Translations of the works of Hero of Alexandria

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The appearance of a manuscript of works by the ancient engineer, Hero of Alexandria (ca. 62 AD) online at the British Library led me to look online for an English translation for his Automata.  I had no luck, but I thought that some notes on what he wrote and how we got it might be useful.

The Greek texts, with German translations, are all available in W. Schmidt, Heronis Alexandrini Opera Quae Supersunt Omnia, in 5 volumes, Teubner, 1899 etc.  These are online here.

The mechanical works include: [1]

  •  The Pneumatica in 2 books, covering devices powered by compressed air, steam and water. An old English translation exists and is online: The pneumatics of Hero of Alexandria, 1851; as does an old French translation.[2]
  •  Peri automatopoietikes or Automata, on ways to fake miracles in temples.  An old partial French translation exists: Victor Prou, Les théâtres d’automates en Grèce au IIe siècle avant l’ère chrétienne d’après les Automata d’Héron d’Alexandrie, Paris, 1881: Greek text with French translation of section 2 of the Automata: p. 94-136.  This is online at Remacle.org[3]  An English translation supposedly exists: Susan Murphy, “Heron of Alexandria’s ‘On Automaton-making,'” History of Technology 17, 1995, pp 1-44;[4] and of selections in Finlay McCourt, “An examination of the mechanisms of movement in Heron of Alexandria’s ‘On Automaton-making'”, in: T. Koetsier &c, Explorations in the history of machines and mechanisms, 2012 (preview). Update (2020): F. Grillo’s Hero of Alexandria’s Automata: A critical edition and translation, diss (Glasgow), 2019 (online here).
  •  The Mechanica in 3 books survives only in Arabic, in a translation made by Qosta ibn Luka in the 9th century.  In the 17th century Grolius brought back a 16th century manuscript of it from the Orient, thereby making it accessible.  The first full edition and a French translation of this was by the baron Carra de Vaux in 1893.[5]  It covers weight-moving machines.
  •  The Dioptra covers instruments for sighting and other purposes.  A partial English translation supposedly exists from 1963[6]
  •  The Catoptrica, on mirrors.  Preserved only in Latin.

I also found a mistake in the literature: Drachmann’s Mechanical technology does NOT contain translations of any of his works, but is rather a commentary on the Mechanica (only), albeit with excerpts embedded.[9]  Unfortunately it does not specify which works.

There are also two artillery manuals covering different types of catapult.

  •  The Belopoeica.
  •  The Cheiroballistra, (=De constructione et mensura manubalistae)

These are both translated into English with facing Greek text and useful notes following in Marsden, E. W.: Greek and Roman artillery: technical treatises. Oxford, 1969, which also includes a useful introduction[10].  It seems that a bunch of these manuals travelled down the centuries together, and I will post on the manuscript tradition.  An 1883 French translation of the second work exists and is online.[11]

Hero also wrote a number of mathematical works.

  • The Metrica in 3 books, on the measurement and division of surfaces and bodies.  There is an English translation of all three books in “Codex Constantinopolitanus Palatii Veteris, edited by E.M.Bruins”, volume 3, Brill (1964), starting at page 182.

  • The Definitiones, on geometrical terms.

  • The Geometrica, the  Stereometrica, and the Peri metron (or On Measures); all on measurement, all revised by later editors.

  • The Geodaesia and Geoponica (=Liber geoponicus) on measurement of land.

  •  A commentary on Euclid is extant in substantial quotations in the 10th c. Arabic writer an-Nairizi (=Anaritius), which was composed in Arabic and then translated into Latin.[12]

Some extracts in French are online at Remacle.org.[13]

Hero’s writings, apart from the Belopoeika, were published with a German translations in Heronis Alexandrini Opera.[14]  This seems to be Herons von Alexandria Mechanik und Katoptrik, herausgegeben und ubersetzt von L. Nix und W. Schmidt (Heronis Alexandrini, Opera quae supersunt omnia, Leipzig, 1900 f.).[15].  I was able to locate a few volumes online: vol.1, 1899; vol.1, supplementum, 1899; vol.2, fasc.1 (backwards!) 1900; vol.3, 1903.  But I think there are five volumes, and obviously we’re missing a lot here.

There is also an article on why Hero thought that automata could be used in temples: Karin Tybjerg, “Wonder-making and philosophical wonder in Hero of Alexandria”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 34 (2003) 443-466 (abstract).

So the sum total of all of this is rather disappointing!  Few of his works have been translated into English, and even the Greek-German critical text, which is out of copyright, is not easily accessible.

It’s worth considering that Hero may have been a contemporary of the apostles, or at least late first century, although his dates are vague.

