Tag: Manuscripts

46 more Greek manuscripts online at the British Library – mostly classical or patristic!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The British Library manuscripts blog has announced here (and in PDF form here[1]) that another 46 manuscripts have gone online. Which is always good news!

This particular group is rather special. For the first time it isn’t dominated by biblical texts. Instead we have mainly classical or patristic manuscripts. Of course a lot of these are late, humanist copies, often from the book-copying industry in Venice in the 16th century – for creating printed Greek was never an easy enterprise – but sometimes still the earliest witness to a text.

Accessing the blog was difficult, so I’m guessing that this post is attracting plenty of attention!

Here are some highlights.

  • Add MS 24371, John Chrysostom, Fragments of Homiliae in Matthaeum (58, 70-75, 78-79, 81-83) (TLG 2062.152). 11th century.

  • Add MS 28824, John Chrysostom, In Genesim homiliae 11-31 (TLG 2062.112), imperfect and mutilated at beginning and end. 12th century.

  • Add MS 28826, John Climacus, The Ladder (TLG 2907.001), imperfect, and Liber ad Pastorem, imperfect. 12th century.

  • Add MS 30518, John Chrysostom, In Genesim homiliae 1-11, 21-33 (TLG 2062.112), imperfect. Written about the year 1121.

  • Add MS 32643, Patristic miscellany, partly palimpsest, with occasional marginal scholia. Includes works by Anastasius of Sinai, Epiphanius of Salamis, Gregory of Nazianzus, Anastasius I of Antioch, John Chrysostom, Hesychius of Jerusalem, and Christopher of Alexandria, as well as Gospel lections (Gregory-Aland l 1234). 12th-14th century.

  • Add MS 34654, Gregory of Nazianzus, Orationes. 11th century.

  • Add MS 36750, John Chrysostom, Ad populum Antiochenum homiliae (TLG 2062.024), imperfect, and Ad illuminandos catecheses 2 (TLG 2062.025), imperfect. 11th century.

  • Add MS 36753, Maximus Confessor, Loci Communes (CPG 7718), which is a florilegium of classical and patristic authors.  A few pages of bits at the end. Written in 1198.

  • Burney MS 62, Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica, with scholia, vitae, and epigrams. Italy, end of the 15th century, written by the scribe known as the Anonymus Harvardianus.

  • Burney MS 66, Commentaries on Aristotle by John Philoponus and others. 1st half of the 16th century.

  • Burney MS 82, Hesiod, Works and Days (TLG 0020.002). Italy, end of the 15th century.

  • Burney MS 85, Speeches by Isocrates and Lysias, and gnomological literature. Italy, c 1500.  I don’t have the expertise to say which gnomological texts these are.

  • Burney MS 95, Codex Crippsianus, containing speeches by the minor Attic Orators. Constantinople, 1st half of the 14th century.

  • Burney MS 276, Fragments of Greek and Latin manuscripts, mostly of classical and patristic authors. 11th-17th century: Lucian, Gregory Nazianzen; Theodoret on the psalms; The Batrachomyomachia attributed to Homer; lists of homilies attributed to Chrysostom; Plutarch; Libanius, oratio to Theodosius; fragments of grammatical texts, such as Herodian;  and two leaves from a Latin commentary on Persius.

  • Egerton MS 942, Demosthenes, Orationes, preceded by Argumenta of Libanius. Florence, made for Alexander Farnese (later Pope Paul III) after 1490. This is a decorated manuscript, apparently. I wonder what the Argumenta are?

  • Egerton MS 2624, Thucydides, Historiae (TLG 0003.001) with numerous scholia and a few glosses added later. Florence, 1st half of the 14th century.

  • Egerton MS 3154, Geoponica (TLG 4080.001) attributed to Cassianus Bassus Scholasticus, imperfect. 16th century. This chap lived at the end of the 6th century and wrote on agricultural subjects. Which sounds dull, but since that was the foundation of ancient economies, it sometimes contains gems.

