Year: 2011

The Realencyclopadie on the festival of the Adonia

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A commenter asked about the date of the Adonia.  I confess I had never considered the matter, and posted the German text of the Realencyclopadie entry in the comments.  Here is a translation. 

Adonia. The feast of Adonis, celebrated in midsummer festival, whose main component is the lament for the death of Adonis who was represented by wooden dolls. The festival, of uncertain origin, is certainly an ancient one on the soil of Greece, Asia Minor and Syria, first mentioned at Athens under the name A)dwnia (Aristophanes Peace 419. Plutarch Nicias 13; Alcibiades 18) on the occasion of the Sicilian expedition as a private celebration for women.  In the 4th century B.C., the comic writers several times refer to it as for courtesans. So in Diphilus, fragment 43, 39 (II 554 K., ibid. 557; in the Theseus of Diphilus, the courtesans gave each other obscene riddles at the Adonia).

An honorary decree of the Thiasotai of Aphrodite for their leaders from the year 302 (Dittenberger Syll. 427) sets out his services in the πομπή (solemn procession) of the Adonia, which must therefore have been a major festival.

There is a portrayal of a splendid celebration of the Adonia in Alexandria, favored by Ptolemy Philadelphus, in Theocritus, 15th Idyll; a description of the celebration in Byblos, probably from the 1st century A.D., in [Lucian] de dea Syria 6ff; in Antioch in 362 AD (Ammianus Marcellinus XXII 9, 15) the festival was still celebrated annually. For the history of the god and its importance see Adonis.

The opening of the 15th idyll of Theocritus, and a link to the full English version, is in the post referenced above.  The hymn that is sung refers to Adonis receiving all the fruits — late summer, perhaps? — while another bit refers to “Oh dear, oh dear, Gorgo! my summer cloak’s torn right in two”, and the footnote suggests that it may have been held on the longest day.

Of course this is Ptolemaic Alexandria.  We need not suppose the festival was held on the same day everywhere.  Indeed in the Greek world, where each city could have different months, where the year started at different times, and there was no agreement on any universal chronology, it would be quite difficult to hold a festival on the same day throughout the Greek world, except by tying it to the solstice or some other astronomical event. 

We’re used to the Christian chronology, which is universal.  But that was a product of late antiquity, of the labours of Eusebius of Caesarea.  It did not exist in the classical Greek period.

UPDATE: Aristophanes, Peace, is here:

HERMES: Is it then for this reason that these untrustworthy charioteers have for so long been defrauding us, one of them robbing us of daylight and the other nibbling away at the other’s disk?

TRYGAES: Yes, certainly. So therefore, Hermes, my friend, help us with your whole heart to find and deliver the captive and we will celebrate the great Panathenaea in your honour as well as all the festivals of the other gods; for Hermes shall be the Mysteries, the Dipolia, the Adonia; everywhere the towns, freed from their miseries, will sacrifice to Hermes the Liberator; you will be loaded with benefits of every kind, and to start with, I offer you this cup for libations as your first present.

Plutarch, Alcibiades, is here.  The time is the arguments at Athens over sending the disastrous expedition to Syracuse.

After the people had adopted this motion and all things were made ready for the departure of the fleet, there were some unpropitious signs and portents, especially in connection with the festival, namely, the Adonia. 3 This fell at that time, and little images like dead folk carried forth to burial were in many places exposed to view by the women, who mimicked burial rites, beat their breasts, and sang dirges.

 Plutarch, Nicias, here refers to the same events:

7. Not a few also were somewhat disconcerted by the character of the days in the midst of which they dispatched their armament. The women were celebrating at that time the festival of Adonis, and in many places throughout the city little images of the god were laid our for burial, and funeral rites were held about them, with wailing cries of women, so that those who cared anything for such matters were distressed, and feared lest that powerful armament, with all the splendour and vigour which were so manifest in it, should speedily wither away and come to naught.

These last two come from Lacus Curtius, the splendid site created by Bill Thayer.  Here the Adonia is being celebrated at Athens when the expedition is despatched — but when was this, I wonder?

Bill has linked ‘adonia’ in the Alcibiades to a dictionary article that he has digitised, here.