UPDATE: I find that an excellent source for these works is here, at http://www.wilbourhall.org/index.html#hero.  All the volumes of the edition are here, often based on versions at Gallica.  In addition an-Nairizi / Anaritius is also there.  The site is somewhat slow, however, but the author has done a great deal of work to make these writers accessible — well done!

UPDATE 7th April 2016:  I have learned this week of a volume containing significant English translations from the works of Hero of Alexandria.  It is Morris R. Cohen and Israel E. Drabkin, A Source Book in Greek Science, Harvard, 1958.

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  1. [1]F. N. Magill and Christian J. Moose, Dictionary of World Biography: The ancient world, 2003. There is a Google books preview of the section on Hero, starting on p.514.↩
  2. [2]http://remacle.org/bloodwolf/erudits/heron/pneumatiques.htm↩
  3. [3]http://remacle.org/bloodwolf/erudits/heron/theatre.htm↩
  4. [4]So Koetiser, p.198. History of Technology is not a journal, but a book series. It was and is published by Mansell of London, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing.  A list of volumes is here.  A copy of this volume exists at Sydney University Library.↩
  5. [5]W. R. Laird, S. Roux: Mechanics and natural philosophy before the scientific revolution, 2008. p.197; Heron d’Alexandrie, Les Mechaniques, 1894 (Google books).  Online at Remacle.org here: http://remacle.org/bloodwolf/erudits/heron/table.htm↩
  6. [7]↩
  7. [8]↩
  8. [6]This annoyingly vague information from F. N. Magill, Dictionary of World Biography 1, p.514; p.517 refers to A.G. Drachmann, The mechanical technology of Greek and Roman antiquity: a study of the literary sources, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1963, as containing “translations of Hero’s mechanical writings”.  This is probably what Magill was referring to.[7]; a translation of a portion in M.J. Taunton Lewis, Surveying instruments of Greece and Rome, Cambridge, 2001, p.259-62;  and a French translation by Victor Prou is online.[8]1888: online at http://remacle.org/bloodwolf/erudits/heron/dioptre.htm↩
  9. [9]Magill and Moose,  p.517: Drachmann, Aage Gerhardt, The mechanical technology of Greek and Roman antiquity: a study of the literary sources. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1963: “Contains translations of Hero’s mechanical writings, with useful running commentary.”↩
  10. [10]I had access to the book on Friday 25/11/11.↩
  11. [11]Victor Prou, La chirobaliste d’Héron d’Alexandrie, Paris, 1883: online at remacle.org: http://remacle.org/bloodwolf/erudits/heronalexandrie/chirobaliste.htm.↩
  12. [12]Eleanor Dickey, Ancient Greek scholarship, p.60: “For editions and translations see Mansfield 1998, 26 n.90”↩
  13. [13]http://remacle.org/bloodwolf/erudits/heron/fragments.htm↩
  14. [14]Pamela O. Long, Openness, secrecy, authorship: technical arts and the culture of knowledge, 2001, p.258, n.56.↩
  15. [15]A. I. Sabra, Theories of light from Descartes to Newton, 1981, p.70, n.4↩

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A dull Saturday morning, and I went into town and visited the local library, in search of my book order from Tuesday.  On entering my ears were assailed with music, from some device stationed on the enquiries desk, and there were stalls filling the main library area.  Apparently the library had been turned into a tatty-looking craft fair for the day.  Want to read and study?  Well, tough.

The book I ordered had arrived.  I’d ordered it online, and given my email address so that they could tell me if it had arrived, but I never got an email.  Possibly it arrived yesterday, and I simply didn’t know?

Back home with it, and I found that some spotty-faced youth had taken his pencil to it, and filled it with underlinings and marginal notes and symbols, evidently in preparation for some college essay.  But who wants their attention distracted by that when reading?  So I had to spend half an hour with the rubber.

The book, of course, is Vermaseren’s Mithras, the secret god, 1963.  It’s an interesting but infuriating book from so many points of view, because the great man didn’t feel the need for any footnotes.  Even the sources for illustrations of monuments are not identified.  The book starts as follows:

In Rome, about A.D. 400, a number of Christians, armed with axes, forced their way into a Mithraic temple on the Aventine, where they smashed the sculptures and cut gaping holes in the paintings. Once the persecuted, they were now the persecutors, and to their ever-growing numbers Mithras and his followers were regarded as deadly rivals.

What a vivid picture!

But there are no footnotes.  So … on what is this based?  Depressingly, this is fiction.  Vermaseren is talking about the Mithraeum of Santa Prica, which he excavated.  In the scholarly publication he identifies damage, and speculates that it might have been done at the fall of paganism by Christians.  Well, so indeed it might; but we have no actual evidence for this, and surely we should not state as fact that which is only a theory?  But in this popular version, the attack has become a fact.