  • Royal MS 16 C III, Dionysius Periegetes, Orbis descriptio (TLG 0084.001), imperfect. Italy, N., end of the 15th century.

  • Royal MS 16 C XVII, Harpocration, Lexicon in decem oratores Atticos (TLG 1389.001), and Heraclitus, Allegoriae (=Quaestiones Homericae) (TLG 1414.001), imperfect. Possibly written in Italy, end of the 15th century.  The lexicon of Harpocration is probably more accessible here than anywhere else!

  • Royal MS 16 C XVIII, Scholia on the Greek Anthology of Planudes and Paraphrase of Aristotle’s Sophistici Elenchi. In two parts, bound together. Italy, N., end of the 16th century (part 1 contains a colophon dated 1580 in Venice).

  • Royal MS 16 C XXI, Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea (TLG 0086.010), with copious Latin marginal notes, ff 3r-130v. Preceded by Latin and Greek notes, with some quotations from Greek authors, ff 1r-2v, and followed by Greek notes on f 131v. Possibly France, S?, 1st half of the 16th century.

  • Royal MS 16 C XXII, Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea (TLG 0086.010), Books VIII-IX. Italy, Central, end of the 16th century.

  • Royal MS 16 C XXIV, Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae (TLG 0008.001), with glosses. Possibly written at Venice, 1st half of the16th century.

  • Royal MS 16 C XXV, Aristotle, De Anima (TLG 0086.002); Plato, extracts; [Plato], Definitiones (TLG 0059.037); Diogenes Laertius, Vitae Philosophorum (TLG 0004.001), Life of Epimenides. Possibly written in Messina, in the south of Italy, c 1500.

  • Royal MS 16 D X, Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae (epitome) (TLG 0008.003), with glosses, imperfect. Italy, Central, 1st half of the16th century.

  • Royal MS 16 D XII, John Tzetzes Homerica (&c), Eusebius Onomasticon, followed by bits connected with Oppian’s Halieutica, part of Philostratus’ Imagines, and a commentary on Hermogenes. Formerly three separate volumes, now bound together. 2nd half of the 16th century.

  • Royal MS 16 D XIII, Sextus Empiricus, with marginal notes by Isaac Casaubon. Italy, N. (Venice?), 2nd half of the 16th century.

  • Royal MS 16 D XIV, Works on grammar and prosody by Dionysius Thrax, George Choeroboscus, Heliodorus, Ammonius, Aelius Herodianus, Porphyry, etc. Italy, 2nd quarter of the 16th century.

  • Royal MS 16 D XVI, Polyaenus, Strategemata (TLG 0616.001), with marginal notes. Venice, mid-16th century.

  • Sloane MS 1774, Euripides, Hippolytus (TLG 0006.038) with marginal scholia in Greek and Latin. Italy, 16th century.

  • Yates Thompson MS 50, Aristophanes, with hypotheses, marginal scholia and interlinear glosses. End of the 15th century, possibly Venice.

There are quite a lot of interesting items in there (and more details and in some cases pictures in the BL blog post, although I have augmented one or two items above by looking at the full page).

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  1. [1]With thanks to Cillian O’Hogan.  Sadly the manuscript links in this do not work.↩

More Greek manuscripts at the British Library

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An announcement this morning that 44 more Greek manuscripts are now online at the British Library, thanks to funding from Stavros Niarchos.

Many are biblical manuscripts.  The following will be of interest to us.

(Apologies for any errors; some thoughtless person at the BL site has fiddled with the copy and paste, removing all formatting and adding a pointless general link at the end in plain text.  All of which makes it nearly impossible to give a list like this, and include links; you have to delete the cruft and re-add the links manually).

