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’m not sure whether it is relevant or useful to any readers of this blog, but I saw an email saying that the Islamic manuscripts at the University of Michigan are now pretty much all online here.
It’s all happening, people — the manuscripts are coming online, slowly. The dam is bursting, and we will all be able to hunt through the primary sources in the oldest extant copies without leaving our desks!
Regular readers will recall that I found reference to a possible pagan festival, supposedly in Antiochus of Athens. I tracked down the text and made a translation, as part of the annual struggle against those headbangers who every year celebrate Christmas by jeering “Christmas is really a pagan festival” at the nearest Christian. My knowledge of ancient literature is rather decent, yet I had never heard of this author, so I have spent quite a few posts exploring who and what exists in this field of ancient Greek and Roman astrological writers.
It’s a strange sensation doing this, in a way. Surely there should be a handbook, which lists all the authors, gives us a brief biography of what facts are known, when they lived, and then lists their works with a reference to the printed text and whatever translations exist?
When we study the early Christians, we are so fortunate. We have Quasten’s Patrology in 4 volumes (plus the extra volume by Angelo Di Berardino, translated Adrian Walford), which gives us just this. It’s getting a little elderly now, and I could wish that someone would bring it up to date. But it is possible to gain so much knowledge of the field, just by reading through it constantly.
Likewise when I took an interest in Arabic Christian studies, I found Georg Graf’s Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur, in 5 volumes. Of course a book of that kind in German is of limited use to most of us, but persistence pays off, and by purchasing a copy and reading and scribbling in the margins, I’ve been able to get something. We need this text in English, in truth. I did enquire through an intermediary whether the Vatican library, who own the copyright, would permit me to sell a translation, but got a refusal. In truth the cost of translation would have been something like $10,000, for each of two volumes, which is a bit rich for my slender resources. But until it is made, Arabic Christian studies in English will always be a cinderella subject.
While looking at the scholia on Aristophanes, I encountered Eleanor Dickey’s book Ancient Greek Scholarship, which gives us the information we need on ancient Greek commentaries on classical works. I was impressed enough to buy a copy, and indeed I am sitting here this morning awaiting a courier from Amazon with it.
But … when it comes to classical literature outside of Christian studies, what is there? Where is the equivalent sort of work for Greek literature? For Latin literature? For specialised technical works such as ancient medical literature? Or, in this case, for astrological literature? Unless I am mistaken — and I could be — it does not seem to exist.
I toyed, indeed, with creating such a thing for the astrological literature. But in truth I am simply not interested enough. I don’t particularly want to learn how ancient astrology was done, the various elements and jargon of that discipline. My mind is on other things. I can’t imagine how such a work can be written without that knowledge. In fact I get the impression that the field of study is largely left to historically-minded modern practitioners of astrology. Isn’t that a curious thing to do?
It is a pity that scholars like David Pingree, whose excellent article on Antiochus and Rhetorius I discussed yesterday, have not compiled the necessary overview text for that area of knowledge. I find that he died a few years ago, otherwise I should write and ask him to create one.
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!
One of the primary sources of material used by atheists for “Jesus = <insert god here>” is J. Frazer’s The Golden Bough, 1911. In my experience, whenever I look at this kind of material, it is always worth checking what Frazer said. In my case I want to find the origin of some curious statements about the Adonia.
His book is well referenced, if you go directly to it. He’s the only author I have ever come across to know of 6th century Syriac author Thomas of Edessa, or to have read the Latin version — the only version ever made — of his De nativitate. Yet read it he must have done, for he refers (correctly) to the fact that Thomas says the pagans even in his day celebrated a solar festival at Christmas-time.
A single volume abridgement is accessible at Gutenberg. But it came as rather a shock to discover that the original was actually in twelve volumes! I tried to locate this on Google books in vain; a search on Archive.org was better.
To locate all 12 volumes, use this link.
Since I discovered yesterday that a scholion on Aristophanes Peace 412 was an important source for information on the Adonia, I have been trying to find the text. A search today led me to here. This is a Google books preview of Eleanor Dickey’s Ancient Greek Scholarship: a guide to finding, reading, and understanding scholia, commentaries, lexica, and grammatical treatises, from their beginnings to the Byzantine period, Oxford University Press 2007. Don’t bother clicking on the link unless you are American — the preview is for the US only (and what a wretched business it is, this new trick of keeping the previews hidden from non-US readers!) But the book looks like a gem, on a subject which few know anything about.