Still, Vermaseren really did have all the data about Mithras at his fingertips, although the Cumontian theory blinded him as to its real impact.  So the book is bound to contain a great deal of hard data, interwoven with fancy like this.  I shall be reading it over the weekend, I think!

Meanwhile I still have a great deal to do.  I need to finish up a page on the works of Hero of Alexandria, and write another on the manuscript tradition of his artillery manuals.  Then I need to get back to Methodius and the Russian  version that I acquired yesterday, and translate some of that.

I’m becoming rather disappointed with progress on the translation from German of Methodius De lepra.  Since last week, only a handful of lines have been done, and those only after prompting.  Total time spent on those can only have been 10 minutes or so.  The translator is not re-reading what he writes, which means that some of the sentences are gibberish.  In some cases the gibberish reflects an Old Testament quotation, and becomes clear if you look it up in one of the online English translations of the bible.  The PDF that I gave the man signals biblical references at the foot of each page, but, although in difficulty, he doesn’t trouble to look them up — I have to do that.  When I do, and send back a file with comments, I get no response.   We’ll see.  But I think this is clearly going pear-shaped.  I’ve had to chase twice now, in a total of 6 pages, and I’m tired of it.

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Suffolk libraries and political thuggery

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Thuggery online is a problem for the ordinary blogger.  Many of us have had to close our comments, or else ignore whatever is in them, or both.  Too often our peace of mind is at the mercy of the online equivalent of a lynching, and the ordinary victim may not even be that sure as to what on earth has happened to him.

For this reason, it’s worth detailing a politically motivated attack on myself, undertaken yesterday and today.  If you blog, it’s worth familiarising yourself with the tactics employed here.  Once you realise it’s a cold-blooded process of inflicting pain in order to silence, you will feel less compunction in defending yourself.

Yesterday I wrote what I believed to be an innocuous piece about poor service at Suffolk libraries, based on personal experience.  After writing it, I emailed the URL to Suffolk County Council, suggesting that it be passed to their media team for comment.

I received no response from the council.  But this afternoon, when I came back, I found a series of abusive “comments” by first-time commenters on the article.  These I traced back to a blog, http://rosehillreaders.wordpress.com/, and a twitter feed:

I can only presume that one of the council officials, rather than addressing my post, decided to slip the word to his political allies that someone needed a thumping.  For how else would my specialised blog come to the attention of these people?

Of itself the blog looks like a harmless political blog, campaigning against the closure for cost-saving reasons of some small local libraries.  It’s a campaign that, on the face of it, any of us might support.

But there’s no name on the blog — never a good sign.  Who is this blog?  And the people who arrived … well, here are some extracts from the “comments”:

“I couldn’t disagree with you more (and that’s ignoring your puerile sexism). … Besides, why don’t you head upstairs if you want to read in silence?”

“You just seem to want it to be for those who would want the same high brow books as yourself. You would be the first to complain if it closed. If the Tories get their way there will be no libraries left in this County- that should please you!”

“If you want there to be any libraries left, in Suffolk, you would be better served by using your blog to champion their place in the community, rather than making patronising and uninformed attacks on them and their staff.”

“‘Mummy, Mummy, what’s a misogynist? she asked…(blah, blah, blah, oh dear, my small female brain seems to have short circuited.)”

“You are correct in your assertion that women make mistakes. Your mother giving birth to you is a prime example of such poor judgement.”

These were not comments on my post — this was heckling, this was personal abuse intended to hurt.  I’ve seen this kind of thing before, when “comments” are used to try and give a blogger a slapping, to intimidate, to harass, anything to stop him writing on the subject.

Most bloggers tend to be taken by surprise by this kind of comment.  Being decent folk themselves, they presume the comment writers are sincere.  They foolishly try to respond, to defend themselves, to explain.  All they are doing, of course, is allowing their assailants to change the subject from “Why Suffolk libraries are not very good” to “Why Roger Pearse is a bad person”.

It’s classic troll territory.  No normal person likes being on the receiving end of this kind of thing.  Everyone finds it unpleasant.  Everyone would like to avoid this.  And so, in order to avoid it, people avoid talking about things which are liable to get them a cyber-lynching like this.

However, I’ve played before.  I didn’t even pause, but the hit the delete key on each of them, without even bothering to read past the first stock jeer.  They’re writing to upset and manipulate me; so why should I bother to allow their words past my eyeballs?  And I don’t.

