From my diary

Reading the letters of the 6th century sophist, Procopius of Gaza, I am struck by the number of places in which the translator, Federica Ciccolella, notes “this is a proverbial expression” and gives sources.  Indeed the notes in that translation are really rather fabulous, and in-depth!

For the last month I have been laid low with a rather vicious winter cold, which has affected an awful lot of people here and keeps coming back.  So I’ve not written much.  Today was pretty much the first day of summer, the first day on which air-conditioning was essential in the car.  Inevitably this was the day for some emergency dentistry!  I’ve also been stood outdoors with a hose, trying to water in some grass seed.  It is now raining heavily.  These are the little things of life!

A fair number of interesting topics to blog about have come in.  A kind correspondent drew my attention to a post made in 2009 about a Vatican palimpsest containing 400 lines of Menander, otherwise lost.  The discovery was made in 2003.  Here we are, 23 years later, and the edition has yet to appear.  To my eye the two prospective editors are perhaps much too senior/busy to get it done, and need to recruit others.  Who knows.  There is an Italian article on the discovery, tho, and I might try and get hold of it.  If I feel bold, I might even write and ask about the progress,

Another topic that I wrote about long ago is the submerged remains of a Roman fort at Felixstowe in East Anglia.  It seems that a local couple are engaged in photographing and filming the ruins, and measuring them.  I will post about this when I can.

I also discovered some details about the library in Mashhad in Iran, which seems to contain quite a lot of Greek scientific works in Arabic translation.  Again, I will post about this.

But what I am doing at the moment is some work on Procopius of Gaza.  I have returned to work on this.  The last time I wrote, I found that I had bitten off more than I could chew.  What I am now doing is going through the Google Translate output for the Italian translation, and adding into it extracts from the footnotes.  The combination is far more readable.  I’ve just reached the end of letter 100 (out of 174), so this plan of attack is working.  The result won’t have any scholarly value at all, but should help anglophone people to access the text.

I’ve also discovered that 25 letters of Aeneas of Gaza exist, with Italian translation.  This is another sophist of the early 6th century.  It would be good to do these also.

So there is plenty to do!