Pages 28-31 contain the following interesting remarks:
The scholia to Aristophanes are among the most important sets of scholia, in part because they provide historical background without which many of the jokes and allusions in the comedies would be incomprehensible. They are relatively well preserved, and most of them can be found in a sound and reliable modern edition, making them easier to use than many scholia.
Most Aristophanes scholia fall into one of four groups: the old scholia, Tzetzes’ scholia, Thomas Magister’s scholia, and Demetrius Triclinius’ scholia. Scholarly attention tends to focus on the old scholia, which are the most useful in terms of the information they provide on Aristophanes, but the later annotations preserve some old material and are interesting in their own right because of the perspective they offer on Byzantine scholarship.
The old scholia to Aristophanes are derived from a variety of sources going back to the beginning of Alexandrian scholarship. Callimachus, Eratosthenes, and Lycophron (a contemporary of Zenodotus) all worked on Aristophanes to some extent, and the first continuous commentary on his plays was produced by Euphronius, the teacher of Aristophanes of Byzantium. Aristophanes of Byzantium himself produced an edition of the plays, providing an introduction to each (the extant verse hypotheses of the plays are thought to be distant descendants of these introductions) and may also have written a commentary; Callistratus and Aristarchus probably wrote commentaries on the plays, and Timachidas of Rhodes wrote one on the Frogs.
The work of these and other scholars was combined into a single commentary by Didymus in the late first century BC or early first century AD, and sometime in the first two centuries AD Symmachus compiled another commentary, using Didymus as his main source but also consulting other works. At a later date Symmachus’ commentary or one of its descendants, along with some other material, was copied into the generous margins of a book of the plays of Aristophanes and formed the archetype of our extant scholia.
Perhaps the most important of the additional sources of our scholia is the metrical commentary on Aristophanes written by Heliodorus around AD 100. This commentary is often studied apart from the other scholia, for it is crucial for our understanding of ancient metrical theory but of limited use in understanding Aristophanes. Heliodorus’ work has been preserved to varying extents for the different plays; one can reconstruct from the scholia nearly all of it for the Peace, as well as substantial sections of it for the Acharnians and Knights and some fragments for the Clouds and Wasps, but little else.
In addition to the direct tradition of the scholia, which is well attested in several manuscripts, there is an indirect tradition via the Suda, whose writer had access to the same body of material when it was more complete and therefore often preserves scholia that did not survive in the direct tradition. There are also a number of papyri and ancient parchment fragments with commentaries or scholia on Aristophanes; on the whole, those of the fourth century and later seem to reflect a body of material very similar to the ancestor of our scholia (though in some places more complete), while the earlier ones, which are much rarer, apparently belong to different traditions.
There is then a discussion of the Tzetzes scholia, and then the hard data:
The best edition of the scholia is a multivolume work edited first by W. J. W. Koster and later by D. Holwerda (1960– =TLG), which includes both old and Byzantine scholia, usually in separate volumes. The volumes containing the Thesmophoriazusae and Ecclesiazusae have not yet appeared, so for those plays the standard text of the scholia is still that of Dübner (1842 =TLG). While the Koster–Holwerda edition is unquestionably the best in terms of completeness and quality of the text presented, a number of older ones are still useful for specific purposes. Rutherford’s edition (1896) of the scholia in the Ravenna manuscript provides translations and commentary in English. White’s edition of the Heliodorus fragments (1912: 384–421) extracts all the Heliodorus fragments from the scholia, groups them together, and provides an excellent introduction (in English) with explanation of Heliodorus’ Greek. Jorsal et al. (1970) collect the Byzantine metrical scholia to the Frogs. White’s edition of the Birds scholia (1914) has much more detailed indices than the new edition, and Koster (1927) provides an important supplement for Plutus and Clouds.
Papyri with Aristophanes commentaries or scholia are not uncommon, and are conveniently collected with German translation and excellent discussion by Trojahn (2002). In addition, most of those relating to extant plays are included in the Koster–Holwerda edition, and those relating to lost plays can be found in Austin (1973).