  • Add MS 39601, Revelation (Gregory-Aland 911), imperfect at the end, with a marginal commentary by Andrew of Caesarea, Commentarii in Apocalypsin (TLG 3004.001).  11th c., from Athos.
  • Add MS 39614, Xenophon, Hellenica. Early 16th century, Venice.
  • Add MS 39615, Hermogenes, De constitutionibus (Περὶ στάσεων) (TLG 0592.002). Early 16th century, Venice.
  • Add MS 39616, [Plutarch], De liberis educandis. Early 16th century, Venice.
  • Add MS 39617, Demosthenes, Orationes, with the hypotheses of Libanius and occasional scholia and interlinear glosses. 15th century, Greece.
  • Arundel MS 531, Diogenes Laertius, Vitae Philosophorum, with illuminated head- and tailpieces on f 1r. 2nd half of the 15th century, Italy.
  • Burney MS 61, Collection of works by Greek lyric poets, including Anacreon, Alcaeus, Sappho, Stesichorus, and Ibycus. Occasional marginal notes with variants of Henri Estienne and T. Faber. 2nd half of the 16th century, France.
  • Burney MS 70, Basil of Caesarea, De legendis libris gentilium (TLG 2040.002), and other works. Large initials in colour and gold, partial foliate border on f 1r similar to that in Burney 14. 4th quarter of the 15th century, written by Ioannes Skoutariotes at Florence.
  • Burney MS 71, Callimachus, Hymns (TLG 0533.015-020). c 1500.
  • Burney MS 88, Libanius, Epistulae (TLG 2200.001). End of the 15th century, Italy.
  • Burney MS 89, Lycophron, Alexandra, with the commentary of Ioannes or Isaac Tzetzes, imperfect. 1st half of the 15th century, Greece.
  • Burney MS 96, Minor Attic Orators. End of the 15th century, Venice.
  • Burney MS 98, Pindar, Olympia (TLG 0033.001), imperfect, with interlinear and marginal scholia; Dionysius Periegetes, Orbis Descriptio (TLG 0084.001), with interlinear glosses and marginal paraphrase; Eustathius Thessalonicensis, Commentarium in Dionysii periegetae orbis descriptionem (TLG 4083.006); Strabo, Geographica (TLG 0099.001), extracts. Beginning of the 16th century.
  • Burney MS 106, Sophocles, Ajax, Electra, Oedipus Tyrannus, Antigone; [Aeschylus], Prometheus Vinctus; Pindar, Olympia. End of the 15th century.
  • Burney MS 108, Aelian, Tactica; Leo VI, Tactica; Heron of Alexandria, Pneumatica, De automatis, with numerous diagrams. 1st quarter of the 16th century, possibly written at Venice.
  • Burney MS 109, Works by Theocritus, Hesiod, Pindar, Pythagoras and Aratus. 2nd half of the 14th century, Italy.
  • Burney MS 110, Zenobius, Epitome collectionum Luculli Tarrhaei et Didymi (TLG 0098.001). 4th quarter of the 15th century, Italy.
  • Egerton MS 2625, Thucydides, Historiae (TLG 0003.001), with scholia, formerly forming a single manuscript with Add MS 5110. 15th century, possibly written on Crete.
  • Royal MS 16 C IV Part 1 and Part 2, John Tzetzes, Antehomerica, with a translation into Latin by Petrus Morellus. 1560-1603, France (Tours/Loches), in the hand of Petrus Morellus.
  • Royal MS 16 C VII, Constantine Manasses, Breviarium Chronicum , imperfect. Mid-15th century, Italy? Probably formerly owned by Sir Robert Cotton.
  • Royal MS 16 C XIV, Apparatus Bellicus, followed by extracts from Byzantine authors. 1584, probably written in Italy.
  • Royal MS 16 C XIX, Simplicius, Commentarius in Epicteti Enchiridion. 1st half of the 16th century, Italy (Padua?)
  • Royal MS 16 C XX, Isaac Argyrus, De Metris Poeticis, imperfect, with marginalia by Isaac Casaubon. End of the 16th century, Italy?

Phew.  That was very unpleasant to transcribe and format.

