Tag: Information access

ICUR – Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae – online

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The ICUR series of inscriptions is not one that I have been familiar with.  But Lanciani references an inscription set up by the 4th century Pope Damasus over the Archivum, engraved by the artist Furius Dionysius Philocalus.  A google search for the Latin text reveals that it was published in De Rossi, ICUR, ii. 151.  So I’ve been searching for the volumes since.

The Fourth Century site gives a list of volumes.  I’ve added such links as I could find using Google Books and Europeana; but the items really do not seem to be online, despite being pre-1923 and so out of copyright.

Oh well.  I shall have to go without my inscription, and the witty, modest, yet learned remarks (or otherwise) that I would have written upon it.

UPDATE: I have added another link to vol.1 sent in by a correspondent: thank you!  He also points out that Damasus’ epigrams and inscriptions were all published by Ihm in 1895.  Archive.org have the book: http://archive.org/details/damasiepigrammat00damauoft.  Apparently the inscription I have in mind is on p.58, #57.  Sadly I have no time to look now.

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Priscilla Throop and the two translations of Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Etymologies of the last writer of antiquity (in the west), the 7th century Isidore of Seville, seem really rather interesting.  I’ve been browsing through book 6 at Lacus Curtius, and it has brief but useful notes on all sorts of things.  So I began wondering if I could get hold of a translation.  It’s much easier to skim read for interesting stuff in English, after all!

Rather to my surprise I find not one but two translations.

First, there is Priscilla Throop’s two volume hardcover version (at Amazon, vol. 1, vol.2,  at Amazon.co.uk: vol.1, vol.2), from January 2006, at $28 per volume.  It turns out that Mrs Throop self-publishes her translations through Lulu.com, and she has made quite a number of translations of medieval texts, as may be seen on Lulu.  There is an Amazon preview of the Isidore, and the opening pages all look very good and professional.

Then there is the single volume by Stephen A. Barney plus a team of translators (Amazon here, at Amazon.co.uk here), published in hardcover by Cambridge University Press for the enormous price of $205 in June 2006, and published in paperback at 20% of the hardcover price — just below the combined price of the two Throop volumes, which is rather mean of CUP —  in 2010.  It also has an Amazon preview, also looks good.  Curiously it advertises itself as the first English translation in the preface.  Did the translators not know of the Throop version?  Did CUP not know?

There is a Google Books preview of the CUP version here.   BMCR seem only to have reviewed the CUP version, here.

Naturally one feels for the underdog, the little guy up against the mighty combine and marketing machine of CUP.  But which to choose?  If one or the other had offered a download version, I might go for that.  But neither does, as far as I could tell, although possibly an electronic version of the CUP one exists through one of their university-online book access schemes.

The Non Defixi blog comments on the two here, and Way of the Fathers also has a post on it.  Sadly the CUP version is likely to be quoted by other scholars.

I suspect that the Throop version has been rather more widely purchased by real people spending their own money.  Let’s hear it for the little guy!

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An online edition of the Derveni papyrus

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The ever excellent Ancient World Online blog is indispensible for those wishing to keep aware of what is coming online, and should be in everyone’s RSS reader.  Today I learn that an online edition has appeared of the Derveni papyrus, on which I wrote some notes as long ago as 2006.

The Derveni Papyrus: An Interdisciplinary Research Project …

The Derveni papyrus is a most interesting new document of  Greek literature. It is perhaps the only papyrus to have been found on Greek soil, and is, if not the oldest Greek papyrus ever found, no doubt the oldest literary papyrus, dated roughly between 340 and 320 B.C. Its name derives from the site where it was discovered, some six miles north of Thessaloniki, in whose Archaeological Museum it is now preserved. It was found among the remnants of a funeral pyre in one of the tombs in the area, which has also yielded extremely rich artifacts, primarily items of metalware. After the exacting job of unrolling and separating the layers of the charred papyrus roll, and then of joining the numerous fragments  together again, 26 columns of text were recovered, all with their bottom parts missing, as they had perished on the pyre.