But of course I knew what would come next.  Usually these creeps split into two groups.  One lot shriek crude abuse; the other lot pretend to be polite.  The idea is that the first lot may get canned, but most people, in order to show that they are reasonable, will be disposed to be seen to be friendly towards the second lot, who can then try to manipulate this.  Usually the latter lot will try to suggest the *victim* is being rude, or is in the wrong.  Once again, they want to change the subject to “Is Roger Pearse a bad person”.

The normal approach to try, is to claim that I was being a “censor”, that I was attacking free speech, and again try to get me to explain, to justify myself, to put myself on the defensive, and so forth, to get me on the defensive.  Same aim, different game.

Nor was I disappointed:

“None of those comments were abusive in any way.  They simply put forward an alternative viewpoint.  Freedom of speech cannot be cast aside on a whim.”

“I have read your comments policy, can you just clarify what this means … just trying to be clear on why you delete certain comments.”

“I’m sorry to say this (wait, no I’m not!) but this post reeks of misogyny. Please stop.”

“Perhaps we can add cowardice to that, too? If you are offended by being accused of misogyny then please defend your comments.”

“I see you have removed my comment.  I screengrabbed it in case you had done so. Can you please explain why my comment was removed?  I will simply have to reproduce it elsewhere in reference to this post otherwise.”

“The problem is, Roger, all the polite comments (and the majority were polite) ARE relevant as this blog references freedom of speech. I am bemused as to why some of these comments (including mine) have been deleted and I will be posting them elsewhere to underline the point.”

The sincerity of the last comment may be judged from the fact that, after I banned this commenter, he kept trying to post under other user names, determined to “get at me” somehow.  And what kind of commenter first screen-grabs his comments?  Only one who is out to cause trouble.  And needless to say, when I posted a comment on the originating blog, complaining about their action, it was silently deleted.

Much of this is like the sort of things that happened in the playground at bad schools.  Yes, we even had the bully’s old favourite, “You’re not being bullied / harassed / whatever, it’s not our fault, what is happening to you is your fault!”  The thug always denies responsibility, and blames the victim:

“I must say that I don’t think any of them were abusive: they challenged some of your premisses and your own offensive statements towards women but to describe the comments as ‘abusive’ seems something of a stretch.”

“I’m interested, also, that you suggest that you consider people disagreeing with you to be in some way flaming when I might also point out that your post (as demonstrated by the many comments!) is, by your definition then, more than a bit troll-y.”

It’s all rather amusing, if you know what to look for and can maintain a certain detachment.   You can even tick off the standard attempts at manipulation!  “Personal insult”? — check.  “Attempt to change the subject to me personally”? — check.   “Claim of rudeness”?  — check.  “Claim of political incorrectness”? — check.  “Attempt to blame the lynch-mob victim”? — check.  “Attempt to claim that politeness demands I do this or that”? — check.  “Attempt to claim that preventing this game is ‘censorship'”? — check.  And so on.

But it is not innocent.  Someone less experienced in the ways of thuggery online could be badly hurt and upset by this.  This is deliberate violence, intended to give pain just as  much as a physical beating would be.

In this case, it’s actually rent-a-mob violence, orchestrated for political ends under the misapprehension that I was One Of The Enemy.  Unbeknownst to me, the library service is currently a political hot-potato.  The council wants to close some of the libraries.  Some  honest people are opposed; and some of the usual left-wing thugs are along for the ride.  In this case one of the thugs was tipped off about my post, and invited other thugs to put the boot in, without even realising that I hadn’t commented on The Cause at all!

Watch for the signs, people.  That delete key on the comments box is there for a reason.  Use it mercilessly, if you get even the faintest feeling of discomfort.  You’re contributing to the web; such commenters are there only to beat you up and damage what you’re doing for their own selfish ends.

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Reading Methodius in Russian

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Today I got hold of photocopies of the pages of Bogoslovskie Trudy that contained materials from the Old Slavonic text of Methodius of Olympus (died 311 AD).  I don’t know any Russian, but my theory was that I ought to be able to work with them anyway, thanks to Google translate.

My first task was to convert the photocopies into a PDF file.  I scanned it as greyscale at 400 dpi.  Since the photocopies were A3 (the journal being slightly too high to fit two pages on an A4 piece of paper), I had to use a guillotine to cut the paper in half, and wallpaper scissors to trim the odd page as I fed them into the sheet feeder of my Fujitsu Scansnap.

The PDF’s created, I then opened them in Finereader 11 Pro, and ran the OCR on it using Language = Russian.  It worked fine!  Indeed it worked nearly perfectly, as far as I could tell!