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Notes on the manuscript tradition of Marcus Aurelius’ “Meditations”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A slim undated hardback of an old English translation of the “meditations” of the emperor Marcus Aurelius came into my hands last week for a couple of pounds in a seaside second-hand bookshop.  The long preface by the unnamed translator  -who proves to be George Long, a 19th c. scholar – was a bit odd, but contained some definite gems such as the following:

A man’s greatness lies not in wealth and station, as the vulgar believe, not yet in his intellectual capacity, which is often associated with the meanest moral character, the most abject servility to those in high places and arrogance to the poor and lowly; but a man’s true greatness lies in the consciousness of an honest purpose in life, founded on a just estimate of himself and everything else, on frequent self-examination, and a steady obedience to the rule which he knows to be right, without troubling himself, as the emperor says he should not, about what others may think or say, or whether they do or do not do that which he thinks and says and does.

Is this not well said?

But it left me wondering, as I always do, how the often-translated thoughts of Marcus Aurelius in 12 books came down to us.  A search for an edition proving fruitless, I eventually found a JSTOR article that enlightened me.[1]

The manuscripts are:

  • A – Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1950, 14th century.  This is the only complete text.
  • T – A now lost manuscript (labelled P by Farquharson) used by Xylander for the editio princeps of Zurich, 1559.  This too was complete, although Xylander describes it as mutilated.[2]
  • D – Cod. Darmstadtinus 1773, 14th century.  This contains extracts from books 1-9.  The text is very close to that found in A.
  • M – Cod. Monacensis 323, 16th century.  This contains short excerpts from books 2-4, and also 7.50.
  • C – Excerpts in several manuscripts from books 1-4.20.
  • W – Excerpts in several manuscripts; 4.33, and excerpts from books 4.33, 6, 7, 8, and 11.
  • X – Excerpts in several manuscripts; 4.49 and excerpts from books 5-12.
  • The ‘Folium Treverense’ containing 5.6.6-5.12.3.
  • There are also quotations from books 2 and 4-12 in Bryennius, a 15th century Byzantine scholar, who presumably had access to a complete manuscript.

An edition is referred to as well – that of J. Dalfen, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus: Ad se ipsum libri XII, Teubner: Leipzig, 1979; 2nd revised ed. 1987.  But of course this is not online.  An earlier edition of I.H. Leopold, 1908, ought to be accessible online somewhere?

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  1. [1]D.A. Rees, Joseph Bryennius and the text of Marcus Aurelius’ “Meditations”, Classical Quarterly, N.S. 50 (2000), 584-596.  JSTOR↩
  2. [2]M. Antonini Imperatoris Romani, Et Philosophi De seipso seu vita sua Libri XII.   Xylander is online here at the BSB.↩

What happened to the bindings of the Syriac manuscripts at the British Library

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A very interesting post on this here:   The Syriac manuscripts in the British Library: what happened to the bindings? (Liv Ingeborg Lied).

Basically they were mostly discarded and rebound.

H/T Paleojudaica.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

2014 has certainly started with a bang!  Here I am, on the Friday of the first week back, and it seems as if I was never on holiday!

The two monochrome microfilm-PDF’s of the unpublished history by the 13th century Arabic Christian writer al-Makin, from the Bibliothèque Nationale Français are now on my hard disk.  Obtaining them cost over 200 euros, which I grudge greatly.  On the other hand I do like the BNF’s new website and system of ordering online!  This works very well.  Now if only we could get colour pictures of manuscripts at a reasonable price!!

The microfilms are at least clear and easily readable, which is more than the last ones obtained from the BnF were.

A week or two back Amazon (US) sent me a gift card.  This allowed me to buy the new translation of the patrialogical texts on Constantinople, about which I wrote a while back.  It was on the door mat this evening when I arrived home.  It’s a useful item to have, that’s for sure, although fairly elementary.  One thing that I did not like: all footnotes are at the end.  I had forgotten how annoying that is.

I’ve also signed up for the 5th British Patristics conference, to be held at Kings College London on 3-5th September, 2014.  I have attended two of these conferences, and they were both superior to the international patristics conference in Oxford.  The reason for this is that the time allowed for papers is longer, and so the papers contain more.