ADOʹNIA (Ἀδώνια), a festival celebrated in honour of Aphrodite and Adonis in most of the Grecian cities, as well as in numerous places in the East. It lasted two days, and was celebrated by women exclusively. On the first day they brought into the streets statues of Adonis, which were laid out as corpses; and they observed all the rites customary at funerals, beating themselves and uttering lamentations. The second day was spent in merriment and feasting; because Adonis was allowed to return to life, and spend half of the year with Aphrodite. (Aristoph. Pax, 412, Schol. ad loc.; Plut. Alcib. 18, Nic. 13). For fuller particulars respecting the worship and festivals of Adonis, see Dict. of Biogr. s.v. Adonis.a

And Bill  has added his own note:

a For a different set of references altogether, see Prof. Crosby’s note on the 62d Discourse of Dio Chrysostom.

But Dio reads:

On the contrary, it was his custom to slip away into the women’s quarters in his palace and there sit with legs drawn up on a golden couch, sheltered by purple bed-hangings, just like the Adonis who is lamented by the women [5],…

and the note is:

5. As early as the fifth century Athenian women honoured him with a two-day festival in which the lament was prominent; cf. Aristophanes, Lysistrata 389.  A celebration in Alexandria forms the background of Theocritus’ fifteenth idyl; cf. also Bion’s Lament in Edmonds, Greek Bucolic Poets (L. C. L.), pp386‑395.

Few sites indeed, other than Lacus Curtius, would give us so much for a few clicks. 

Aristophanes, Lysistrata is here:

MAGISTRATE: Have the luxurious rites of the women glittered
Their libertine show, their drumming tapped out crowds,
The Sabazian Mysteries summoned their mob,
Adonis been wept to death on the terraces,
As I could hear the last day in the Assembly?
For Demostratus–let bad luck befoul him–
Was roaring, “We must sail for Sicily,”
While a woman, throwing herself about in a dance
Lopsided with drink, was shrilling out “Adonis,
Woe for Adonis.” Then Demostratus shouted,
“We must levy hoplites at Zacynthus,”
And there the woman, up to the ears in wine,
Was screaming “Weep for Adonis” on the house-top,
The scoundrelly politician, that lunatic ox,
Bellowing bad advice through tipsy shrieks:
Such are the follies wantoning in them.

MEN: O if you knew their full effrontery!
All of the insults they’ve done, besides sousing us
With water from their pots to our public disgrace
For we stand here wringing our clothes like grown-up infants.

This gives us little new information, tho.

Bion’s Lament for Adonis is here.  However, while it makes clear that the festival was annual, it gives no indication as to when it took place.

The only remaining reference in that lot is the scholia on the passage in Aristophanes.  I’m not at all sure, tho, where these might be found.

Next a search in Google books, which gave me Matthew Dillon, Girls and women in classical Greek religion.  Page 164-5 talk of Menander’s Samia, much of which was recovered in 1907 from papyri, and more in 1959 in the Bodmer papyrus, giving us four out of five sections.  This does not seem to be accessible online, however.  Dillon tells us that the festival was not a state event, but conducted in private houses, a women-only event, including both respectable women and prostitutes involved,  and he gives the Samia as his reference for this.   But he also tells us that Photius mentions the Adonia (unfortunately I cannot see the footnote 155), as coming to the Greeks from Cyprus and Phoenicia.  Interestingly he also says:

But Adonis was in no sense an eastern dying and reborn vegetation god.  The Adonis images laid out as in death, and the seed garden that never bear fruit, honour him once each year.  After the Adonia, he will not make an appearance until the next celebration of the festival (i.e. his death is commemorated each year; only late sources mention a resurrection).[156]

On p.167-8 Dillon adds that the date of the festival is disputed.  The Sicilian expedition referenced in Aristophanes was in early Spring in 415, but Plutarch gives the Adonia happening in the middle of a whole series of ill-omens before the expedition, all taking place in mid-summer.  Two passages of Theophrastus say that the Gardens of Adonis were sown in the Spring.  On p.168 he refers to, not one, but three decrees of the thiasotai (members of the thiasos), found at Piraeus.

All this is interesting.  I wish I could see the references.  The mention of Photius is perhaps a reference to the Lexicon, rather than the Bibliotheca.

There is also an entry in the Suda, although the online site doesn’t seem to allow us to link to articles.  But it gives us nothing useful.