Then I copied a page to Google translate, and … it produced a very decent translation!  Easily good enough to work out what was being said.  Thus I started with this:

Ознакомление с содержанием этой — славянской — части литературного наследства св. Мефодия до настоящего времени было возможно только по изданиям проф. Н. Г. Бонвеча5. Но эти издания, при всех своих исключительных научных достоинствах, имеют одну своеобразную особенность: если греческий текст дается здесь в подлиннике — на основании наиболее авторитетных рукописей, — то для славянского текста имеется лишь немецкий перевод. Перевод этот сделан весьма тщательно, с хорошим знанием особенностей древнего славянского языка. Однако никто не станет оспаривать тот факт, что, как бы далеко ни ушел в своем развитии современный русский язык от того языка, на котором написаны уже не раз упоминающиеся здесь славянские рукописи, созвучность русского и древнеславянского языков (в самом обширном значении этого выражения) значительно больше, чем созвучность немецкого языка с языком славянским. Во всяком случае, для успеха перевода это обстоятельство имеет большое значение. Для русского читателя узнавать содержание творений св. Мефодия, сохранившихся только в славянском тексте, из немецкого перевода— значит, по меньшей мере, снижать познавательную ценность изучаемого материала. Таковы те соображения, которые явились побудительной причиной, заставившей автора этих строк заняться работой над славянскими рукописями творений св. Мефодия и предпринять опыт перевода некоторой части вышеназванных славянских текстов на современный русский язык.

And the output was this:

Familiarization with the content of this – Slavic – part of the literary heritage of St. Methodius so far been possible only on publications of Professor. NG Bonwetsch 5. But these books, for all their exceptional academic merit, have a peculiar feature: if the Greek text is given here in the script – based on the most authoritative manuscripts – something for Slavonic text, there is only a German translation. This translation is made very carefully, with good knowledge of the characteristics of the ancient Slavic language. However, no one will dispute the fact that, no matter how far gone in its development the modern Russian language from the language of the written many times referred to herein Slavic manuscripts, the consonance of the Russian and Old Slavic languages ​​(in the broadest sense of the expression) is significantly more than the harmony of the German language with the language of the Slav. In any case, the success of translating this fact is of great importance. For the Russian reader to learn the content of the works of St. Methodius, preserved only in Slavonic text of the German translation, then, at least, reduce the informative value of the studied material. Such are the considerations that were motive that made the author of these lines to do work on Slavic manuscripts of St. creations. Methodius and experience to undertake the translation of some parts of the foregoing Slavonic texts of the modern Russian language.

Now that isn’t perfect — but I think we can all, with a bit of concentration, work out what is being said, bar a word here or there.

In this way, a non-Russian speaker like me can read part of the preface of Chub’s publication.

As someone said, doubtless in a similar context, “I love it when a plan comes together!”

UPDATE: Reading a few more pages, I come across a discussion of the manuscripts.  I think, on the whole, it would probably be a good idea if I could attempt a translation of Chub’s preface in toto, by smoothing out the Google output.  But not tonight!

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The sun shone today, so I drove up to Cambridge University Library.

My first objective was the articles by archbishop Michael Chub in Bogoslovskie Trudy, which gave versions of the Slavonic text of Methodius.  The articles appear in issue 2 (1961) and 3 (1964).

I don’t know a single letter of Russian, but the journal itself helped me quite a bit.  Remember that this is the period of KGB control of the church.  The journal was published by the Moscow Patriarchate, mainly to give a false impression of the freedom of the church in Soviet times.  Being intended for export, it had a table of contents in English and French, and Arabic numbers for page numbers.

The articles also were accompanied by monochrome photographs of pages of the Slavonic manuscripts.  Anyway I got a photocopy of the lot — slightly over A4, unfortunately, so some work with scissors will be necessary in order to scan it — and I will run it into PDF, OCR it, put it through Google Russian-English translate, and see what Dr Chub — let us hope that he wasn’t one of the KGB officers appointed as bishops — has to say.

It was a long drive to get this, and I had considered ordering a photocopy of the articles from my local library via the British Library.  But it would probably have cost no less, and the copies that I have received through the latter have often  been of very poor quality.

Last night I started writing a post on the bibliography of Hero of Alexandria.  I took the opportunity to verify a couple of references.  Amusingly, two of them were wrong!  One volume was supposed to contain a load of English translations of Hero; in reality it was a commentary, and contained none.  It is surprising how often people do not verify their references.

Meanwhile I have had a couple of interesting emails.  Andrea Gehrtz, who has translated various works by Porphyry, has had a go at book 1 of the ancient astrological writer, Vettius Valens.  It’s available for sale on Amazon.com here.

