Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, information access, and more
I forgot to mention that fragment 7 of Philip of Side arrived over the weekend as well. It’s the bit which is alchemical in nature.
I’m always wary of alchemical texts. I have a degree in Chemistry, but I find them quite hard to understand. However this one is clear enough, and refers to dyeing copper.
The translation that I commissioned of John Chrysostom’s sermon on the new year festivities is now online here. I hope it will be useful! It’s public domain – do whatever you like with it!
The translation that I commissioned of John Chrysostom’s sermon In Kalendas, on the kalends of January — i.e. on New Year — has arrived and looks good. It will be released into the public domain and placed online this evening.
There may be a bit of a hiatus with various projects over the summer. I imagine that translators will want to get a break — to run barefoot in the meadows and bathe in the mountain streams, frisking with … with whatever is frisking at this season. I find my own urge to sit before a keyboard is diminishing too!
UPDATE (June 19th). After writing which, I promptly forgot all about it! Oops!
The project to translate all the remaining or supposed fragments of Philip of Side’s 24-book Christian History is going well. Regular readers will remain that the fragments were classified into seven groups. Nos 1, 2, 5 and 6 are done, and 7 is in progress. The translator is doing is very good job, and the results are pretty spectacular, and will be definitive, I think. I still find myself amazed that no-one has done this earlier.
We’re also going to include the testimonia, since these are few. The critical edition of Socrates Scholasticus Church History arrived at my local library today, and I have copied the relevant pages and will send them across. How we get the Photius text I’m not sure, tho.
It is a time of solemn rejoicing here at Roger Pearse Towers. The staff have been given the evening off to make merry, and are even now dancing on the lawn wearing masks and wreaths of vine leaves and in their Sunday best. The maids are carrying candles and one and all are sampling the new wine — or at least, the decaf diet coke laid on copiously from the ancestral cellar.
The cause of all this merriment is that the last, the very last portion commissioned from someone else of the Eusebius volume has come in! Adam McCollum has transcribed all the Syriac text — 21 pages of it — which would be a job all by itself. But the original editors were weak and cowardly men, and only printed the consonants. Adam has added the vowels, which the original editors never had the courage to do. And he did it to a deadline and on time, and in a beautiful Serto font. Would that everyone I have worked with was so professional.
What this means is that the book can now be finished and prepared for the typesetter. I need await no-one but myself. I need to spend a day or so on adding some cross-references between the Greek and Syriac text. I ought to build some kind of index. I think there is a couple of days of editorial work; probably a couple of weekends.
Once that is done, I shall approach the people with whom I have discussed typesetting. They can typeset the Coptic, I think, as a sample. That will test their nerves and their skill; if they can do that, I shall be confident they can do all of it.
Thanks be to God, to have got this far after more than 2 years. My sincere thanks, not just to Adam who has been a tower of strength in all this, but also to David Miller who translated the Greek and Latin; Claudio Zamagni and the people at Sources Chretiennes who supplied me with the Greek text in electronic form; Tom Schmidt who typed up the new fragments of the Greek and checked all the other fragments over against Mai’s text; to Carol Downer and the UCL Coptic Readers Group who translated the Coptic and came through after I had given up any hope of doing that; to Ambrose Boles who transcribed the Coptic quickly and well into Keft, and by no means least to Adam McCollum who translated and transcribed both the Syriac and the Arabic and whose professionalism cheered me no end during the dark days when I wondered if it would ever all be done.
I’m not out of the woods yet. But now we can move forward.
The last in our short series of short anonymous late Latin Christian poems discussing paganism is the Carmen ad Antonium, the Poem to Anthony. This is preserved in a couple of manuscripts of the poems of Paulinus of Nola, where it appears, following the poems of Paulinus, but without name or title. It was first printed by Muratori, who gave it the title of “Poema Ultimum” and attributed it to Paulinus. It may be found in modern editions of Paulinus as poem 32 (CSEL 30, carm. 32, p. 329-338).[1] Like the others, it sheds light on late paganism, albeit in a critical way. The cult of Mithras with its subterranean worship of the sun is mentioned, as is the cult of the Magna Mater (Cybele) and Attis. Interesting is the reference to Adonis — a statue of Adonis — being carried out into the arena at the festival of Venus and filth thrown at it.