All of which is very inconclusive.  I think we have to say, in truth, that we do not know for certain when the Adonia was celebrated.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I find it convenient to use Google mail for my email, mainly because of its excellent spam filtering.  But it is also an advantage that it is online wherever I am.  However I do want to hold a local copy which I can backup, and I have recently installed Mozilla Thunderbird for this purpose.  It required quite a bit of setup to get it to store its files in the place where I could copy them.

One advantage of this is that, when I download messages received and sent since the last download, I get an idea of how busy I am.  Today I sent or received 43 emails at that account.

No wonder I never have any time.

I wonder how many of us made new year’s resolutions.  I seem to have forgotten to.  Instead I’ve been too busy scrabbling to earn a living.  But our lives are very short.  5% of the year 2011 is already gone. 

I need to schedule some things which store up sunshine and happiness in my soul.  It is so fatally easy to march from one urgency to another!

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The review of the four letters of Isidore of Pelusium that I commissioned from a new translator has come back, generally positively.  But I haven’t had a chance yet to examine this in detail.

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Has Markus Vinzent been abducted by aliens?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An email draws attention to some remarks, supposedly by Markus Vinzent, here.

… let me just mention, that Marcion could take the place that was previously given to Q, yes, but Marcion provides, of course, not just a sayings source, but a Gospel that includes narratives. Moreover, he seems not only to have cooined the terms ‘Gospel’, as suggested by H. Koester, and ‘New Testament’, suggested by W. Kinzig, but has oriented Christianity towards a literature based new religion. In addition, I suggest that we have to revise our understanding of 2nd century school relations. Instead of reckoning with antagonistic schools, divided along the divides between orthodoxy and heresy, it seems that the various school teachers were more closely related than later apologetic literature wants to have it.

Considering that Tertullian has Marcion’s works before him, and works about Marcion before him, and lives within half a century of the time when the heretic got the bum’s rush from the Roman church, this is all rather cute.  It can only be advanced by ignoring the data in the historical record — selectively, of course — in order to fabricate a fairy-story.

But Dr Vinzent is someone I have met (a rare event).  That Dr Vinzent is a very capable patristic scholar, doing much excellent work, including getting Cyril of Alexandria, Contra Julianum, into a critical edition and modern languages.  It’s hard to imagine such a man peddling such stale old revisionism.   After all, we’ve all seen this kind of trick before, haven’t we? 

It’s always done in the same tired old way.  You take whatever the historical record says, imagine the opposite, then find excuses to selectively ignore the record until you create a vacuum on the subject you want to fake, and then proclaim that the vacuum proves that Jesus was an astronaut (or whatever).  Of course it isn’t very honest, but the faker often hides this from himself by various excuses.  It also tends to bring the humanities into disrepute. 

Can anyone even find this trick interesting these days?  Haven’t we seen it so many times before? 

So I have a theory.  Clearly Markus Vinzent has been abducted by aliens, and replaced with a clone.  The pseudo-Markus is vainly attempting to establish his place as a scholar, but has not realised that revisionism is now old hat.  And obviously we must now all campaign to have the real Markus Vinzent back. 

Some may protest that there is no actual evidence of abduction, and this is true.  But then, it’s more evidence than there is for a first century Marcion!

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More on Anianus of Celeda

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An email reminded me of this post about Anianus (or Annianus) of Celeda, who flourished ca. 413 AD and translated a number of the works of Chrysostom into Latin, in which form they circulated in the Middle Ages.  I’ve been looking for a bit more information about him.

An index entry for Anianus at CERL is here, which I found by searching for Anianus von Celeda.  A Chrysostom PDF here also refers to his work.  I also found a reference here to “Baur, Chrysostomus.  «L’entrée littéraire de saint Jean Chrysostome dans le monde latin.»  RHEccl.  8 (1907) 249-265.  Anianus of Celeda and Pelagian controversy.”  Another important reference for Chrysostom in Latin and Anianus seems to be “Altaner, Berthold. 1967. “Altlateinische Übersetzungen von Chrysostomusschriften.” Kleine patristische Schriften, 416–36. TU 83. Berlin. Reprinted from Historisches Jahrbuch 61 (1941): 208–26.” 

I learn from here:

In the West a work [supporting Pelagius] was written by Anianus, a deacon of Celeda, of which a copy was sent to Jerome (letters cxliii. 2) by Eusebius of Cremona, but to which he was never able to reply.