On a personal note, I’ve decided to make another effort to see the Northern Lights this year.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve spent today driving up to Cambridge to visit the university library.  My object was to obtain some articles by R. Delmaire on the subject of Chrysostom’s letters.  For the most part I was able to obtain these; although I was disappointed to discover that the latest available volume of one serial was not shelved or accessible.  I’m reading into them at the moment.  R. Delmaire’s 1991 study examined the letters, and reordered them by date.  The order in the Benedictine edition (and the PG) isn’t even that of the manuscripts!

The Letters of Chrysostom project is not mine, so I won’t say a lot about this.  But I have also discovered a list of the opening words of all of the letters at the Sources Chretiennes site here (PDF).

Equally useful, I have discovered a list of the works of Chrysostom at the same site, with the Clavis Patrum Graecorum number for them all, here (PDF).

I’ve also received from the Lebanese typist the next 10 pages of the transcription of al-Makin’s world history.  This is taken from the 1625 Erpenius edition, which has the merit of being printed.  Once we get to the end of this – for Erpenius died before he could complete editing the text – I shall have to try the typist on a PDF of a microfilm manuscript.

An email has arrived today from the Bibliothèque Nationale Français, containing an estimate for reproductions of two manuscripts of al-Makin.  They require 50 euros each, plus 10 euros for “shipping” (why?) plus M. Hollande’s tax on top of that, totalling around 130 euros, or nearly $190!  Quite a bit for 2 PDF’s!  Worse still, they propose to supply me with scans from microfilms — at least, I hope these are scans, for the estimate says only “microfilm”.  And these will be black and white, and quite possibly unreadable.  I have a lot of time for the BNF, but this is shameful.  For that price they could at least photograph the things with a consumer digital camera and supply me with some decent images!  I shall have to pay the blackmail – it is, at least, less than the Bodleian is demanding – but it is a salutary reminder, in these days of digitisation, how bad things were and still are in some places.

Onward!

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Some notes on the bindings of ancient codices

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A useful post at the British Library blog here drew my attention to an interesting question: what did the bindings of ancient manuscripts look like?

We all know that ancient books in 1 AD were written on rolls of papyrus.  With these we are not concerned here.  Examples have reached us, notably the charred rolls from Herculaneum.

A roll from Herculaneum
A roll from Herculaneum

Notes for day-to-day use were written on wax tablets.  These consisted of wooden boards with a recess, filled with wax.  The notes could be written on the wax with a sharp point, and erased with the flattened area at the other end.  Examples have been found, often with much scratching on the wood!  One such example, now in the Louvre, is given here.

Roman wax tablet - Louvre
Roman wax tablet – Louvre

A natural development from this was to take a sheet of papyrus or parchment, and fold it in the middle, again to take notes.  This gives rise to the modern book-form or codex, which starts being used in the 1st century AD.

Such items are mentioned by Martial in his Epigrams, who tells the reader where his poems may be bought, written on these novel-sounding objects.  But most authors seem to have ignored this parvenu.  Snobbery is always a feature of the literary world, and it was perhaps used mainly by middle-class and business people.

One exception to this rule was the early Christians.  The municipal rubbish dump at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt has yielded immense amounts of papyrus fragments from ancient books; but analysis shows that the Christian texts tended to be written on a codex much earlier than non-Christian texts.  In this context, it is notable that the end of Mark’s gospel is lost, and plainly was lost very early indeed.  The end of a text, if it is written on a roll, tends to be well-preserved; but the last leaf of a codex can easily become detached, if the volume does not have a cover.  It has been suggested, therefore, that Mark’s gospel was originally written into a codex, and that the last leaf or two was lost, before almost any copies were made.