The excellent translation of Croke and Harries is as follows:
I admit to having examined all ways of belief, Antonius; I have enquired into much, run through questions in every detail, yet I have found nothing superior to belief in Christ. Now I have arranged to set this out in flowing verse and, to avoid offence in my choice of poetic subject, I cite David himself who prayed to God through the poetry he sang, as my precedent for treating great matters with humble words. I shall speak of what should be shunned, followed, or worshipped, although both practice and its principles must be established in all things.
In the first place, even the marvellous favour of God did not influence the Jewish race; for, when they were rescued from the wicked Pharaoh and crossed the sea on foot with their leader, the pillar of light shining before them, they saw the enemy cavalry Overwhelmed by the waters. Although they had left cultivated fields behind them, they never lacked anything, as manna fell from the sky and springs gushed from the rock, yet, after all these great things, they denied the present help of God and, while seeking another divinity in the madness of their hearts, lit fires and lost the gold that he had sent.
The pagan, too, is the same. He worships stones he has carved himself and creates by his own hand the object to which he owes fear. Then he adores images which he has so moulded from bronze that he can melt them down for coin whenever he wants to, or change them, as he often does, into shapes he should be ashamed of. Hence he sacrifices unfortunate cattle and looks in their warm lungs for the intentions of the gods whom he believes angry, and prays for the life of a man through the death of a beast. What kind of forgiveness can a man ask who asks it with blood? What a strange, stupid damnable practice it is! After the omnipotent God once formed man man dares to fashion God; to complete the tally of sin, he also sells the image and the buyer purchases himself a master.
Could I accept that philosophers’ beliefs are reasonable when they are unreasonable themselves, they whose wisdom is but vain? There are the dog-like Cynics — their name betrays them. Some follow the dogma of Plato, who doubted it himself, and worry themselves over the composition of the soul, a matter discussed now for a long time past. They investigate it constantly yet are never able to reach a conclusion, which is why they like copying Plato’s book on the soul, a book containing nothing susceptible of proof apart from the title.[1]
There are also the Physici, so called from the word for nature, who enjoy living in an old-fashioned, uncultivated and uncouth fashion. For there was once a man[2] who carried only a staff and a pottery dish, because they were, he thought, the only indispensably useful things, hence the only possessions one should have, the one to support him, the other to drink out of. But when he saw a farmer standing and drinking water out of his cupped hands, he smashed his dish and threw it away from him saying that one should reject all superfluous things. A country man had taught him that one could reject that small dish too. These men neither drink wine, nor do they eat bread, nor lie on a bed nor wear clothes to keep out the cold and, in their ingratitude to God, refuse what he has offered them.
What can I say of the various religious rites and temples set up to gods and goddesses? Let me first talk of the character of the Capitol; they have a god and a god’s wife and will have it that she is his sister, as Virgil, their creator, denoted by his phrase ‘both sister and wife’. It is also said of Jupiter that he violated his daughter and gave her to his brother and, to get other women, changed his shape; now he was a snake, now a bull, now a swan and a tree and by all these changes provided his own evidence as to his real nature, preferring the shapes of others to his own. Even more disgraceful than this, he pretended to be an eagle and accepted the unnatural embraces of a boy. What do his crowd of worshippers say? Let them either deny this is Jupiter or admit his unseemly conduct. He certainly has a prestige not confirmed by reasoned thought. They make sacrifices to Jupiter and call him ‘Jupiter the Best’ and make requests to him and also place ‘Father Janus’ in the first rank of gods. This Janus was a king long ago who named the Janiculan hill after himself, a wise man who (foresaw) as many things in the future as he could look back (on in the past) and so the ancient Latins pictured him with two faces and called him the two-headed Janus. Because he had arrived in Italy in a boat, the first coin was struck in honour of him with the following devices: on one side was carved a head, on the other, a ship. It is in memory of this that men distinguish the sides of some of their coins, calling one side ‘heads’ and the other ‘ships’ after that event long ago. Why do they hope for anything from Jupiter who came second after this king yet who is served with offerings through the lips of suppliants? This god has a mother, too, who was overtaken by love for a shepherd, so the shepherd himself came before Jupiter or Jove; but the shepherd was his superior for, wishing to preserve his chastity, he rejected the goddess who in her rage castrated him so that he who had refused to come to her bed should never be the husband of another.[3] Was this the just ordinance of the gods however, that a man who had not been made a fornicator should never be a husband? Now, too, eunuchs chant shameful mysteries nor are there lacking men to be corrupted by this infection. They worship some secret the more profound for being behind closed doors and call holy something which would render a modest man unholy should he approach it. Thus the priest himself, more restricted, avoids sleeping with women and accepts the embrace of men.
