From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The sales figures for September for my book — Eusebius of Caesarea, Gospel Problems and Solutions.  Text and translation.  Get yours from Amazon now! — have arrived and are acceptable.  For a change most of the sales were in the UK.  More acceptable still is the first chunk of payments.  Lightning Source, the distributor, delay these for three months, so this is the first money that I have seen from Amazon.

A correspondent from Germany interested in Coptic studies has emailed me the Arabic text of the life of Samuel of Kalamoun, in PDF form.   This is Anthony Alcock’s publication, The Arabic Life of Anba Samawi’l of Qalamun, Le Museon 109 (1996), p.321-345.  The text was edited from a manuscript written on … 29th September 1945 AD!  We forget, I suspect, that hand-copying texts is something that goes on even today, and was certainly going on in the Arab world until the photocopier era.  It was printed from the mss. of the Franciscan Center of Christian Oriental Studies in Muski in Cairo.

The editor remarks that this vita survives in Coptic, and also in Ethiopic.   The Arabic version is closer to the Ethiopic, naturally enough, as the Ethiopic probably derives from an Arabic version.

I got the PDF’s on Tuesday, but only today realised that this included an English translation!  Wonderful!

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Delving in the Analecta Bollandiana

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A post in an online forum queried whether an English translation existed of the “Halkin Vita” of Constantine.  I had never heard of this item, but a little searching revealed that it is a medieval Greek Saint’s “Life”, mostly fictitious, of the Emperor.  A reference to a medieval patriarch dates it to after the iconoclast disputes, and it is apparently extant in a single 13th century manuscript from Patmos, and was published by F. Halkin in volume 77 of Analecta Bollandiana, that great repository of scholarly editions of obscure hagiographical literature.

Hagiography is a funny business.  It’s not history, nor biography.  It is a genre of its own, which arose in the late 4th century, and is primarily related to folk-tale.  There is quite a spectrum of material.  At one end, a “saint’s life” may be entirely fictitious, for instance, and told mainly because it is interesting to hear.  At the other end, we find “lives” which are full of details which are plainly derived from an eye-witness.  Because it is a genre, the form of the tales is quite rigid in some ways, and standard incidents — the props of the genre — can be recognised by comparing texts. 

The process of recognising material of historical value has exercised scholars, and the Bollandist scholars in particular have published considerable amounts of material for some centuries, although, like most people, I have never read a word of their work.  There is a perceptible tendency, unfortunately, to simply assign all supernatural material and all homiletic material to the category of “folk tale”, and then to presume that the secular remainder may have some historical value.  The risks in this approach are obvious — why do we suppose that a writer cannot invent plain details as well as marvellous?  But how to proceed, when we are asking a question of a text which it is not designed to answer?

Unfortunately I could not access Halkin’s publication, which I suspect was accompanied by a French translation.  A number of older volumes are on Google  books.  Volume 16 (1897), for instance, is here (US readers only, thanks to the usual greed of European publishers). 

This volume opens with a martyrdom (“Acts”) of a certain Saint Dasius, preserved in ms. Paris graecus 1539 of the 11th century.  The article is by Franz Cumont, the founder of Mithras studies, and opens with interesting remarks about how the Saturnalia was celebrated.

From the first words, we find some very curious notes on the Saturnalia which are certainly authentic.  The soldiers in the garrison at Durostorum, the anonymous author says, had the custom, during the festival of Cronos, which they celebrated each year, to set up a mock-king.  Wearing insignia denoting his rank, this person went out at the head of a numerous procession, and in the town gave himself up to every species of excess and debauchery .  The license permitted on this occasion was treated as a special “gift” of Saturn, of whom the ephemeral king was treated as an terrestrial image.

These details agree with what profane authors tell us about the Roman Saturnalia.[1]  In each society a “king”, under some such name, presided at the festival, and helped things along by giving as ridiculous as possible orders to his “subjects”, and, just like the editor of our “Acts”, Lucian speaks of behaviour, for which Saturnalia was the pretext, as a “gift” of the relaxed sovereign of the Age of Gold, who every year regained his power for seven days.[2]  All these details from our text are therefore of an indisputable authenticity.

After which, I admit that I was rather curious to read the text itself.  Sadly, in compliance with a vile custom not yet quite extinct, the editor provided no translation.  Oh well.

