2.1; 2.1 Tabulae; 3.1; 3.2)
- Pars 4: Inscriptiones Himyariticas et Sabaeas Continens (Including: 1: fasciculus primus; 2: fasciculus secundus; 4.1)
- Pars 5: Inscriptiones Saracenicas continens (Including: 1: Inscriptiones safaiticas; 2: Tabulae)
I have been unable to locate any of these items online, however.
From my diary
I’ve spent today working on some PHP scripts to work with the new Mithras pages. It’s slow work, programming, especially when you’ve spent the week at the terminal. Thankfully tomorrow is Sunday, and I never use my PC on Sundays. I suspect that a farm near me will be selling home-grown strawberries, and I shall go and see!
I don’t refer all that often to Alin Suciu’s amazing blog on Coptic literature. Yet another find, this time of portions of the Catechitical Orations of Cyril of Jerusalem, is signalled today. Alin’s work is a model of how to do an academic blog, with footnotes, downloads of relevant old papers, and everything calculated to stir the interest of the most casual viewer.
UPDATE: Via AWOL I have learned of the new Loebolus site:
Loebolus is based on Edwin Donnelly’s “Downloebables” , aiming to make all the public domain Loebs more easily downloadable by re-hosting the PDF’s directly, without the need to enter CAPTCHA’s.
You can also download a .zip containing all 245 PDF’s (3.2GB). Or view the code used for generating this site on GitHub.
Marvellous!
I’ve also ordered a paperback copy of an English translation of Quintus Curtius. There isn’t one online, primarily because Bill Thayer has decided not to upload one.
I have no intention of putting online any translations of Curtius. Precisely because he is such an easy author, he is used as homework material around the world: and I will not undercut the work of thousands of Latin teachers by making it easy to cheat.
Bill is right. We can all agree not to upload a translation of this author, in the interests of a greater elementary knowledge of Latin in the population in general.
That said, since I found myself with tired eyes trying to translate some of it last week, I will provide myself with a ‘crib’!
It’s quite a testimony to the role that Bill has played in putting classical literature online, tho, that, if he doesn’t do it, it doesn’t get done.
I’ve also stumbled across more excellent work by the PLGO people, in adding more versions of GCS volumes, Fathers of the Church, etc, to the web. Get them conveniently via this interface. I learn from their forum that some of the CSCO volumes are appearing at Archive.org, it seems. No time to get these this evening; time only to run a backup and go to bed.