Mischa Hooker’s links – a new incarnation

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I can’t be the only one who has found some pages compiled by Mischa Hooker of links to material on Google books extremely useful.  His table of links to the PG was long an aid, although these days I prefer the Cyprian project list.

It seems that Dr Hooker has started a new set of links.  This appears in wikispaces, presumably for the same reason that I have used a wiki — that it’s easier to add links when you find them, ad hoc, if you can bash them in online.  Likely to be very useful.

The list of authors down the left hand side stops with Commodian, in IE6.  I’m not sure if that is the browser or the list.

Share

Chrysostom’s sermon on new year (in kalendas) now online in English

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The translation that I commissioned of John Chrysostom’s sermon on the new year festivities is now online here.  I hope it will be useful!  It’s public domain – do whatever you like with  it!

Share

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Up early and to the laptop to work on QuickGreek, my tool for working with ancient Greek.  It really has suffered from being worked on in bits and pieces.  Moving bits of code around to simplify things, so I can build on top of it.

While doing so, downloading more of the RealEncyclopadie in PDF form from the web.  The download site places obstacles in your way.  For each PDF you have to click on a link, then “request a download ticket” (just an excuse for another click), wait while the advertising downloads, then click on “Download”, then wait as IE blocks the download, then click on the “if it didn’t download click here”.  If you download more than one or two, it adds an extra step and demands you type in a “captcha”.  All very wasteful of time and energy, but the RE is worth it, even in so many, many PDF’s.  How else would someone like me ever even see a copy?

Rainy and dull and cool, which is all to the good.  If the sun was shining I’d feel morally obliged to go out and do something summery.  But as it is, the pressure is off!

UPDATE:  One of the nicest days I’ve had for a long time, in fact.  I spent most of the day working on QuickGreek, untangling some code that had given me pain for years.  It is strange, tho, how long it all takes!  Also I got my upgrade to Office 2010 downloaded and installed, and I finished getting hold of the RE at long last.  I didn’t really post online much — my alternative to working! — but I stuck to the job.  I also went out early and got a haircut, which mysteriously made me feel more cheerful as well — I don’t know why.  Did all the hippies take drugs to get away from the fact that they all felt so unkempt?!?  I walked down to Sainsburys at lunchtime to get a baked potato and a scone and some very necessary diet coke, or liquid caffeine as I think of it.  There’s always a queue, but somehow I timed it right and didn’t have to wait long. It rained on and off all day, just a cool, quiet, grey, and comfortable day. 

Today was one of the good ones, in other words.  As ever, tomorrow is Sunday and the PC goes into the cupboard in a few moments.  First to run my backup software!

Share

Greek and Latin books at Google

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An extremely useful list (thanks to George Kiraz):

http://www.google.com/googlebooks/ancient-greek-and-latin.html

Share

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve pulled QuickGreek out of the drawer and I’ve been working on it again. 

It’s always hard to remember where I was with the code.  Software development is definitely NOT something best undertaken in short bursts with weeks in between.

This time I’m trying to include some matching for Greek words by stripping off the accents.  Quite a lot of words are unique, even without an accent.  It should improve the hit rate.

Reading about software is tedious.  My apologies!

Share

The manuscripts of Socrates Scholasticus

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I have Gunther Christian Hansen’s evidently excellent new critical text in the Berlin GCS series of Socrates Scholasticus before me.  So I have placed online a summary of what he says about the extant manuscripts of that work, plus their translations into Armenian, Syriac, etc.  The notes are here.

Share

Translation of Chrysostom “In Kalendas” has arrived

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The translation that I commissioned of John Chrysostom’s sermon In Kalendas, on the kalends of January — i.e. on New Year — has arrived and looks good.  It will be released into the public domain and placed online this evening.

There may be a bit of a hiatus with various projects over the summer.  I imagine that translators will want to get a break — to run barefoot in the meadows and bathe in the mountain streams, frisking with … with whatever is frisking at this season.  I find my own urge to sit before a keyboard is diminishing too!

UPDATE (June 19th).  After writing which, I promptly forgot all about it!  Oops!

Share

Working on QuickAccents and other things

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A few years ago I wrote a little tool called QuickAccents.  What it did was add the correct accents to a Greek word as you typed it, using the accentuation in the New Testament.  Hardly anyone ever bought a copy, and it languished until I finally withdrew it a year back.

Over the weekend I had an email from one of the few, asking me if it would run on Windows 7.  The answer was that it would not.  But in response to pleas, I located the source and tried to port it to the current version of Visual Studio.

I wasn’t very hopeful, but the port more or less worked.  Well, Microsoft to Microsoft… it ought to!  But certainly earlier versions did not.  So I have the new version.  This I will package up, and the gentleman will be able to run it.

In those days I tended to list the date in the files.  I notice, ruefully, that I wrote QuickAccents in 2002.  It didn’t seem so long ago… And where did the time go?

I’ve been feeling really incredibly tired over the last couple of days, with lots of headaches and toothache in the upper jaw.  I started to feel better last night, and suddenly realised that it must have been a virus!  The virus gets into the sinuses, and thus the other symptoms.  I mention this only in case others are afflicted, and have not realised what is happening.

Last night I started to look at the preface to Hansen’s edition of the Church History of Socrates Scholasticus.  We’re so accustomed to having this in English that it was a shock to learn that no German translation had ever been made!  Interestingly there is evidence that a complete Syriac version exists.

If the virus will let up, I will digest down the manuscript tradition and place it online.

Share

How do we get people to photograph stuff overseas?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Under the church of Santa Prisca in Rome is a crypt which was once a Mithraeum.  It was excavated in the 1960’s by Martin Vermaseren and G. Van Essen, and contains some striking frescos. 

But it is probably best known for a series of inscriptions which I think are scratched in plaster.  One of these, in particular, is a favourite of the “Mithras=Jesus” headbangers, because it contains the word “And you have saved us by the shedding of the eternal blood”.  At least… it might do.

Last week someone raised the question of whether the inscription in the Santa Prisca Mithraeum in Rome really does refer to nos servasti — “you have saved us” — or not.  Apparently there is some doubt in the scholarly literature.

The obvious thing to do is to get some photographs.  But how? 

I find that you can visit the Mithraeum, but only as part of a guided tour.  I do not think that would probably make photography possible.

But there must be people who can do this.  People based in Italy, firms of photographers, people with the contacts to get access, who could do this — for money.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Share

Update on Philip of Side

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The project to translate all the remaining or supposed fragments of Philip of Side’s 24-book Christian History is going well.  Regular readers will remain that the fragments were classified into seven groups.  Nos 1, 2, 5 and 6 are done, and 7 is in progress.  The translator is doing is very good job, and the results are pretty spectacular, and will be definitive, I think.  I still find myself amazed that no-one has done this earlier.

We’re also going to include the testimonia, since these are few.  The critical edition of Socrates Scholasticus Church History arrived at my local library today, and I have copied the relevant pages and will send them across.  How we get the Photius text I’m not sure, tho.

Share