But returning to the Analecta Bollandiana, isn’t it a shame that the scholarly publications of this recondite branch of knowledge remain offline?  For only a few libraries can possibly hold that journal, and those libraries are open only to academics.  Few of the latter will be avid readers of the AB, I suspect.  Of course the publication makes money for the press, and, I would hope, at least something for the Bollandists themselves.

But wouldn’t it be a much better idea to go electronic, and make the material available online to us all?  Would the Bollandists be a penny worse off?  Somehow I doubt it.

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  1. [1]Lucian, Saturn. 4; Cf. Tacitus, Annals, XIII, 15; Arrian, Epictetus diss. I, 25. ↩
  2. [2]Lucian, Sat. ch. 2-4↩

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A couple of snippets only.

Firstly, an email tells me that someone is producing audio versions of some of the ante-Nicene fathers, here.  Apparently they have backing music, which sounds unusual.  I have a vague idea that other people have done some of this, but it can only be a good thing!

Secondly, via Ancient World Online, I learn of a new site of dissertations online, the The Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD).  I was unable to work out who and what and why from the corporate-speak on the site, but there are two search engines for it:

Scirus ETD Search
A comprehensive scientific research tool from Elsevier, Scirus ETD Search provides an advanced search that can narrow results to theses and dissertations as well as provide access to related scholarly resources.
VTLS Visualizer
This is a dynamic search and discovery platform with sophisticated functionality.  You can sort by relevance, title, and date.  In the current implementation, faceted searches are available by language, continent, country, date, format and source institution.  Additional facets, such as subjects or departments, can be added if desired.

Anything that makes these items more readily accessible is good.   Many, perhaps most dissertations are of limited value.   But they often contain unpublished translations, and so can be valuable long after the author has forgotten about them.

I’ve just done a search on “english translation”. 

This thesis [by C.R. Hackenberg, 2009] offers, for the first time, a complete Arabic-to-English translation of the debate between Nestorian Patriarch, Timothy I (a. 779-823), and Muslim ‘Abbāsid Caliph, al-Mahdī (r. 775-785). An analysis of the various editions of the Arabic and Syriac versions of the debate is included. The primary editions of the debate consulted for this thesis were Samir K. Samir’s critical edition of the Arabic text named MS 662 of the Bibliothéque Orientale à Beyrouth, and Alphonse Mingana’s edition of the Syriac text named Mingana 17 taken from the Convent of Alqosh in northern Iraq. In analyzing the various editions of the debate, the goal is to establish the primacy of the Syriac text in its relationship to the Arabic text. This analysis is largely based upon the existing work of Hans Putman. In the translation and analysis of the debate, significant differences between the Syriac and Arabic versions of the debate are noted. In addition to the translation and analysis of the debate, a general introduction to Timothy I and his accomplishments as Nestorian Patriarch as well as an outline of the proposed purpose of Timothy’s text during late antiquity and the medieval period are offered.

I downloaded it at once!  It is followed by a load of stuff of no special interest, including stuff about machine translation.  Then I found this:

A Critical Edition of Anastasius Bibliothecarius’ Latin Translation of Greek Documents Pertaining to the Life of Maximus the Confessor, with an Analysis of Anastasius’ Translation Methodology, and an English Translation of the Latin Text (Neil Bronwen, 1998)

Anastasius Bibliothecarius, papal librarian, translator and diplomat, is one of the pivotal figures of the ninth century in both literary and political contexts. His contribution to relations between the eastern and western church can be considered to have had both positive and negative ramifications, and it will be argued that his translations of various Greek works into Latin played a significant role in achieving his political agenda, complex and convoluted as this was. Being one of relatively few Roman bilinguals in the latter part of the ninth century, Anastasius found that his linguistic skills opened an avenue into papal affairs that was not closed by even the greatest breaches of trust and violations of canonical law on his part. His chequered career spanning five pontificates will be reviewed in the first chapter. In Chapter 2, we discuss his corpus of works of translation, in particular the Collectanea, whose sole surviving witness, the Parisinus Latinus 5095, has been partially edited in this study. This collation and translation of seven documents pertaining to the life of Maximus the Confessor provides us with a unique insight into Anastasius’ capacity as a translator, and into the political and cultural significance of the commissioning and dedication of his hagiographic and other translated works in general. These seven documents will be examined in detail in Chapter 3, and compared with the Greek tradition, where that has survived, in an effort to establish the codes governing translation in this period, and to establish which manuscripts of the Greek tradition correspond most closely to Anastasius’ (lost) model. In Chapter 4, we analyse consistency of style and method by comparison with Anastasius’ translation of the Historia Mystica attributed to Germanus of Constantinople. Anastasius’ methodology will be compared and contrasted with that of his contemporary John Scotus Eriugena, to place his oeuvre in the broader context of bilingualism in the West in the ninth century. Part II contains a critical edition of the text with facing English translation and historical and linguistic annotations.