The book, composed near the end of the 5th century B.C., contains the eschatological teaching of a mantis; the content is divided between religious instructions on sacrifices to gods and souls, and allegorical commentary on a theogonical  poem ascribed to Orpheus. The author’s outlook is philosophical, displaying, in particular, a physical system close to those of Anaxagoras, the Atomists, and Diogenes of Apollonia. His allegorical method of interpretation is especially interesting, frequently reminiscent of Socrates’ playful mental and etymological  acrobatics as seen in Plato’s Cratylus. The identification of the author is a matter of  dispute among scholars. Names like Euthyphron of Prospalta, Diagoras  of Melos, and Stesimbrotus of Thasos have been proposed with varying degrees of likelihood.

A few years ago The Center for Hellenic Studies made the Greek text of the papyrus available online, as it was published in 2006, © Olschki, Firenze. …

Editio princeps 2006 (Olschki, Firenze)

Unfortunately the “editio princeps” is merely a pointer to the site, and I found this rather confusing.

The announcement relates to some new way of viewing the text online, but it is news to me that the text itself has been online.  Indeed, if you struggle through the site, you will find a translation in English at the book of a transliteration of each column, but only for the first six columns.  Column 1 is here, for instance. 

Useful to have access to, tho. 

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This morning I’ve been poking around the PDF volumes of the Patrologia Graeca.  I was trying to find the Lexicon of Photius, in fact.

I’ve not achieved much, because it’s quite hard to work out which volumes contain what.  Each volume does contain a table of contents; but you have to download and open the PDF to see it.  Some of the volumes are in 1900 reprints, which I can’t access anyway.

It seems to me that someone needs to go through the PDF volumes and type up a table of contents for each, and put it online.  There’s only 161 of them, and the task might take a day or two.  I was a little tempted myself, in truth.

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Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum (= Collection of Semitic Inscriptions, abbreviated as CIS) is a series with which few of us will be familiar.  The following notes come mostly from the Italian Wikipedia.

The CIS is a series of volumes containing inscriptions in semitic languages written in a “semitic character” (i.e. not cuneiform) and giving them a reference number.  The content covers the period from 2,000 BC down to 622 AD, the start of the Moslem period, and is intended to cover material not already included in the similar collections of Latin, Greek, Assyrian and Egyptian materials.

The series owed its existence to a commission headed by Ernest Renan, which proposed its creation to the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres Francais on 17th April, 1867.  Each inscription is given as a transcription in Roman letters, with a Latin translation.

The plan of the work was for ten volumes:

  1. Phoenician, Punic and Neo-punic inscriptions.
  2. Jewish and Samaritan inscriptions.
  3. Aramaic inscriptions.
  4. Palmyrene inscriptions.
  5. Nabatean inscriptions.
  6. Syriac inscriptions.
  7. Mandaic inscriptions.
  8. Primitive Arabic inscriptions.
  9. Himyarite inscriptions.
  10. Amharic inscriptions.

An appendix was also planned, to contain items from Cyprus, Libya, Lycia, etc.

The work was delayed by the Franco-Prussian war, and by difficulties with the Phoenician types, which had to be redesigned and recast.  Finally the first part of the first volume appeared in 1881.

Publication continued until 1961, when it halted.  In the end, four parts appeared:

Corpus Inscriptionum ab Academia Inscriptionum et Litterarum Humaniorum conditum atque Digestum.Parisiis: E Reipublicae Typographeo, 1881-1962 Parisiis: E Reipublicae Typographeo, 1881-1962

  • Pars 1: Inscriptiones Phoenicias continens (1.1; 1.1 Tabulae; 1.2; 1.2 Tabulae; 1.3; 1.3,4; 2.1; 2.2; 2.3; 2.4; 3.1; 3.2)
  • Pars 2: Inscriptiones aramaicas continens (Including: 2.1; 2.1 Tabulae; 3.1; 3.2)
  • Pars 4: Inscriptiones Himyariticas et Sabaeas Continens (Including: 1: fasciculus primus; 2: fasciculus secundus; 4.1)
  • Pars 5: Inscriptiones Saracenicas continens (Including: 1: Inscriptiones safaiticas; 2: Tabulae)

I have been unable to locate any of these items online, however.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve spent today working on some PHP scripts to work with the new Mithras pages.  It’s slow work, programming, especially when you’ve spent the week at the terminal.  Thankfully tomorrow is Sunday, and I never use my PC on Sundays.  I suspect that a farm near me will be selling home-grown strawberries, and I shall go and see!