This is good news, because it’s the first sign of a primary source.  I find a Russian site with the Latin (why aren’t Jerome’s letters online in English?) here, but I can’t copy from it.  However the same material is on an Italian site (as letter 202 of the letters of Augustine) here.  The letter is from Jerome to Augustine and Alypius, explaining why he hasn’t refuted the books of Annianus “the pseudo-deacon of Celeda”, whom he describes as acting for Pelagius at the synod of Diospolis.

DOMINIS VERE SANCTIS ATQUE OMNI AFFECTIONE AC IURE VENERANDIS, ALYPIO EI AUGUSTINO EPISCOPIS HIERONYMUS, IN CHRISTO SALUTEM.

1. Sanctus Innocentius presbyter, qui huius sermonis est portitor, anno praeterito, quasi nequaquam in Africam reversurus, mea ad Dignationem vestram scripta non sumpsit. Tamen Deo gratias agimus quod ita evenit, ut nostrum silentium vestris epistolis vinceretis. Mihi enim omnis occasio gratissima est, per quam scribo vestrae Reverentiae; testem invocans Deum quod si posset fieri, assumptis alis columbae, vestris amplexibus implicarer, semper quidem pro merito virtutum vestrarum, sed nunc maxime, quia cooperatoribus et auctoribus vobis, haeresis Celestiana iugulata est: quae ita infecit corda multorum, ut cum superatos damnatosque esse se sentiant, tamen venena mentium non omittant; et, quod solum possunt, nos oderint, per quos putant se libertatem docendae haereseos perdidisse.

Quod autem quaeritis utrum rescripserim contra libros Anniani, pseudodiaconi Celedensis, qui copiosissime pascitur, ut alienae blasphemiae verba frivola subministret: sciatis me ipsos libros in schedulis missos a sancto fratre Eusebio presbytero suscepisse, non ante multum temporis; et exinde vel ingruentibus morbis, vel dormitione sanctae et venerabilis filiae vestrae Eustochii, ita doluisse, ut propemodum contemnendos putarem. In eodem enim luto haesitat, et exceptis verbis tinnulis atque emendicatis, nihil aliud loquitur. Tamen multum egimus; ut dum epistolae meae respondere conatur, apertius se proderet, et blasphemias suas omnibus patefaceret. Quidquid enim in illa miserabili synodo Diospolitana dixisse se denegat, in hoc opere profitetur; nec grande est ineptissimis naeniis respondere. Si autem Dominus vitam tribuerit et notariorum habuerimus copiam, paucis lucubratiunculis respondebimus; non ut convincamus haeresim emortuam, sed ut imperitiam atque blasphemiam eius, nostris sermonibus confutemus: meliusque hoc faceret Sanctitas tua; ne compellamur contra haereticum nostra laudare.

An English translation of the letter is here (Augustine, Letters 156-210:Epistulae II, New City Press, 2004):

To his truly holy lords, Alypius and Augustine, bishops who are to be venerated with all affection and by every right, Jerome sends greetings in the Lord.

1. The holy priest Innocent, the bearer of this letter, did not take with him my letter to Your Reverence last year, on the grounds he was not going to return to Africa. But we thank God that it turned out that you overcame our silence by your letters. For every occasion on which I write to Your Reverence is most pleasant for me. I call upon God as my witness that, if it were possible, I would take up the wings of a dove and wrap myself in your embraces. This would always be in accord with the merits of your virtues, but it is so now especially because the Caelestian heresy1 has been slain by your cooperation and initiative. It had so infected the hearts of many that, though they perceive that they have been defeated and condemned, they still do not give up their poisonous ideas. And they hate us—the only thing they can do—because they think that through us they lost the freedom to teach heresy.