That’s the stuff!

After 9 pages, tho, I found that I needed some means to exclude all the Chinese stuff!  I tried the other search engine, with advanced, and excluding “chinese”.  Interestingly this gave better results.  Some of the theses are very old — there was one on Numenius by Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie.  There was a translation of portions of John Tzetzes’ letters and histories in another.  But I was much less sure whether there was actual material for download — the Tzetzes talked about “add to cart” rather than giving a link.  But returning to the first engine, and doing a similar search, I did find the Tzetzes here.  But the search engine then went wonky!

Very interesting, and deserving much investigation, I suspect!

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Over the weekend I was thinking about the ancient information that has reached us about the cult of Mithras.  There is a considerable quantity of not-very-useful literary testimonies, but the majority of the material is inscriptional or in the form of reliefs and statuary.

All this was sparked by thinking about a depiction of the so-called “water miracle”.  This shows Mithras firing a bow, at what is presumably a rock, which then gushes what is presumably water.  The “presumably” comes because we have no literary testimony to this part of the myth, so we don’t quite know what we are looking at.  Yet it sometimes appears in the 10 panels of mythical events, appearing on either side of the tauroctony — the central depiction of Mithras killing the bull which appears in every Mithraeum — in the more elaborate examples of that sculpture.  So plainly it was of some importance.

This led me to wonder how one might find out what is, or is not, being depicted.  For all these pictorial bits of information, the best way to learn what they are is to compare examples.  So what we need for the “water miracle” is a collection of all the examples of the depiction, with locality and date etc.

I considered starting a collection of these.  One could start with Vermaseren’s Corpus of materials, and start trying to get photographs etc, which could be put online.

But then it occurred to me that, although this is a good idea, it is one before its time.  The British Museum has started to put its collection online, and limited photographs are already appearing.  Undoubtedly other institutions will do the same.  Meta-sites will spring up, making it possible to search more and more collections.  Minor collections will do likewise.  And at that point it will be possible to do this research relatively simply.

So I shall refrain, tempting tho it is.  For those of us whose eyes are larger than our stomachs, it will always be possible to dream impossible dreams!

In other news, I have had a demand from some UK government body for five copies of my book, to be delivered for deposit in the five copyright libraries.  Pity that wasn’t an order for five copies!

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve done a little more OCR on the English translation of Ibn Abi Usaibia, but it is slow going.  Unfortunately I have had a cold for some weeks — symptoms are coughing and indigestion, curiously — which restricts what I can do in the evenings.  When I get well, it will be easier to spend more time on it.

Emails today were plentiful.

Two people have bought copies of the CDROM that I sell of the English translations of the Fathers.  One of these was in Japan, and has an address in Japanese characters.  That will be interesting to process!  The other had an invalid email address, forcing me to recheck it in Paypal and re-email him.

Another email was from a great-nephew of the French philologist, François Nau (d. 1931), Pierre Sabatier.  Nau edited and translated great quantities of Syriac and Christian Arabic texts, often in the Revue de l’Orient Chretien, whose volumes remain indispensable even now.  

Back in 2008 I created a Wikipedia article for Nau, and mentioned that a collection of his articles was due to appear in 2007.  Dr Sabatier discovered this, and emailed me, offering to help with any such volume, and regretting that I no longer contribute to Wikipedia.  Someone must have emailed me about that commemorative volume.  But, several years later, I don’t remember anything about it.  Nor did a search of my emails reveal anything.  So I posted something in the Hugoye list for Syriacists, to see if anyone knows. 