These early codices were unlike modern books in one respect.  They consisted of a single gathering or “quire”: you took a pile of sheets of papyrus, and folded them in the middle, and sewed a link in the centre of the fold to hold them together.  A modern example from here shows the problem nicely:

Single quire notebook
Single quire notebook

There is a maximum size to these items, and they quickly become very difficult to handle.  The solution was found in the 4th century AD, when the multi-quire codex went into general use.  Each quire was no more than 16 pages; and then the quires were sewn to each other to form a book of almost any length, and the binding attached.  A modern example again:

Multi-quire binding
Multi-quire binding

These very large codices come into use in the late 4th century AD, and of course remain in use today in modern hardback books.

The find of a collection of gnostic books at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1946 gave us a clear idea of what the ancient books of the early 4th century looked like (via here).  These were still single quire papyrus codices.

The Nag Hammadi codices
The Nag Hammadi codices

The British Library cover comes from a tax register written in 716-717.  It consists of limp leather, lined with papyrus.

British Library Papyrus 1442 - 8th century leather binding of Coptic tax register
British Library Papyrus 1442 – 8th century leather binding of Coptic tax register

Note that there is a flap: this would be covered with metal and used to keep the book closed.  It formed a catch, in effect.

The cover is decorated with ink, and, usefully, the British Library have enhanced a detail photograph to show it:

BL Papyrus 1442 - enhanced image of cover
BL Papyrus 1442 – enhanced image of cover

Let me say that, after attempting to enhance it further myself, I am full of respect for the skills of the chap who created that image!

Of course this is a fairly late example of an “ancient” binding, which happens to be that of a single-quire non-literary text.  But it is clear from the Nag Hammadi volumes that this is precisely the technology in use in the early 4th century, and no doubt earlier.  In which case, we may speculate that early – 1st century – copies of Mark’s gospel perhaps had covers of the same kind.

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How to find the digital manuscripts at the Bodleian-Vatican project

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Lots of ballyhoo in the press, but it is remarkably difficult to find any actual manuscripts digitised by this project, paid for by Leonard Polonsky (to whom all kudos), between the Vatican and the Bodleian libraries.

Anyway, the Greek manuscripts to be digitised are listed here:

http://bav.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/items-to-be-digitized-greek-manuscripts

The tiny number that have been done so far are linkable.  Here are the mss that have been done:

The Vatican mss have a table of contents of what is in the manuscript, which is helpful.

The Bodleian seem to intend to do their Barocci manuscripts – mostly miscellaneous stuff, probably containing goodies since accessing them was always a pain.  That is rather a good idea.

Soberingly the Bodleian library is still ripping off scholars for reproductions.  They charged one poor scholar £200 (300 USD) for images of one Arabic manuscript recently, and bound him by fearsome threats to share the output – delivered as digital images – with nobody.

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The two recensions of al-Makin

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There are quite a number of manuscripts of the history by the 13th century Coptic historian al-Makin ibn al-Amid.  I have listed these in a previous post here.  Martino Diez, in his important article on the subject[1] has obtained copies of three of the manuscripts.  This is no small feat in itself, as I can bear witness myself after attempting it. Indeed a look at the prices on the Bodleian website today was quite enough to dissuade me from trying to obtain a copy of any of their manuscripts!  I have commented before on the corruption involved in charging huge sums for reproductions of public-owned manuscripts.

Diez obtained somehow copies of the following:

  • Vatican ar. 168. (16th c.)
  • Bodleian ar. 683. (AD 1591) (=Pococke 312)
  • Paris ar. 4729 (19th c.)

He writes:

Investigation shows that the three manuscripts belong to two different recensions.  One, the shorter, is present in ms. Vat. ar. 168 and in Pococke 312, and the other, longer, preserved in ms. Paris BNF ar. 4729.  The exact relationship between the two recensions seems, on first sight, difficult to establish.