2. But you ask2 whether I replied to the books of Annianus,3 the fake deacon of Celeda, who dines most lavishly in order that he may serve up the frivolous words of a strange blasphemy. You should know that I received not long ago on little scraps of parchment those books sent to me by my holy brother, the priest Eusebius and then, because of either the worsening illnesses or the death of your holy and venerable daughter. Eustochium,4 I was so saddened that I almost thought that they should be ignored. For he is stuck in the same mud,5 and apart from some ringing and borrowed words he says nothing else. Still we worked hard in order that, when he tries to reply to our letter, he may reveal himself more …

1. Caelestius was am ally of Pelagius; he was condemned at the Council of Carthage in 411. Augustine wrote The Perfection of Human Righteousness against a work of Caelestius entitled Definitions.
2. The letter of Augustine to Jerome is not extant.
3. Annianus was a lesser-known follower of Pelagius.
4. Eustochium. the daughter of Paula, was the first young lady of the Roman nobility to consecrate her life to God as a virgin. Paula and Eustochium followed Jerome to Bethlehem. Eustochium assumed direction of the monastery after the death of her mother; Eustochium herself died in 418 or 419.
5. See Terence. Phormio 780.

(The preview of the translation ends there, and I don’t have time to complete it this evening).

A search by “annianus of celeda” also produces information.  I find a reference to this interesting-sounding paper!

  • Kate Cooper, ‘Annianus of Celeda and the Latin Readers of John Chrysostom’, Studia Patristica 27 (1993), 249–55

It would be good to gather whatever primary sources there are for Annianus.

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The manuscripts of Caesar’s works

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An email reached me this evening, asking what are the earliest manuscripts of the works of Julius Caesar.  I thought my reply might be of general interest. I obtained the following details from L.D.Reynolds, Texts and Transmissions, pp.35-6, written by Michael Winterbottom.

The extant mss fall into two families.  The alpha family contains only the Bellum Gallicum, and is notable for allusions in colophons to late antique ‘correctores’.  The beta family contains the whole collection of works.  Where the two overlap, the readings are often rather different.

Alpha family

There are 6 early witnesses to the alpha family.  Two derive from a common lost ancestor: these are:

  • Amsterdam 73, 2nd quarter of the 9th century, written at Fleury (=A)
  • Paris lat. 5056, 11-12th century, written at Moissac (=Q)

The remaining four derive from another now lost ms: 

  • Paris lat. 5763, 1st quarter of the 9th century, French, later at Fleury (=B)
  • Vatican lat. 3864, 3rd quarter of the 9th century, written at Corbie (=M)
  • Florence, Laur. Ashb. 33, 10th century, possibly French (=S)
  • British Library Additional 10084, 11-12th century, probably from Gembloux (=L)

Some 75 mss later than the 9th century have been listed by Virginia Brown, who has classified them into groupings tentatively.

Beta family

The Klotz edition of 1950 used 8 mss, although at least 3 of these are now considered to be non-primary.  The five are:

  • Florence, Laur. 68.8, basically 10-11th century, probably Italian, once the property of Niccolo Niccoli (=W)
  • Vatican latinus 3324, 11-12th century, possibly French (=U)
  • Paris lat. 5764, 3rd quarter of the 11th century, French (=T)
  • Vienna 95, 1st quarter of the 12th century, probably from Trier (=V)

and apparently S above is also a member of this family (not sure how that works).  There is no agreement about how all these are related or to be classified.  Virginia Brown classified and eliminated 162 later mss of this family.  (I would imagine, myself, that the majority of these are 15th century, the sort of books being made in quantity in Italy on the eve of the invention of printing).

How the text travelled from the ‘correctores’ of late antiquity to the earliest manuscripts is not clear.  Brown argues that all our manuscripts derive from a single copy in a minuscule book hand.  One factor that must be considered is that the medieval authors who refer to Caesar (mostly French and German) refer only to the Bellum Gallicum.

It would be interesting to know what the “testimonia” are — the quotations of the text in antique authors.  But for that, I’d have to look further!

UPDATE: A search in Google Books on testimonia caesar brought up an edition here with quotations from Caesar’s lost works in Cicero, etc.  It’s an 1813 edition of Caesar’s works, with English notes, by a certain Thomas Clark.

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A new study on the horrible reality of ancient prostitution

Posted on by Roger Pearse

From RogueClassicism I learn of a new book which is more timely than we might suppose:

Prostitution has been called arguably the world’s oldest profession. And the world can now get rare insight into some of the earliest prostitution from ancient Greece in a new book that was co-edited by Madeleine Henry, a professor in Iowa State University’s department of world languages and cultures and chair of the classical studies program.