I don’t refer all that often to Alin Suciu’s amazing blog on Coptic literature.  Yet another find, this time of portions of the Catechitical Orations of Cyril of Jerusalem, is signalled today.  Alin’s work is a model of how to do an academic blog, with footnotes, downloads of relevant old papers, and everything calculated to stir the interest of the most casual viewer. 

UPDATE: Via AWOL I have learned of the new Loebolus site:

Loebolus is based on Edwin Donnelly’s “Downloebables” , aiming to make all the public domain Loebs more easily downloadable by re-hosting the PDF’s directly, without the need to enter CAPTCHA’s.

You can also download a .zip containing all 245 PDF’s (3.2GB). Or view the code used for generating this site on GitHub.

Marvellous!

I’ve also ordered a paperback copy of an English translation of Quintus Curtius.  There isn’t one online, primarily because Bill Thayer has decided not to upload one.

I have no intention of putting online any translations of Curtius. Precisely because he is such an easy author, he is used as homework material around the world: and I will not undercut the work of thousands of Latin teachers by making it easy to cheat.

Bill is right.  We can all agree not to upload a translation of this author, in the interests of a greater elementary knowledge of Latin in the population in general.

That said, since I found myself with tired eyes trying to translate some of it last week, I will provide myself with a ‘crib’!

It’s quite a testimony to the role that Bill has played in putting classical literature online, tho, that, if he doesn’t do it, it doesn’t get done.

I’ve also stumbled across more excellent work by the PLGO people, in adding more versions of GCS volumes, Fathers of the Church, etc, to the web.  Get them conveniently via this interface.  I learn from their forum that some of the CSCO volumes are appearing at Archive.org, it seems.  No time to get these this evening; time only to run a backup and go to bed.

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Sign a US petition that govt-funded research papers be available online to ordinary people

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Jona Lendering of Livius.org draws my attention to a White House petition that should interest everyone:

We petition the Obama administration to:

Require free access over the Internet to scientific journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research.

We believe in the power of the Internet to foster innovation, research, and education. Requiring the published results of taxpayer-funded research to be posted on the Internet in human and machine readable form would provide access to patients and caregivers, students and their teachers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and other taxpayers who paid for the research. Expanding access would speed the research process and increase the return on our investment in scientific research.

The highly successful Public Access Policy of the National Institutes of Health proves that this can be done without disrupting the research process, and we urge President Obama to act now to implement open access policies for all federal agencies that fund scientific research.

Other bloggers have endorsed the move.  More power to their elbow, I say.  There is no good reason why public money should be spent to create private monopolies.

I suggest that all US readers of this blog take the time and sign the petition.

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A bibliography of scholarship on Gregory of Nyssa

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A correspondent has drawn my attention to a treasure online: a site maintained by Matthieu Cassin, which consists of a bibliography of articles about Gregory of Nyssa, in reverse date order.

What makes this special is that some of the articles are linked.  This includes translations of texts by the man himself:

M. Cassin, « Grégoire de Nysse, Sur la divinité du Fils et de l’Esprit et sur Abraham », Conférence 29, 2009, p. 581-611.

and this interesting article, which also discusses the titles and chapter divisions of Gregory’s work against Eunomius.  Whether the chapter divisions are authorial in late antique texts is a discussion which remains to be clarified, but the paper contributes to it.

M. Cassin, « Text and context : the importance of scholarly reading. Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium », dans S. Douglass, M. Ludlow (éd.), Reading the Church Fathers, Londres, 2011, p. 109-131 et 161-165.

There are other treasures too:

P. Géhin, « Fragments patristiques syriaques des Nouvelles découvertes du Sinaï », Collectanea Christiana Orientalia 6, 2009, p. 67-93.

P. Géhin, « Manuscrits sinaïtiques dispersés II : les fragments théologiques syriaques de Milan (Chabot 34-57) », Oriens christianus 91, 2007, p. 1-24.

although some of the links are just to pay-journals, unfortunately, or to Google books.

There are further interesting items linked from his CV, among them:

A. Binggeli, M. Cassin, « Recenser la tradition manuscrite des textes grecs : du Greek Index Project à Pinakes », dans La descrizione dei manoscritti : esperienze a confronto, éd. E. Crisci, M. Maniaci, P. Orsini, (Studi e ricerche del Dipartimento di filologia e storia 1), Cassino, 2010, p. 91-106.