Andrea Gehrtz, Vettius Valens

Another correspondent advises me that Beth Dunlop’s translation of 4 Christmas homilies is accessible here.  The homilies are by John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nyssa, Amphilochius of Iconium, and Gregory Nazianzen — all 4th century, and it is good to have access to them.  I did write to Beth Dunlop years ago, asking if I might place these online, but had no response.  Perhaps the author of this site has been more successful!

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Another 75 Greek manuscripts online at the British Library

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Stavros Niarchos foundation continue to fund the digitisation of Greek manuscripts at the British Library, who in consequence are still shovelling them online.  Thank you both, gentlemen: this is good news.  Long may it continue!

A new tranche of 75 was released today, bringing the total to 500.  Fortunately the library staff have started to give a summary of the contents of each manuscript, which can be found at the bottom of the post.

So, what goodies are there for patristic and classically minded people in this release?

  • There’s a 16th c. copy of Photius’ Bibliotheca cod. 1-222 — i.e. nearly all of it — in Harley Ms. 5591.
  • Hero of Alexandria, Pneumatica and De automatis, Harley 5605, with diagrams. (16th c.)  These are the texts in which he describes his machines.  Here’s one of the diagrams (fol. 10v).  I was curious to see whether these were copies of ancient diagrams.  But … they look more like modern ones to me.

Useful to be able to see what the manuscript contains, tho.

I wonder if there are online English translations of these two works?  Greek scientific literature is shamefully neglected.

  • Ms. Harley 5638 is not well catalogued, being given merely as “Plutarch and Philostratus”.  Here is where the limitations of the online viewer kick in — it really would not be a simple task to leaf through the book and discover precisely what it contains.
  • Harley 5643 contains a “patristic miscellany”, much of it from Chrysostom (and there’s a thought: given that you usually can’t breathe for codices of Chrysostom in any collection of Greek mss., isn’t he shamefully under-represented in the 500 mss we have had so far?)  There’s a scholion of Eusebius in there too — on what I cannot say.
  • Harley 5646 is another of the same, mostly 216 letters by Chrysostom.
  • Harley 5677 contains the Catena of Nicetas on the Psalms!  Now that is well worth having!  And almost immediately I learn something novel and interesting on fol. 1v, which is how the names of the authors excerpted appeared in 17th century copies of  the catenas.  For it is very hard to work this out, from editions of catenae like those of Cramer.

(How I wish it was possible to link to what I want to display, at the resolution I want, and to embed the precise view that I want, rather than having to screen-grab bits like this?  Surely it should be possible to pass a few parameters to the display engine?)

The sigla are in red in the margin.  The top one is “xru” — probably Chrysostom.  The lower one is “athana” — probably Athanasius.  I wonder what the bit above the name is, in each case?  What we need now, of course, is a list of authors and folio numbers for each.  That would be quite a task, tho!

  • Harley 5689 is a bunch of Chrysostom, including homiles 4-8 of the homilies against the Jews.  This one is 11th century.
  • Harley 6296 is the “impious Porphyry”, De Abstinentia.
  • Harley 6305 is medical works by Galen and Paul of Aegina.
  • Harley 6318 is two books of Stobaeus (and why hasn’t Stobaeus ever been translated?)

It would not be right to ignore two mss. containing work by Manuel Chrysoloras, such as Harley 6505.  Chrysoloras is the father of all modern Greek studies.  He was a Byzantine diplomat who was persuaded to come and teach in Florence at the very end of the 14th century, and who proved capable of reducing the myriad complexities of Byzantine grammars down to something that could be comprehended for the first time by a non-native speaker.  Before it, fol. 1v has with an alphabet, and a few marginal signs at the bottom.  Ever wondered how we know that a sign indicates “obelise”? —

Of course I am just scratching the surface here.  Go and explore!

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When libraries forget their mission

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Into town this morning, and into Suffolk Central Library in Ipswich.  My purpose?  To enquire as to the whereabouts of the copy of Vermaseren’s Mithras: the secret god.  A copy lives 40 miles away in the county reserve in Lowestoft, and I ordered it online on Tuesday.  Yet here we are on Thursday, and it has not arrived.

In I went, to find — to my astonishment — that a childrens’ playgroup had been set up in one corner of the main library.  The happy toddlers, and their parents, and some unspecified person in charge, were all singing childrens’ songs lustily.  This did mean, of course, that it was impossible for anyone to use the library for reading anything.  I had to queue, waiting to be served, so I had plenty of time to “enjoy” the caterwauling.  Hard-headed Andrew Carnegie, who funded the original library building, would not have approved.