And … there!  Somehow, the evening is gone, and nothing achieved. 

Well, almost nothing: I did watch a bit of the new TV series Merlin, featuring the rather pre-Raphaelite-looking Katie McGrath as the evil sorceress Morgana…

Searching for an image to include revealed that the BBC employ some hilariously stupid publicity people.  The first one I chose and uploaded promptly vomited a load of copyright nonsense into the WordPress description — “only to be used in print, only after this date, special permission for internet yadda yadda yadda” — which effectually deterred me from using it. 

But … unless I mistake, surely the point of promotional pictures is to, erm, promote things?  And if you want to promote things, isn’t it rather counter-productive to deter people from using the promotional pictures?

Never mind.  Let’s instead admire Miss McGrath’s cheek-bones, as undoubtedly Dante Gabriel Rosetti would have done.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve found some rather good photographs of a fresco in a Mithraeum at Marino in the Alban Hills near Rome on a blog entry here.  The fresco depicts the “tauroctony” — Mithras killing the bull.  This is present in every temple of Mithras, but in this case it is a colour painting on the wall, rather than a stone relief, coloured or otherwise.

The most interesting elements are the side-panels, which depict elements of the myth of Mithras.  Since no literary source explains them, or indeed gives us the details of the mysteries of Mithras, we are forced to guess at their meaning.

These side-panels are not always present in a tauroctony, but I have seen them before.  The content seems to vary a little.  The bottom right panel at Marino shows Mithras drawing a bow.  The blog says this is the “water miracle”; not sure how we know that water is involved.  (You have to be wary around these iconographical people — they tend to state as fact their own theories about what can be seen in an image!)

A very nice post, all the same.  I wonder where the images come from?

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Is ambiguity in ancient texts a problem for the translator?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

At work today one of my colleagues had received a particularly hasty email from a customer.  The sentence was somewhat difficult to parse, and could be read in two ways.  But we worked out what it meant.  And then — for, unusually, my current colleagues know who I am — he asked me this:

When you’re translating an ancient text, how do you deal with ambiguity?

It’s a very good question, isn’t it? 

The first point that struck me is that mostly ancient authors wanted to be read, and to be understood, and consequently wrote in order to avoid ambiguity.  A word might have two meanings, but the rest of the sentence would be so phrased as to rule out all but one choice.

I think that here is rather less ambiguity in ancient texts than we might suppose, as we translate them.  Isn’t it the case that, in the majority of the situations where we find ourselves with ambiguity, it is because we can’t work out what the thought is, that the author is trying to express? 

I remember wrestling with a translation of the 6th century Syriac scientific author, Severus Sebokht, On the Constellations.  The subject matter — “climates” and stars and so on — was unfamiliar, and I found myself in the dark, sometimes, where a sentence could have more than one meaning, word for word.  But the real problem was that I simply didn’t know enough about the subject to choose the right possible word meaning.

When we find a word that could be translated several ways, we usually find that the context decides which word that should be.  By “context” we mean that the word is part of a sentence, and the sentence part of a paragraph, and the paragraph is devoted to putting forward a train of thought.  All this naturally tends to reduce the possible multiple meanings of a word, or a set of words.  The author probably did not intend to be ambiguous, after all, although, with some of the more allusive Byzantine writers, you do wonder!

When we do find a word which is clearly ambiguous in the original, how do we handle it?  In this case we must consider the possibility that the ambiguity is deliberate, and therefore needs to be conveyed to the reader in English.  The best solution is to use an English word that has the same dual sense.  Habeo in Latin has a considerable range of meanings beyond have, own; and have itself can carry more than one meaning in English.  But in most cases we will not find a convenient equivalent.  In that case we must resort to footnotes; translate the meaning that is most important, and indicate the overloading in a footnote.  Indeed even when a single ambiguous English word can be found, it is probably best to indicate in a footnote that the ambiguity is in the Latin or Greek. 

For footnotes, of course, exist primarily to allow the translator to anticipate the criticisms of the reviewer — “surely any schoolboy would have known that blah blah…” — and prevent such captiousness.  Whether such preventative footnotes are of use to the general reader may sometimes be doubted.