Discussions of the Aristophanes scholia are numerous, lengthy, and extremely varied in character and conclusions. The best overview in English is still White’s exceptionally lucid introduction to his edition of the Birds scholia (1914), which covers the entire history of the creation and transmission of the scholia and includes detailed information on Didymus and Symmachus; this work is, however, out of date in places and is concerned almost exclusively with the old scholia. Dunbar’s introduction (1995: 31–49) is briefer but up to date and covers all types of scholarship. Rutherford (1905) offers a detailed and highly informative examination of the nature and contents of the old scholia, but many of his views are no longer accepted, and the author’s evident grumpiness can make the book difficult to read. Additional discussions of textual history can be found in Koster (1985), Hangard (1983, 1985), and the prefaces to the individual volumes of the Koster–Holwerda edition (particularly volumes i.i a, i.iii.i, and ii.i). Montana (1996) discusses the information the old scholia provide on the Αθηναίων πολιτεία.
The papyrus scholia and commentaries are particularly interesting for the question of the dating of the transition from self-standing commentary to marginal scholia, as the marginal commentaries in Aristophanes papyri of the fourth century and later tend to resemble the medieval scholia more than is the case with other authors. Discussions of this and other issues relating to the papyri can be found in Trojahn (2002), Zuntz (1975), H. Maehler (1994: 124–6), Luppe (1978, 1982), and McNamee (1977: 175–96, 356; forthcoming). The best sources for discussion of Heliodorus are White (1912: 384–95) and Holwerda (1964, 1967). For the scholia recentiora one can consult N. Wilson (1962), O. L. Smith (1976b), Koster (1964), Koster and Holwerda (1954), Holzinger (1930), and the prefaces to volumes i.iii.ii, iii.iv b, and iv.i of the Koster–Holwerda edition. For examples of the way scholars use the Aristophanes scholia for historical information on the plays and on Athenian history and culture, see Carawan (1990), Lavelle (1989), Sutton (1980), Bicknell (1975), and Holwerda (1958).
I think the only possible comment on that is “wow”.
I deeply approve of this book. In fact I’ve got to buy a copy of it. I’ve managed to find a bootleg PDF of it, but you can’t read a book like this on-screen!
The author knew what she was doing. In the preface she tells us that scholars are increasingly making use of the ancient Greek scholarly tradition, while finding it very difficult to access. Her book, therefore, is intended to facilitate access. Well done!
It is a pity that Oxford University Press did not see facilitating access in the same way.
A few weeks ago I wrote of my discovery that a bunch of ancient astrological texts existed in an largely unknown English translation by Robert Schmidt of Project Hindsight. These can be obtained by emailing the site and sending money by Paypal (a price list is here, but prices are actually more flexible than the flat $45 per booklet). A table of contents for each volume is on the site (e.g. Antiochus of Athens is here).
These translations have remained unknown. I cannot check l’Année Philologique, but I don’t know that they have ever received an academic review. COPAC, the UK union catalogue for research libraries, did not reveal a single copy in any of them. They were originally sold on a subscription basis to interested people in the astrological community, and so did not circulate more widely.
Now I’m not very interested in ancient astrological texts. The existence of astrology and astrologers in our own times is something of a curiosity. I have found those I have dealt with to be rather civilised folk, somewhat gun-shy and afraid of being taken for cranks and cultists when they write.
It was important to get rid of astrology so that astronomy could be born. But since they are so harmless, we may see these people, and their interest in the astrological tradition, as a genuine survival from ancient times. It’s a part of our own day that would be thoroughly comprehensible to a Roman. It’s as if the worship of Apollo lingered in some mountain fastness; wrong, no doubt, but of great historical interest. This has led me to take an interest in the matter, and perhaps to write more than I might otherwise have done.
I believe that all ancient literature should be accessible to anyone who wants to click on a link. At the very least, it should be easy for people to find out about them! So I invested some of my own money and obtained three volumes from the series; Antiochus of Athens, The Thesaurus; and Hephaistio of Thebes, Apotelesmatics vols.1 and 2. I was warned that these were not of professional quality, that they were reprints, perhaps even photocopies, and that this was why they are not widely advertised.
A package arrived this morning from the US. On opening it, I found three A5 booklets, a card cover, bound as a single-quire with two staples in the spine holding the quire together. My first impression was positive. The text is typeset professionally, the tone is calm and sensible, and the introduction by Robert Schmidt a model of professionalism.
