Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, freedom of speech, information access, and more
I’m not really all that interested in ancient astrological texts. What I am very interested in, tho, is that we should have access to ancient literature, whatever it may be. And it’s really quite hard to access to stuff when you don’t know it exists! The technical works of antiquity are just as much part [...]
In the updates to my last post, I stumbled across a translation of Porphyry’s introduction to Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos that included an interesting-sounding work by a certain Serapion Alexandrinus, consisting of a short explanation of terminology. A Google search brings me to this page, which gives the text of the work (from CCAG vol. 8.) plus a [...]
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 [...]
A note from Prof. Mark Riley to say that he has fixed a few bugs in his translation of Vettius Valens, and uploaded a revised PDF here. Grab it while it’s hot! I’m getting snippets suggesting that the upload of this complete translation to the web is causing rather a stir in astrological circles. Which [...]
I’m still thinking about parapegma, the ancient peg-calendars to predict star- and weather-movements. A google search has revealed that the opening parts of Daryn Lehoux’s 2007 book are a version of his 2000 PhD thesis, which is online at ScribD here. It’s a Canadian thesis, which leads me to wonder whether Canadian theses are online for free, and [...]
I thought it might be useful to signal how the calendar of Antiochus got to us. We have Boll’s nice printed edition, and Daryn Lehoux’s even nicer text, translation and explanatory notes. But … how did these get to us? What is the text based on? Boll lists the copies available to him, which were [...]
In a very useful comment on a recent post, Alexander Jones drew my attention to the term “parapegma”, and to Daryn Lehoux, “Astronomy, weather, and calendars in the ancient world: parapegmata and related texts in classical and Near Eastern societies”, CUP, 2007. The link is to the Google Books preview. At a price of $155, [...]
At last, here we are at the point of greatest interest — December. But we now have much more context for what we find. Μὴν Δεκέμβριος. December βʹ. Κύων ἑῷος δύνει. 2. Sirius sets in the east. γʹ. Ἀρκτοῦρος δύνει · ἐπισημασία. 3. Arcturus sets : weather change. δʹ. Σκορπίος ἐπιτέλλει ἅμα ἡλίῳ · ἐπισημασία. [...]
Μὴν Νοέμβριος. November αʹ. ὁ κατὰ τὸ γόνυ τοῦ Τοξότου κρύπτεται. 1. The portion below the knee of the Archer is absent from the sky. γʹ. ὁ λαμπρὸς τῶν Ὑάδων ἑσπέριος ἀνατέλλει. 3. The radiance of the Hyades arises in the west. εʹ. Ὑάδες δύνουσιν · ἐν ἡμέραις ἑπτὰ ἐπισημασία. 5. The Hyades are setting [...]
Μὴν Ὀκτώβριος. October βʹ. Αἲξ ἑσπερία καὶ ὁ Στάχυς ἀνατέλλει. 2. The Goat arises in the west, and Stachys. εʹ. ὁ λαμπρὸς τοῦ Στεφάνου ἀνατέλλει · ἐν ἡμέραις θʹ ἐπισημασία. 5. The radiance of the Crown arises: weather change in 9 days. ζʹ. Ταύρου οὐρὰ καὶ ὁ λαμπρὸς τῆς βορείας χηλῆς τοῦ σκορπίου ἀνατέλλει. 7. [...]