Henry and co-editor Allison Glazebrook, an associate professor of classics at Brock University in Ontario, Canada, brought together an international team of scholars to contribute to the book, “Greek Prostitutes in the Ancient Mediterranean, 800 BCE-200 CE,” which is being released this month ( The University of Wisconsin Press ). …

“Historically, we like to focus on the glamorous upper class aspects of prostitution. We don’t focus on buying the right to rape a child,” said Henry …

Dr Henry’s point is right, as any reader of Martial can tell.  But the need to deglamourise is more important than we might suppose.   I cannot imagine a prostitute as glamorous — more likely a sad, drug-addicted, diseased woman dragging out her life in misery and waiting to die.  But thanks to Hollywood and the TV producers of the selfish generation, I find that many ignore this.

Recently someone in the UK called for brothels to be legalised.  This means making pimping and procurement legal, the enticement of women into a trade that has use for them only for so long, and then sells them on to still more degraded institutions.  You don’t need to know very much about English literature to realise what an awful business this is, how brothels function as a gateway into a world of buying and selling women.   A post appeared in an online forum, and I wrote a quick post pointing out what it really would mean.

To my astonishment, there were posters calmly accepting the spin that this would benefit the women, that a house in which women were sold to enrich a pimp would be a safe place.  A few posts and queries, and it became clear that those so speaking cared nothing about the women; they just wanted brothels, they were prepared to make all the usual excuses that we hear whenever some evil is to be legalised — haven’t we seen so much of this? — and the consequences were of no concern to them.  Thus the 60’s revolution reaches its inevitable conclusion.  This is not the place to recount that debate.  But I took away from that the conclusion that it is really important not to glamourise this evil trade. 

I have not seen the book.  Let us hope that it is not some waffly study, but a solid digest of sources, texts, inscriptions, and as little speculation as possible.

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The Serapeum of Alexandria, described by Aphthonius of Alexandria

Posted on by Roger Pearse

For the last day I have been hunting down a description of the Serapeum in Alexandria.  I learned of it from Philip Amidon’s translation of Rufinus.  The description is recorded — of all places — in the handbook of rhetoric by Aphthonius of Antioch.  This writer was a friend of Libanius, and lived in the late fourth century.

The description is there, not for its content, but rather as an example of a relaxed style (!).  It has been no mean hunt to locate the materials, but in fact a complete translation of the text is available from Malcolm Heath here, and here.  The word “Serapis” does not appear in the text — on the face of it, the description is of the acropolis.  But in fact it is the Serapeum.

A text in Greek is available in Rhetores Graeci, vol. 2, 1854, p.47-49.  The 1926 Teubner by Hugo Rabe, with the commentary of the 9th century John of Sardis (compiling much earlier information), does not seem to be online.

Rather than quote the Heath translation, here is the translation by George Kennedy, who has translated and annotated four rhetorical handbooks, and some of John of Sardis.   The Google books preview only gives the opening bit.  Page numbers in Rabe are marked with R, the other numbers in [] are from the Rhetores Graeci text, whose page numbers have become standard.

ECPHRASIS OF THE SHRINE OF ALEXANDRIA, WITH ITS ACROPOLIS

Citadels, then,87 have been built in cities for the common security; for they are the highest points in the cities, and they are not themselves more fortified with buildings than they fortify their cities. The middle of Athens has embraced the acropolis of the Athenians, and Alexander had a height prepared in his own city, constructed to suit the name he gave it;88 for he set it on the highest point of the city, and it is more sensible to call it an acropolis than that on which the Athenians took counsel.89 Its appearance is as this account will describe.

An ”akra” projects up from the land, going up to a considerable height, and is called an “acropolis” for two reasons: because it is raised to a height and because it has been set on the high point of a city. Roads leading to this acropolis are not alike; for here there is an incline (”anodos”) and there an entrance way (”eisodos”). The roads change their names, being called by their function: here it is possible to go on foot and the way is public and a road for those going by carriage; on another side, flights of steps have been constructed [39R] where it is not possible for carriages to go. Flight of steps follows flight of step, always increasing from the lesser and leading upward, not ceasing until there have been a hundred steps; for the limit of a number is the end [48] that reaches perfect measure.90