A further element reducing ambiguity in ancient sentences is the language itself.  English is a weakly-typed language, to borrow a computer idiom.  A word may be a noun or a verb, and little or nothing in the form of the word itself indicates its grammatical purpose or position in the sentence.  But Latin and Greek were more strongly typed. 

In English you can reverse the position of words, and it alters the meaning.  “Sextus killed Marcus” and “Marcus killed Sextus” are not equivalent statements, not least from the point of view of Marcus and Sextus. 

But in Latin this is an impossible problem.  “Sextus Marcum occidit” and “Marcum Sextus occidit” are of near identical meaning, differing only in emphasis.   Consequently the scope for ambiguity is reduced. 

But of course ambiguity does not disappear simply because of grammar!  The second word anyone learns in Latin, amas, has two different meanings — the second person singular indicative active of the verb amo meaning “you love”, as in amo, amas, amat; but it is also the accusative plural of the noun ama, the fireman’s buckets.  “amas amas” is a perfectly legal Latin sentence — “you love the fireman’s buckets”.  It is not clear, perhaps, which amas is which!  But even so, the meaning is unambiguous.

In short, translation does not have a special problem with ambiguity.  The author may be ambiguous; the language he writes in may assist or obstruct him; but surely the real cause of ambiguity is between the ears of the author, not in the mind of the translator?

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John the Lydian, September – now online

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There is a chapter on the events of September in John the Lydian, On the Roman months, book IV.  The final version of the translation by Mischa Hooker has arrived!  I’ve uploaded the raw Word document here.  And, since it is September, it seems rather timely to see what the Romans did and saw in September.  I’ve placed it in the public domain — do whatever you like with it, personal, educational or commercial.

Since it is short, I give the text here.   There are a few gaps in the text in the sole manuscript, indicated with ‘…’  I do wonder whether modern methods might reveal some text here, or whether there are simply holes in the pages.

[158]    SEPTEMBER

121.  What we said was true, that the Romans set the month of March as the beginning of the year, and this can be grasped from the designation of the current month.  For they named it September, as being the “seventh” from the “spring”—for “seven” is septem and “spring” is ver [1]—that is, from the month of March, on the 24th day of which the sun, entering Aries, allows [159] the nature of spring to begin.  After that, it will not be necessary to go into the names of the following months at length; for October is the eighth from the “Waxing of the Light,”[2] and so forth for November and December.

122.  The number nine is divine, being composed of three threes, and preserving the perfections of theology according to the Chaldaean philosophy, as Porphyry says.

123.  Metrodorus says that at the new moon, Andromeda rises, and with the other winds ceasing, the East Wind prevails.

124.  On the day before the Nones of September,[3] Augustus defeated the Egyptians with Antony and Cleopatra at Leucate.  And for this reason, he introduced the reckoning of the cycle of the so-called “indiction” from the beginning of the month of September.[4]On this day, Democritus says there occurs a change of winds and a predominance of rain.

125.  The various distinctions of flavors are quite numerous, according to Apollonius, but the there are nine principal types:  sweet, bitter, sharp [i.e., acidic], pungent, brinchos [5], harsh / astringent, slimy [?],[6] severe / rugged,[7] and salty.  Hence also in this ninth month the Romans would pray for good
health. [160]

126.  On the Ides of September, [8] Eudoxius indicates that the Horse [i.e., the constellation Pegasus] sets, and the West—or Bright—Wind blows.

127.  We know that on cabbage a kind of “worm” grows, called “Curvy” [i.e., the caterpillar].  This animal, when the cabbage dries out in the spring, naturally turns into a winged “worm” like an ant, and somewhat larger, supported by white triangular wings; and it flies around in gardens in a way that is low to the ground and makes it easy to catch it.  And it turns out that this sort of “worm” is called “Psychê” [i.e., the butterfly, lit. “soul”].[9]

128.  Ten days before the Kalends of October,[10] Dositheus indicates that Arcturus rises.  On the 12th day before the Kalends of  October, Caesar says that the swallows leave.

129.  …of Nicomedes the tyrant of Bithynia.

130.  When there has been an excess of fire, a fever occurs; when air [has been excessive], a quotidian fever; when water, a tertian fever, when earth, a quartan fever.  And shivering tends to be the first stage of [all] these.  For whenever the aforementioned fluids are made thick by the cold—since this is a characteristic of both water and earth—at that time, as they travel through the pores they are not able to expel the thicker substances, but come into locations of these and produce a compression and crushing action; this of [161] necessity causes turmoil and quaking—which experience is called “trembling and cold.”