O blinded intellect of man! Plays about their holy things always arouse laughter, yet they do not abandon the error of their ways. They maintain Saturn was Jupiter’s father and that first he devoured his children and then vomited up his unspeakable meal, yet later, by a trick of his wife’s, he swallowed a stone, believing it to be Jupiter and that if he had not done that, Jupiter would have been consumed. They call Saturn Chronus and give him this name, meaning Time, because he swallows the time he creates and then brings up again what he has swallowed. But why be so devious in inventing a name for Time? Moreover, this god, who always so feared his children’s designs for himself, when hurled out of heaven by Jupiter, lay latent in the fields of Italy, called Latium for that reason. What great gods they both were! One hid under the earth, the other could not know the earth’s hiding places. Therefore the Quirites [Romans] established the evil rite of Latiaris, using human sacrifice to glut an empty name. How deep is the night of the mind, how unthinking the human heart! The object of their worship is nothing, yet the rites cause the shedding of blood.
What of the fact that they hide the Unconquered One in a rocky cave and dare to call the one they keep in darkness the Sun? [4] Who adores light in secret or hides the star of the sky in the shadows beneath the earth except for some evil purpose? Why do they not hide the rites of Isis with her symbols and the dog-headed Anubis even deeper, instead of showing them throughout the public places as they do? Yes, they look for something and rejoice when they have found it and lose it again so that they can hunt for it again. What sensible man could put up with the sight of one sect hiding the sun, as it were, while the others openly display their monstrous gods? What had Serapis done to deserve to be so dragged and torn by his own people through such varied and degrading places? Always at last he becomes a wild beast, a dog, a decomposing ass’s corpse, he becomes now a man, now bread, now heavy with disease. While acting in this way, they admit he feels nothing.
What should I say too of Vesta, when her own priest says he does not know what she is? Yet deep in the heart of her sanctuary they claim there is preserved the undying fire. Why is she a goddess, not a god? Why is fire [masculine in Latin] called a woman? Yet Vesta was a woman, so Hyginus implies, who was the first to weave a garment from new thread, called a ‘vestment’ from her name, which she gave to Vulcan who, in return, showed her how to watch over her hidden hearths; Vulcan, in his turn, was pleased with the gift and offered it to the Sun, by whose help he had previously discovered the adultery of Mars; nowadays all the credulous mob at the Vulcanalia hang up garments for the Sun. To show the character of Venus, Adonis [5] is carried out; then they send for manure and throw it about him. If you look into everything, it becomes more and more laughable. There is this additional detail: I gather that every five years the so-called Vestal Virgins take a feast to a serpent who either does not exist at all, or else is the Devil himself, who formerly persuaded the human race to its ruin. But they venerate him, even though now he trembles and hangs imprisoned by the name of Christ and confesses to his evil deeds. How strange is the mind of man that he tells lies instead of the truth, worships what he should renounce and turns his back on what he should adore.
Now I shall have said enough about useless fears. Before I saw the clear light, I too was uncertain on all these things for a long time, tossed by many a storm, but the holy church received me into a harbour of safety and set me in a peaceful anchorage after my wanderings over the waves, so that the dark clouds of evil might be dispersed and, at the promised time, I might hope for the calm light of heaven. For that former salvation, which the forgetful Adam lost when urged off course by an adverse wind, now, with Christ at the oar, is pushed off the rocks and arises once more to remain with us forever. For he, our helmsman, so guides all things everywhere that he who but recently removed our mistaken thinking now sets us on a better road and opens the gates of Paradise. Fortunate is our faith in its dedication to a sure and single God.