The existence of two families of witnesses was already highlighted by Gaston Wiet in a long note to the History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria.  The French researcher proposed to call the first family the vulgata and assigned to it most of the witnesses, notably Paris BNF ar. 4524, Vat ar. 168 and 169, Borg. ar. 232, and Pococke 312.  All the same, Wiet noted the existence of a second family, “completed and retouched using [the Annals of] Eutychius, such as ms. Paris ar. 4729.”  “This manuscript reveals that its copyist had literary, confessional and chronological concerns: the material of al-Makin is treated very freely.  But the modifications at bottom belonging to the Chronicle [of al-Makin] have not been invented by the copyist.  It is obvious that he worked with a copy of the Annals of Eutychius before him.”  For Wiet, therefore, the vulgata is the original work of Ibn al-Amid, while ms. Paris ar. 4729 (which we will refer to as the “expanded” recension) represents a later elaboration, contaminated from other sources, notably Eutychius, and not without literary ambitions.

In reality the relations between the two recensions are more complicated.  That they are both fundamentally the same work is clear, because of the existence of the same rubrics for people (166 in both recensions), but it is not always the expanded recension that completes the vulgata.  It is not uncommon for the reverse to be the case.  Taken together, the differences are not marginal, especially in certain sections such as the introduction, or the history of Alexander.  The key to understanding this is supplied by the author himself in his preface.  …

Here Diez gives a transcription of the incipit from all three manuscripts and portions of the preface; unfortunately without translation, so of course I cannot follow it.  Then:

The text clearly shows that the vulgata represents an abridgement (muhtasar) of the chronicle, made by the author himself.  He states, in fact, that, after completing a first version of his work, he came into possession of new sources (on the origin of the world, the shape of the world, on the patriarchs, on the kings of Persia) which enriched the treatment of certain periods.  However the work was already too long, and someone, “to whom it was not possible to say ‘no'” (“someone who sought to make his request accepted and to assist in the pursuit of his desire”) asked Ibn-al `Amid to make an abridgement which contained all the best known events.  And this is exactly what is called the vulgata of Ibn-al `Amid.

He then explores what the “expanded” edition is.  Is it indeed the original version, or a longer version, enriched with further information before being condensed?  He argues that it is the former; this is, indeed, the original version produced by al-Makin.  He notes that the titles and explicits of the copies indicate something – again this is not translated so I can’t say what that is! – and then details differences.  Diez does not seem to deal with the question of contamination from Eutychius, however.

If both versions are indeed by the author, any future edition and translation needs to include both.  But clearly there is more work to be done.

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  1. [1]Martino Diez, “Les antiquites greco-romaines entre ibn al-`Amid et Ibn Khaldun. Notes pour une histoire de la tradition, in: Studia Graeco-Arabica 3 (2013), 121-140.  Online here.↩

Eusebius Chronicon book 1 – portion of original Greek rediscovered!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A very interesting article (in English) by J. Gruskova has appeared on the web, discussing recent work with Byzantine palimpsests, at the Austrian National Library.[1]  Somewhat annoyingly the PDF doesn’t allow copying of the text, so I can’t give you more than snippets here.

The article notes various palimpsests where modern technology – multi-spectral imaging – is producing spectacular results, even compared with the use of UV lamps less than 10 years ago.

The most interesting is the discovery of two leaves from a manuscript of Eusebius’ Chronicon book 1, otherwise preserved only in a single Armenian manuscript.  The ms. is Vienna Iur. gr. 18, fol. 32 and 39, which must have been an internal bifolium of a quire.  Comparing it with Karst’s GCS edition, it contains the text from Karst p.9, line 1, to Karst p.10 line 27.  It was digitised under UV in 2007 and 2008, which allowed only 60% of the text to be read; MSI will now be applied to it.

Other items discussed are 33 folios of Herodian’s De prosodia catholica, a 2nd century AD exposition in 20 books of the rules for accentuating Greek; an anthology of Byzantine legislation known as the Basilica; possible fragments of the lost 3rd c. Scythica (about the Goths etc) of Dexippus; and a new manuscript of Constantine Porphyrogenitus’ De cerimoniis.

It’s all extremely valuable stuff; but also very encouraging!  We have the technology.

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  1. [1]J. Grusková, Further Steps in Revealing, Editing and Analysing Important Ancient Greek and Byzantine Texts Hidden in Palimpsests. Graecolatina et Orientalia 33-34 (2012) 69-82.↩