I attach a couple of photographs. You should be able to click through on these to the full-size images. Unfortunately it is rather dim here today, and I am never that handy with a camera taking images of pages anyway.
The volumes, as far as book production is concerned, seem to me to be perfectly acceptable and nothing to be ashamed of. A few of the pages betray the odd mark indicating that a photocopier has been involved — the odd dust speck, the odd hair. But all of us have photocopies of that kind! The text is always perfectly clear and readable with none of the blodges that you get from photocopying old paper.
The prices are rather high, it must be said at once. But you can haggle. The team at Project Hindsight have reprints on the shelf of some of the volumes, which they are willing to let go at a discount.
The introduction to the Antiochus by Robert Schmidt is a model of how this should be done. He indicates his sources, he states what text he is translating, and he gives an appendix indicating how he has translated specific technical terms. The additional editorial work and notes by Robert Hand also look good.
This issue of technical terminology is a real one, which must obstruct all progress in this field until a specialist lexicon is compiled. Mark Riley, while working on Vettius Valens, did start compiling such a lexicon, and he has placed his notes online. It is interesting that Robert Schmidt has found the same need, and I could wish that the Project should place online a digest of how these terms were rendered. In fact Dr Schmidt might be well advised to publish an article in some technical journal on this very subject.
A number of volumes of Vettius Valens are in the Project Hindsight list. It seems that Dr Riley and Dr Schmidt worked independently, neither aware of the other. But the result is probably of benefit to everyone.
Robert Schmidt is now reworking his translations, with the benefit of 17 years experience, into a new series of hardbacks, again to be sold on subscription. We must all wish this enterprise well, and I hope that the translator reaps a handsome financial reward, for his efforts have benefitted mankind to an extraordinary degree.
I wish I knew how to get some of the major libraries here to subscribe, for it is clear to me that these volumes need to be held in research libraries, and will otherwise be very hard of access. Anyone any ideas?
Two posts at the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog here and here — neither makes it quite clear — have made me aware that the Laurentian library in Florence has put online a mass of manuscripts! ETC only refer to Greek New Testament mss, but I discover that in fact it is all the Plutei collection.
This is the core collection of classical manuscripts at the library. The Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, to give it its formal title, is the library of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Florence was the home of the renaissance, the base of the rediscovery of the classics, and the great library of Nicolo Nicoli ended up in this collection. There are treasures to be found there!
Here are the two main Tacitus manuscripts. M1 contains Annals 1-6, M2 contains Annals 11-16 plus the Histories.
Tertullian is also here, although the Conventi Soppressi collection is not included, which contains the most important manuscripts.
But a two volume copy of the Cluny Collection of his works is online:
Eusebius on the Psalms, in Greek? Here. Cicero, Seneca… they’re here. In fact if you look at my digest of manuscripts of the Greek classics here, you will find that this collection contains Aelian and half a hundred others.
The search page is here:
Just search for Tacitus, Tertullianus, Eusebius, and see what you get!
This is wonderful, wonderful news. Suddenly it becomes possible for us all to consult these manuscripts. Better still, you can download individual pages and do digital enhancement on them, if you need to.
Magic! Well done the BML!
I am a king.
I sit in the hall of my ancestors, on a throne of gold and crystal. My castle overlooks the land, where there are many towns. I rule as my fathers have done, justly, that all may live in freedom and enjoy their property without fear of robbers or invaders or my own tax-gatherers. Yet we are not savages, and every modern convenience is at our disposal. But we have no university in our land.
Today some clerks came to see me. They asked me to give them gold every year, to pursue their studies.
I asked them why I should do so. For while my land is not impoverished, my people are not wealthy, and I will not take one man’s goods to give them to another without true need.
One of the clerks talked largely and vaguely of the importance of their studies, and I put him aside as a blatherer. But another spoke more to the purpose.
“O king,” he said, “This land needs learning, that it may prosper, that your people may become more numerous — which is the strength of any land — and your treasury overflow with gold.”
“Say on,” I told him. “How do words in books lead to so pleasing an end?”
“Your land needs Chemistry, so that plastics may be made and other synthetic materials, all of them necessary to a society which depends on such things.”