[1] The Phaedo.
[2] Diogenes.
[3] Cybele, and Attis.
[4] Mithras Sol Invictus.
[5] The lover of Venus.
I’ve asked Hercules if he’d consider allowed me to clean the Augean stables, in return for cleaning up the word document containing the Coptic fragments of Eusebius Quaestiones. At least, I would have done but I don’t have his mobile number. And anyway, I think the big lunk would refuse.
The file contains any number of points at which the translator has indicated two possible meanings rather than one. This leaves me as the editor to decide which best fits the context. But I shall choose the more English-like, and place the other in a footnote unless it is simply an identical idea in a different word.
Another problem is where the text changes from translation to commentary or general remarks, all placed inline and not distinctly marked off. This ought to have been in footnotes, I think.
But I have now processed the translators pencilled comments into the file, and am reworking it now. I think the translation — which is what it is all about in the end — really is good, and sound. All the rest is less important.
The translator also went over the transcription, which I had not expected, but which was good. In truth the transcriber made some mistakes. But he didn’t do a bad job (aside from omitting one entire line, by the process known to all manuscript buffs), and probably there are only four or five typos.
Onwards…
UPDATE:17:41. A very hard day’s work, but the Coptic is now in the same form as the rest of the book. I’m awaiting the Syriac transcription, but otherwise the heavy lifting is all done.
The next stage is cross-referencing the Syriac, Coptic and Arabic fragments with the Greek. I’m fairly tempted to use Lulu and print off a copy of the whole thing in a spiral binding, with nice wide margins, so I can scribble on it. We’ll see. I also need to go through and remove the TODO marks in various places.
One issue I have not resolved is whether to use the translation of the introduction to Lagarde’s catena. Lagarde wrote in Latin, but I had it run into English for the Coptic group. It’s quite interesting; but out of date, of course. That reminds me; some kind friends sent me some PDF’s of material relating to it, which I need to read.
But I’ve done enough for today. I might bunk off and go and play Microsoft Freelancer instead this evening!
An Augean day today. I’ve received an A4 envelope containing a print-off of the translation of the 18 Coptic fragments of Eusebius Gospel Problems and Solutions (Quaestiones ad Stephanum et Marinum) with pencil revisions in the margin, plus revisions of the Coptic transcription, plus notes on the translation of De Lagarde’s Latin preface. Also an electronic file containing a new version of the translation. All this has to be merged together, which would anyway be arduous and is hampered by a somewhat disorganised presentation.
De Lagarde benefited from the generosity of the then owner of the Coptic manuscript. The latter was rather more generous than the British Library of our own day with its talk of copyrights on PDFs which has prevented me seeing it.
Now, since Robert Curzon, with that mindset whereby the British nobles are ever ready to help in every fine endeavour, had promised on 1 May 1866 (after I wrote to him from Schleusingen) to grant me free access to the very valuable books he had collected, in the year 1874 I asked Robert, Lord Zouche, the son of that most magnanimous man, who had meanwhile been summoned to heaven, to honour his father’s promise (I was intending to edit the Egyptian Psalter).
He very kindly, with truly unheard-of benevolence, entrusted to my piety and learning both the most ancient fragments of the Egyptian Psalms and the codex of which I have just been speaking, sending them to Göttingen.
This favour was all the more gratifying, the more certain it was that neither in my own Germany were such treasures possessed—for I was born after the riches of the globe had been distributed—nor in the whole of Europe was there to be found, apart from myself, a man who had both studied theology and had acquired some acquaintance with the Egyptian language, and was willing to expend toilsome and thankless effort—and to suffer a large enough financial loss—on the task of editing this catena.
Faced with such generosity, one might hope that De Lagarde would behave similarly. Alas, at the end of the preface we read:
All those who wish to do so may use my volume, but only with the proviso that without my permission it is not permitted to reproduce what I have edited, nor to include it in the margin of an edition of either the Egyptian New Testament or of the Fathers.