At the desk, a smart-looking and helpful young lady told me that the book had been loaded into “the van” yesterday, and should be in Ipswich in 4-5 days.  I laughed, and asked whether they were sending the book by stage-coach.  (On reflection this was unfair: the stage-coach would have made that journey in a day).  The poor girl said that “the van” had to go around all the libraries in Suffolk, not just straight to Ipswich.  Even so, this is not a large county, and there are only 46 libraries, most of which are tiny and will probably have nothing on order.  It’s impossible not to notice that taking a book from the County Reserve to the County Library takes so long.  It is, in a word, inefficient.

I then ordered two more Mithras books.  The girl volunteered that the books would first search local libraries; and that this would take 4 weeks.  Again I felt a sense of unreality; why precisely does a search which could be undertaken in minutes take 4 weeks?  I declined this delay, and ordered the books from the British Library.  The price for a loan?  Now 5.40GBP each.  That’s not a lot less than the cost to buy many books.  Nor did the girl know who imposed the charge, supposing that it was the British Library.  But I know different: the British Library charges something like 15GBP, but the local authorities have a statutory duty to refund that to them.  Of course that means that each ILL costs the local council 15 GBP — so if they charge a lot to readers then that will deter people from borrowing books, thereby saving money which could be spent on buying votes!

Meanwhile the libraries themselves decay.  I was told on a previous visit that my emails were dealt with so very slowly because most of the staff were part-time, and so tended to leave things for someone else.

And so it went on.  Item after item of inefficiency, maladministration, neglect or wrong-headedness.  In real terms, there was nobody in charge.  Doubtless there is some woman somewhere who receives a salary to run the organisation.  (You can tell that it is a woman in charge because the conversion of Ipswich library into a playgroup is something that only a woman would do).  But she won’t have budgetary control.   All she will be doing is following “the rules”, doing the daily business of administration, but — this is the crucial bit — not in any way concerned with whether what is being done makes sense.

Why do we have libraries funded by compulsory exactions from ordinary people?  There is a reason, although you never hear it.

We live in a global economy.  We cannot compete on price for work.  We can and do compete on educational level.  When we have men out of work, it makes sense for them to skill themselves up by reading textbooks, so that they can obtain work and pay taxes.  Thus it makes sense for a small deduction on the salaries of us all in order to fund a supply of such books via local reading rooms.  It makes sense because in this way fewer people will be subsisting on those same public funds, and their wages will contribute to the local economy.  Supplies of textbooks cannot sensibly be held locally, so it makes sense to have a central depot which can speedily supply them as required.  The same facility can be used to encourage reading among the lower classes — the middle and upper classes can probably buy whatever they want — , again in order to ensure an educated workforce.

That’s it.  It’s not a question of philanthropy, but of cold hard self-interest.

And do Suffolk Libraries fulfil this mission?  Or have they forgotten it entirely, and do they now exist primarily to pay salaries to inattentive minor offcials?

The truth is somewhere in between.  But if we had to cost-justify Suffolk Libraries, could we do so?  I have my doubts.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m still proofing the OCR of the English translation of Ibn Abi Usaibia, and reached p.639 last night.

The translation of Methodius De lepra is creeping forward.  I prompted the translator last night, and another couple of (short) pages arrived this morning, and I have just annotated them and sent them back.  These pages from the German need to be completed by a translation of a Greek fragment.  The translator has subcontracted that bit out, so it will need to be checked.  It will be interesting to see what that is like.

But great joy — a draft translation of John the Lydian’s section on December arrived this morning.  And in fact I had no comments on it, so it is pretty much done, and all I shall have to do is pay for it and upload it.

The translator of John also sent me a comment on the “cline” issue for the Sol Serapis post.

He’s also been working on the Origen Homilies on Ezechiel book, which I do hope we will manage to get out of the door sometime.  Most of it is done, and I think both of us will be glad to draw a line under it.

Meanwhile I’ve heard nothing from Chicago University since I accepted their price for digitising Loviagin’s Russian version of Methodius.  It’s hard to believe that any institution takes a week to answer an email.  I hesitate to nag them!

One of those winter viruses laid its cold hand on me at the weekend, so I’ve been a little under the weather since.  This morning the sun came out, and, feeling rather more normal, I drove up to Cambridge and visited the university library.  I think I got the very last free car parking space there!

It’s been a while since I’ve been — my pass ran out in June.  They will only issue me a pass for 6 months, which is tiresome.  There’s some noodle in the library administration with the fidgets — every time I turn up and reapply for another 6 months, there is some extra demand for evidence of this or that or the other.  But I got through the assault course OK.

I went to have a look at Vermaseren’s Mithras: the secret god.  I’ve only ever seen extracts of this, and I was looking to see whether he gave any sources for some of the line-drawings of reliefs.  And … he doesn’t!  I have a copy on order by ILL from my local library, so I will look at this some more then.  Curiously Cambridge did not have the original Dutch version of the book, nor the German translation.