131.  The Romans, after defeating the Africans, conveyed the wild beasts from there to Rome and slaughtered them in the arena, so that not even the wild beasts from that region would remain unenslaved.

132.  The column [stêlê] of Tyche which stands in Byzantium was erected by Pompey the Great.  <For> after enclosing Mithridates there with the Goths, and dispersing them, he captured Byzantium.  And this is attested by the epigram in Latin letters on the base of the pillar, which says the following:

To Tyche Safe-Returner, on account of the defeat of the Goths.[11]

The place later became a tavern.  The Goths are Getae.

133. …but the common people call it delphax [“pig”].[12]

134.  And the oracle recommends drinking milk for the sake of good health all through the month of September.

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  1. [1]Transliterated here as βέρ.↩
  2. [2]Gk. Auxiphôtia.  Elsewhere (De Mensibus 4.135, 158), John Lydus uses this term for the winter solstice (or just afterwards), but here, by inclusive counting, October would be the eighth after March, i.e., perhaps John is intending a reference to the spring equinox?↩
  3. [3]4 Sept.↩
  4. [4] The “indiction” system of 15-year cycles was used in the Byzantine empire, as well as in medieval Western Europe; the cycles were calculated from the beginning of September in Byzantium, as John Lydus says, but the system was not used until the late Empire.↩
  5. [5]LSJ:  “between…pungent…and astringent” (citing this passage)↩
  6. [6]Gk. blennôdês.↩
  7. [7]Gk. austêros.↩
  8. [8]13 Sept.↩
  9. [9]John Lydus continues to use the term “worm” (skôlêx) in reference to the animal, even though strictly speaking it should only have been used for one stage in its development.  On the development of the butterfly (“Psychê”), cf. Aristotle, Historia Animalium 5.19 (551A); Plutarch, Quaestiones Conviviales 2.3 (636C).  The odd reference to the ant does not appear in either of these. ↩
  10. [10]22 Sept.↩
  11. [11]For the still-extant “Gothic column” and its interpretation, see B. Croke, “Poetry and Propaganda:  Anastasius I as Pompey,” Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies 48 (2008), pp. 462-3; C. Mango, “The Triumphal Way of Constantinople and the Golden Gate,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 54 (2000), p. 177.  It is likely to be connected with 3rd- or 4th-century victories over Goths (Claudius Gothicus or Constantine), not with Pompey the Great.  The Latin inscription on the column base, now barely legible, agrees with John Lydus’ account; it reads:  Fortunae Reduci ob devictos Gothos. ↩
  12. [12]This may be a reference to a part of the imperial palace at Constantinople; cf. Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Cerimoniis 1.86 (p. 391 Reiske), etc. ↩

Another UK attack on free speech

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This report on a “bigot” who is to expect a jail sentence for expressing dislike online of those whom he saw as his enemies should make us all shiver.  There is no pretence that the man did anything except say how much he hated Catholics. 

Apparently that is justification enough for “a substantial jail sentence”.

Who knew?

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Bibliography (with links) of Pachomian literature

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Alin Suciu has collected a bibliography of publications of works connected with the 4th century founder of Egyptian monasticism, St. Pachomius.  He’s also linked to downloads.  You know, five years ago you just couldn’t have got these books!

The first on the list is a publication by Egyptologist E. Amelineau.  Amelineau is a name that I came across as a boy, when reading Leonard Cottrell’s books about ancient Egypt.  Flinders Petrie, who started scientific archaeology, found that Amelineau was the enemy, and his name was associated with everything bad in my early reading, therefore.

But the truth is that Amelineau wasn’t an archaeologist at all.  He was a coptologist, publishing papyri and other 4th century Christian texts.  His volumes — and they are numerous — are still of value today.  It is unfortunate, therefore, that in getting involved in digging for antiquities, in a period when this was commonplace, he outlived his time and started to do real damage. 

UPDATE: Dr Suciu has continued his Pachomian bibiography here with further excellent material. 

UPDATE: Part 3 is here, and part 4 and last here.

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