I thank Robert, Lord Zouche, to the highest extent of my abilities for sending the manuscript to me in Göttingen to use.
De Lagarde’s failure to provide a translation was a more certain guarantee that his work would remain unused than this early claim of copyright. It was successful; the catena remains unknown and unused by scholars.
Let us mourn the passing of the aristocratic spirit, in these days of small minded officialdom, and honour the shade of Robert, Lord Zouche.
Very busy this week with work-related stuff; too much so, to do anything useful!
The fragments of Philip of Side are coming along nicely. The translator is doing his usual excellent job and ferreting out a lot of useful related information buried in articles in languages none of us know. The publication — which will be free and online — will be an excellent one.
One interesting issue arose concerning the text to translate of the fragments contained in the Religionsgesprach text — a 6th century fictional dialogue at the court of the Sassanids. This was printed by Bratke, but a critical edition does exist, in a thesis form, by Pauline Bringel. The two texts are rather different, even aside from the fact that Bringel identified two recensions of the text. We’re going to use Bratke, tho, and footnote differences. Bratke is accessible. Bringel will not be publishing her thesis any time soon, I learn, although the Sources Chretiennes would publish it, because of pressure of teaching duties. There would be little point in doing a translation from a text that none have access to.
This weekend is deadline time for contributors to the Eusebius project. There is more that could be done to the Coptic materials — but there has to be a limit some time! The translator is sending me hard-copy of proof-changes, which I hope will arrive tomorrow. I’m afraid it looks as if I may have to learn the Coptic alphabet to do some work on it, which is a nuisance, but there we are. However I shall do the minimum possible! With luck I can put the Coptic fragments to bed this weekend. I still need to resolve issues with fonts, tho. I’m still awaiting the transcription of the Syriac fragments, but I am told this will be ready on time, but not before. The Latin fragments I revised last night and are now — thankfully — done. An index of fragments and publications that I commissioned is in Excel, and needs more work and to be turned into a Word document.
The translator of the Origen Homilies on Ezechiel has found some more materials that probably derive from Origen’s Scholia on Ezechiel; these will be added in. I have admonished him to remember to take a summer holiday!
On a quite different subject, I had to rebuild the installer of QuickLatin, the tool that I sell ($29) to help people with Latin. My local anti-virus wailed about “unsigned code”, and I have been trying to work out how to sign a .exe file. Apparently no-one wants to make it too easy, although why anyone would want to make a security measure hard to implement I can’t imagine. I tried to f ind out this afternoon and failed. Oh well. It can go unsigned a while longer.
I’m still thinking about going to the UK patristics conference at Durham in September. I may yet go. But I’ll wait until July at least, because I don’t quite know what will happen to me in my current freelance job. I may need to find a new contract in a month, although I suspect that I shall end up with time off this summer! And I shall take some time off too.
I’ve also had a lot of correspondance this week, much of it very interesting. One chap who is interested in Coptic turns out to have a PDF of the British Library manuscript containing De Lagarde’s catena. This is the catena which I am publishing the Coptic from. He declined to give me a copy of it, because of fears about copyright — not entirely unreasonable, considering that today there was an announcement about more enforcement measures by the regulator, OFCOM. But he did let me see a page with the first Eusebius entry on it. The Coptic text was extremely clear, and interestingly there was a difference from De Lagarde’s printed version. De Lagarde runs the text together, and the names of the authors of each bit appear inline. But in the ms. the “Eusebius” was actually on a separate line! I’d show you, but apparently the British Library don’t want you to see it unless we pay them money.
It did leave me wondering what the point of running a public collection of manuscripts is, when circulation of images is prohibited! But I think I’ve asked that question before.
Bad news — the chap who was to help with the editorial cleanup, indexing, cross-referencing of the Eusebius Gospel Problems and Solutions is over-committed and has had to withdraw.
I need to find someone with plenty of time and an appetite for sorting out the dull but necessary stuff. I’m paying, of course. Anyone any suggestions as to how I find such a person?