Another item that I went to look for was the German original of Manfred Clauss’ The Roman cult of Mithras.  This was indeed present, but I couldn’t make much of it — I think the virus was trying to make a comeback at that point and my head grew fuzzy.

But what I did find was Reinhold Merkelbach’s Mithras; and I also found next to it the two volumes of Mithraic Studies edited by John R. Hinnells, Turcan’s book, and a few other items.  I was impressed with Merkelbach’s book — it looked very sound.  He surveys the data about Persian Mithra, and then starts a new section for Roman Mithras and states plainly that the latter was a new cult, using systematically elements borrowed from the Iranian mythology.  That seems to me to hit the nail on the head.

Finally, a bit of vanity: I went to the catalogue and searched for my own name, to see if the Eusebius book had been added to the library.  And it had!  Off I went, to find it next to all the other editions and translations of Patristic literature, but sadly minus its beautiful dustjacket.  I felt quite indignant for a moment at the loss of what had cost me so much time and labour; but then they do the same with all their books.  Nice to see it there, anyway.

I think I shall spend some time on the sofa now.  It’s been a busy day!

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C. S. Lewis died today

Posted on by Roger Pearse

N. S. Gill points out that today, 48 years ago, on Friday 22nd November, C. S. Lewis died at the age of 65.

I do not know what can be said about C. S. Lewis that has not been said many times before.  As with most Christians of my generation, my bookshelves are studded with his books.  The Narnia stories shaped my imagination at a young age — too young, indeed, and too isolated even to know that there was such a thing as Christianity.  Many years later, after my conversion, the slim cream-coloured paperbacks published by Fontana helped to form my understanding, while the outer space trilogy and The Great Divorce gave nourishment to my imagination again.  So it was with many of us.

A few years ago I picked up one of the Narnia books.  I was grieved to discover that the clear and transparent prose now seemed dated, and that it was not longer so simple to pass through it into Narnia.  I fear that they will not last much longer.  Can children today even enter Narnia?

Changes in language may mean that in a few decades the door to Narnia will be shut, and that learned pedants, and self-important scholars who have never been to Narnia, will write fanciful theories about the “meaning” of things that they do not understand with the utter certainty today reserved for books that no longer please the general public.

A few years ago, in a shop, I was turning over the pages of some jumped-up edition of The innocence of Father Brown.  The second story in the collection, The Secret Garden, ends with a flourish, as the murderer is proved to be the detective, Valentin and they rush to confront him:

The great detective sat at his desk apparently too occupied to hear their turbulent entrance. They paused a moment, and then something in the look of that upright and elegant back made the doctor run forward suddenly. A touch and a glance showed him that there was a small box of pills at Valentin’s elbow, and that Valentin was dead in his chair; and on the blind face of the suicide was more than the pride of Cato.

The annotated edition included a footnote here on the last word.  The exact words escape me, but they confidently informed the reader that here Chesterton meant the Devil, as only his pride was greater than the pride of Cato.

From this folly I learned instead that the annotator was a man without literary taste, unable to read or appreciate the text about which he was writing a commentary for the benefit of others.  For nothing of the kind is intended here; the reference to Cato merely informs us that this was a suicide, and “more than the pride of Cato” is merely a splendid literary flourish.  I myself read The Innocence of Father Brown long ago for enjoyment, as it was meant to be read.  I doubt that unhappy man enjoyed a line of the book.

No doubt similarly foolish people will soon write equally fatuous notes on The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.  It is a warning to us, in a way, to beware of learned ignorance.

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Notes from the preface to the 3rd edition (1913) of Cumont’s “The mysteries of Mithras”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Until this evening I was not aware that Cumont’s The mysteries of Mithras existed in a 3rd French edition, published 10 years after the English translation of the 2nd edition.  But it may be found on Archive.org, and the note to the 3rd edition on p.xiii contains a couple of interesting remarks.

In response to the wish expressed by some correspondents, we have, as in the second German edition, added some concise notes which will permit the reader to verify  quickly the evidence on which our assertions are based.  These “texts and monuments” will be found reproduced in our editiomaior.   Those which have been found or reported since 1900 have been briefly listed in the appendix, as far as they have become known to us.  This small volume will serve thus to some degree as a supplement to our Mithraic Corpus.  For the same reason we have introduced some new illustrations of statues or bas-reliefs, which have come to light recently.  The index has been brought up to date and a good number of new names have been added to it.

The lack of footnotes to some pretty bold statements is one of the frustrations of the English edition; the French version was better equipped, but it will be interesting to see how useful the 3rd edition was from this point of view.

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