I replied, “Fair enough. Let some chemists be hired, then, and facilities for their work supplied.”
“O king, unless you are willing for this knowledge to be the property of a rival monarch, to be withheld at their whim, you must train your own folk to be chemists.”
“Let it be so, then,” I replied.
“A university, then, there must be, and means for the young to attend it for the period of study necessary. There must also be jobs for them to occupy, to practice their craft, after they have trained, or the supply will quickly wither away.”
“This seems reasonable,” I said. “I will pay for some of this, and those merchants in my land who profit from their labours will pay for more.”
“There are other forms of learning also, which your land will need, in a similar way.”
“Say on, most persuasive of clerks.”
“You will need physicists also, for their command of the properties of matter, without which no machines may be fabricated. Mathematicians also are needed, to create the control mechanisms for computers and electronics of every kind. Doctors we shall need, until a day comes when none of us get sick.”
“All this I agree to.”
“You will need the botanist, to collect and examine plants. For how else do new drugs and medicines come into being? And the blights that affect the crops may be cured, if we know enough about them. Likewise the zoologist, for his knowledge of animals, unless your majesty considers that a diseased horse is one fit to ride.”
“Your university will not be small, it seems, and the cost will be high.”
“Yet the cost of not doing so is higher. For all these things are necessities, and lands that do not have the means to produce the works of craft that arise from these skills are poor indeed. The engineer, who can build roads and railways and bridges, must also be found. And then there are those whose skills are less obvious, but equally necessary.”
I asked, “Who are these?”
“Your courtiers rely much on persuasion, on words, and on casting ideas in a favourable light. But unless a king is educated, how may be know truth from falsehood?”
“These seem like vague statements,” I said, not entirely patiently.
“When a king has a matter of statecraft to decide, does he not wish to know whether his choice is wise or not? If he could see what the consequences of each choice might be, would he not choose to do so? This knowledge may often be found in the deeds of past rulers, however far in the past. Moreover many things that exist in the world today make little sense of themselves, unless we know how they came to be. A man can only remember a short period of time, from his own youth onwards. A man who loses that memory is at the mercy of others who know more. He cannot even live an independent life. But what if it were possible to extend your memory back before your own life, into the remote past? Would not such a thing be of the highest utility to a ruler?”
“I can imagine that it is so. The decisions of rulers, the laws they passed, the battles they fought, the speeches that were made for and against, and how men politicked with one another… it seems useful for a ruler to know this.”
“Thus your majesty’s university must include the historian, who gathers this knowledge and produces books containing it. It must also contain those who know the languages and literature, both of other lands, and of times gone by; for how otherwise can a historian read the books of past times? Likewise there must be libraries of knowledge and literature for the same purpose, and those whose task is to find and edit these texts. No doubt it is not necessary to have many who are skilled in a dead language of limited modern relevance, but what ruler would not choose to have such a man at his disposal, at need?”
I replied, “Very well, you may have these also, O glib one. But what of the study of the religions of man, past and present? Will you find me a reason why I should hire men to tell me of these also?”
He paused, and then spoke slowly. “The ideas that men share and throw around influence the course of politics; not always, but often. Men who can discuss these ideas should be available to your majesty. There seems no pressing need for your majesty to fund the training of your majesty’s clergy — surely their own collections of money to fund their own activities can cover that. Some study of the past of these movements would naturally form part of history. But there would seem to be a limit to what your majesty should pay for.”
“Particularly when your own pocket will contribute to the tax I levy to pay for all this,” I grumbled.
“Likewise knowledge of the beliefs of the fanatic clergy in your majesty’s neighbouring states should be paid for, as a matter of intelligence gathering on potential foes.”
“Certainly”.
“And thus you see, your Majesty, that you need a university, and you need one with clerks skilled, not merely in metals and machines and the methods of their invention and production, but also with a knowledge of the humanities. This is not for any indefinite purpose, but as source of information whereby you can rule better, achieve more, and whereby your land can prosper. A prosperous land will fill your treasury with gold.”
He ceased speaking, and there seemed little more to say. All that remained was the question of how many jobs I should fund, how many students were desirable or necessary in each area, and the number of establishments required to make the whole system work. And this task I assigned to my steward, reminding him that gold did not grow on trees and that no clerk should doubt that he held his post as a favour, not as of right.