Impressive!

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Saudi mufti calls for all churches to be destroyed — UK media suppresses story

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I wouldn’t bother with this story, except that the UK media seem to have received a 3-line whip, directing silence about it.  ArabianBusiness.com reports (four days ago!):

Destroy all churches in Gulf, says Saudi Grand Mufti

The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia has said it is “necessary to destroy all the churches of the region,” following Kuwait’s moves to ban their construction.

Speaking to a delegation in Kuwait, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, stressed that since the tiny Gulf state was a part of the Arabian Peninsula, it was necessary to destroy all of the churches in the country, Arabic media have reported.

Fox News reported the story from the Washington Times, and commented:

If the pope called for the destruction of all the mosques in Europe, the uproar would be cataclysmic. Pundits would lambaste the church, the White House would rush out a statement of deep concern, and rioters in the Middle East would kill each other in their grief. But when the most influential leader in the Muslim world issues a fatwa to destroy Christian churches, the silence is deafening.

On March 12, Sheik Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, declared that it is “necessary to destroy all the churches of the region.” The ruling came in response to a query from a Kuwaiti delegation over proposed legislation to prevent construction of churches in the emirate.

The mufti based his decision on a story that on his deathbed, Muhammad declared, “There are not to be two religions in the [Arabian] Peninsula.” This passage has long been used to justify intolerance in the kingdom. Churches have always been banned in Saudi Arabia, and until recently Jews were not even allowed in the country. Those wishing to worship in the manner of their choosing must do so hidden away in private, and even then the morality police have been known to show up unexpectedly and halt proceedings. 

This is not a small-time radical imam trying to stir up his followers with fiery hate speech. This was a considered, deliberate and specific ruling from one of the most important leaders in the Muslim world. It does not just create a religious obligation for those over whom the mufti has direct authority; it is also a signal to others in the Muslim world that destroying churches is not only permitted but mandatory.

There’s nothing novel in the demand, in truth.  This is how Islam is, as a look at the dismal stories in the History of the Patriarchs of the Coptic Church of Alexandria reveals.  Usually the method is to forbid repairs, which, over time, amounts to the same thing; but direct demolition or theft of the premises is also fairly common.  How else, indeed, did Hagia Sophia come to be a mosque?  How much longer we may be allowed to say this, however, I do not know.

But the real issue for me is the media silence.  Fox News make precisely the right point.  For instance, I can see no sign that the BBC have reported this.  This happened a week ago.  And I didn’t know until, by accident, I saw the story on Facebook.

We cannot trust the mass media.  Incidents like this, where a story with all sorts of important implications go unreported, should act as a wake-up call.  Our mass media are in the hands of a tiny minority of people whose values are not our own. 

It isn’t that the stories they run are untrue — although the framing of the story is often dishonest or polemical.  It is the selection and the editing that ensures that only stories that reflect one particular political agenda and narrative can even be reported.  Dr Goebbels did it first (and isn’t it curious that, in all my 40 years of watching TV, I have yet to see a documentary on the media methods of the good doctor?)

And that should worry us all.

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So, farewell, O dead tree Encyclopedia Britannica

Posted on by Roger Pearse

News today that Encyclopedia Britannica has decided not to print any more editions of its encyclopedia.  Sales of the paper version have been “negligible” for years, and 85% of the income comes from the online version.  I would imagine these sales are licenses to libraries and the like.  There is, apparently, some gloating from some anonymous erk in Wikipedia — the ‘encyclopedia’ that any teenager can edit (and especially Randy in Boise).

It’s a key moment, isn’t it?  The paper encyclopedia is now definitely dead.  That is, the major reference source until 1995 is now history. 

Any reference source in paper form is now obsolete.  Any source that is not read from end to end, but instead is accessed in bits and pieces, is now on borrowed time.  There are any number of such handbooks — we might think of the Clavis Patrum Graecorum.  They’re all dead meat, and just waiting to be collected.  They cannot, commercially, exist on paper any more.

It’s a brave new world.

Mind you, I do wish someone would sue the hell out of Wikipedia and force it to institute some proper controls and regulation of trolls.  It can’t grow much beyond its current status as “collection of hearsay”, until this is addressed.

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