At the top of the stairs is a Propylaeon, enclosed by latticed gates of moderate height, and four very large columns rise up, providing several openings into one entrance passage. Above the columns stands the Oecus, fronted by many smaller columns which are not all of the same color, and when compared they add ornament to the design. The roof of the building rises in a dome, and around the dome is fixed a great memorial of things that are.91

On going into the acropolis itself, one enters a single open space, bounded by four equal sides, and its figure is rather like that of a war machine (i.e., a hollow rectangle). In the middle is a courtyard, surrounded by a colonnade. Stoas continue the courtyard and the stoas are divided by equal columns, and as for their measure, it is the largest possible. Each stoa ends [40R] in another crosswise colonnade and a double column divides it from another stoa, one ending and the other beginning again. Small covered structures are built inside the stoas; some are reading rooms for books, offering an opportunity for the studious to pursue knowledge and arousing the whole city to the possibility of wisdom; others were built as shrines to the ancient gods. Gold adorns the roof of the stoas and the capitals of the columns are made of bronze, overlaid with gold. The decoration of the courtyard is not all the same; different parts were done differently. One part has a representation of the contests of Perseus. A column higher than the others stands in the middle, making the place conspicuous.92 A visitor, up to this point, does not …

87 Unlike the other examples of composition, this begins with connective particles (”de ara”), contributing to the relaxed style; see John of Sardis’ commentary on this ecphrasis, translated below.
88 I.e.. the name “acropolis,” but the sentence is clumsy and possibly the text is corrupt. Alexander’s city is of course Alexandria.
89 The Areopagus?
90 “In its completed form the plateau on which the Temple stood was approached from the north and south sides by a carriage road and from the east side by a flight of 200 steps,” John Marlowe, The Golden Age of Alexandria (London: Victor Gollancz, 1971). p. 60. For more information about the Serapeum, see I. A. Rowe, “Discoveries of the Famous Temple and Enclosure of Sarapis at Alexandria”, Annales du Service de l’Antiquite de l’Egypte, Cahier supplementaire 2 (1946).
91 “At the top of the steps was a Propylaeum supported by four large columns and approached between two obelisks. Immediately inside the Propylaeum was an Oecus, or circular hall, covered by a gilded dome resting on a double ring of columns,” Marlow ibid. The “great memorial of things that are” was probably a religious and historical fresco.
92 This monument, some 80 feet high, was known as “Pompey’s Pillar,” but was actually erected to commemorate a visit to Alexandria by Diocletian in A.D. 297, when he suppressed a revolt.

Unfortunately the Google Books preview breaks off there.

Doesn’t that translation seem good!  Of course the Heath translation was made earlier, and is merely a rough draft.  Here is the remainder of the entry, from Heath:

…. where he is going, unless he uses the pillar as a sign of the direction) and makes the acropolis stand out by land and sea. The beginnings of the universe stand round the capital of the column. Before one comes to the middle of the court there is set an edifice with many entrances, which are named after the ancient gods; and two stone obelisks rise up, and a fountain better than that of the Peisistratids. And the marvel had an incredible number of builders. As one was not sufficient for the making, builders of the whole acropolis were appointed to the number of twelve.

As one comes down from the acropolis, here is a flat place resembling a race-course, which is what the place is called; and here there is another of similar shape, but not equal in size.

The beauty is unspeakable. If anything has been omitted, it has been bracketed by amazement; what it was not possible to describe has been omitted.

Who would have thought that so obscure a writer was nevertheless online in several Greek versions, older Latin translations, and two English versions?  Truly we live in a blessed age!

UPDATE: My thanks to Domenico in the comments for pointing out my mis-spelling of Aphthonius as Apthonius.  Aargh!

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Vettius Valens translation revised

Posted on by Roger Pearse

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 is all to the good, of course!

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve spent some time collecting literary testimonies about the origins of Serapis.  For the moment, these are here.  A useful article by Richard Gordon is here. 

Meanwhile Andrew Eastbourne has agreed to review the translation of 4 letters of Isidore of Pelusium which reached me earlier this week.

Yesterday I also went back to the Wikipedia Mithras article and removed the vandalism of the last 6 months.  There was no useful contribution in that time, needless to say.  This morning some anonymous person promptly re-added a slur on one writer quoted.  Re-reading the discussion page, it is striking how much time I wasted trying to reason with people making no useful contribution but determined to edit the article to suit their own ignorant prejudices. 

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