Tag: Information access

Griechische Kalender: the four calendars published by Franz Boll

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve now uploaded PDF’s of four ancient Greek calendars to Archive.org.  All were edited by Franz Boll, and published in Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse, vols 1 (1910), 2 (1911), 4 (1913) and 5 (1914).  Here are the links:

Franz Boll, who edited them, died in 1924, so these are all well out of copyright everywhere.

The important one for our purposes is the Calendar of Antiochus of Athens.  Looking at it, all the entries are astronomical, and concerned with the risings and settings of constellations.  I didn’t see any other kind of entry.  The notice on 25 December — “Birth of the sun.  The light increases” — has no significance, I think, except for the astrological one.  It certainly is not a witness to the Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, therefore.

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More on Antiochus of Athens

Posted on by Roger Pearse

With Antiochus we are indeed at the edge of knowledge, or so I infer from the article in the Realencyclopadie, which is meagre indeed:

68) Aus Athen (Hephaistion Theb. II 1 bei Engelbrecht Hephaest. von Theb. 36), Astrolog. von dessen Büchern manches handschriftlich erhalten ist (vgl. Englebrecht a.a.O Fabricius Bibl. Gr. 1 III c. 20).

68) From Athens (Hephaistio Theb. II 1 in Engelbrecht Hephaest. of  Thebes 36), astrologer. Some of his books are preserved in manuscript (cf.  Englebrecht ibid, Fabricius Bibl Gr. 1 III c. 20).

Even the reference to “Engelbrecht” seems obscure.  Fortunately there is an explanation and a download online at the same scholarly astrology site we mentioned earlier, here.

A critical edition of the early 4th century astrologer Hephaistio of Thebes’ Apotelesmatics was published by Engelbrecht in 1887. This edition was superceded by David Pingree’s critical edition of the same text in the mid-1970’s, although since Engelbrecht’s edition is in the public domain we provide it below courtesy of Google Books: Hephaistio of Thebes – Engelbrecht edition

The Pingree edition is a Teubner, Hephaestionis Thebani Apotelesmaticorum libri tres: Apotelesmaticorum epitomae quattuor (1974).  There is a wiki page for Hephaestio of Thebes, which tells us:

The first two volumes of the Apotelesmatics have been translated into English (by Robert Schmidt of Project Hindsight); the third volume … is in preparation.

The Project Hindsight page is here, although how to get hold of the translations is not indicated, and these include extracts by Antiochus of Athens). A table of contents is here for Hephaestio. Schmidt’s translations are unknown to the British research system, which indicates not a single copy of any of them is held in any library in the UK.

Looking at Engelbrecht, p.36 quotes the opening of Hephaisto, book 2, which does indeed discuss Antiochus of Athens.  After an extract (untranslated — why let the peasants read it?) he continues that there was indeed an astrologer named Antiochus of Athens, as the mss. Laurentiani plutei 28, 7 and 28, 34 contain an extract of The Thesaurus of Antiochus.  The Vienna ms. phil. gr. 179 contains something “from Antiochus the Astronomer”; and Vienna phil. gr. 108 folio 342v contains another reference.

All this is all very well… but I wish I could get my hands on Boll’s edition of his calendar!

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Manuscripts of Greek astrological works

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Looking at the calendar of Antiochus of Athens, as I was yesterday, led me to a corpus which was unfamiliar, the Catalogus codicum astrologorum graecorum.  Seven volumes of this are on Google books.

What was this series, the CCAG?  I find a splendid blog piece here by Chris Brennan on the Rediscovery of Hellenistic astrology in the modern period.  He also has a collection of PDF’s of these texts online.

The most important efforts in this area were initiated by a group of scholars in Europe towards the end of the 19th century who set out on a mission to collect, catalogue and edit all of the existing manuscripts on astrology that were written in ancient Greek during the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods.  This project, which was led by a Belgian scholar named Franz Cumont, took over fifty years to complete, and it entailed scouring the world’s libraries and private collections for ancient texts and manuscripts that had been copied and preserved over the long centuries since their original composition.  This project culminated in the publication of a massive twelve volume compendium called the Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum (Catalogue of the Codices of the Greek Astrologers), more commonly known simply by its acronym as the CCAG. …

This massive compendium, which was published in 12 volumes between 1898 and 1953, consists of critical editions of dozens of astrological texts and fragments which had been carefully sifted through, examined, and edited by diligent linguists and paleographers in order to produce published volumes of all of the extant Greek astrological texts from antiquity. 

This explains why the CCAG, despite its name, is more than this and contains material by Antiochus of Athens.

I can’t say that I am at all interested in astrology, ancient or modern.  But someone has to edit all this material.  It may be junk, but it is part of the literary heritage from antiquity.  It is a reminder that, as in every age, most of what is written is rubbish.

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Back to Isidore of Pelusium’s letters

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An email reached me today from a chap volunteering to take on a commission for some Greek and Syriac (and Armenian for that matter, although I have none in mind at the moment).  I’ve written back and asked for some details.  It might be nice to get him to do a few of the letters of Isidore of Pelusium, at least as a starter.

This reminded me that someone translated 14 of Isidore’s letters during the summer, and that — as I dimly remembered — I commissioned some more, as I remarked here.  I wonder if I ever published those 14 letters online?  I certainly meant to!  I paid for them, after all, and the last revision was rather good and rather readable.  I must hunt them out.  Meanwhile I have written to the translator asking what happened with regard to the next chunk. 

There’s no lack of material to commission.  There’s sermons by Chrysostom, such as the two on Christmas.  I think I listed a bunch of Chrysostom material some time back.

There’s also material by Severian of Gabala.  That reminds me that I ought to write to two other people, each of whom was going to do a sermon and neither of whom I have heard from since.  There is such a thing as being too busy, and I suspect I probably qualify!   But it illustrates why reliability is such a virtue in a translator. 

Then there are works by Cyril of Alexandria, such as his Apologeticus ad imperatorem, explaining himself after the Council of Ephesus.  There’s John the Lydian, On the Roman Months (De Mensibus), book 4 of which is intensely interesting.  Andrew Eastbourne translated the section on December for us a while back.  Indeed John’s work might form a nice volume three in the series of translations I am publishing, although I suspect a UV photographic copy of the manuscript might be a necessary precursor.

Who knows?  The email is welcome, and let’s see if we can get something done.

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Letter 133 in the letters of Leo the Great – Proterius on the calculation of Easter

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A post in an online forum has drawn my attention to the letters of Pope Leo I (d.461).  He is probably best known for persuading Attila the Hun to leave the defenceless city of Rome alone.  Among patristicians, he is remembered for his Tome to Flavian, a letter sent to the Council of Chalcedon in 451 on the monophysite question, which was approved by the council and so committed the Roman see to supporting the decisions of that highly divisive council.

A collection of 173 letters, 30 of them by other people, is found in the Patrologia Latina volume 54.  Among these is letter 133, which is not by Leo but addressed to him. 

At that period the date of Easter was determined by a letter sent out by the patriarch of Alexandria.  In 455, Leo wrote, querying the date given as being wrongly calculated.  The patriarch was one Proterius.  The emperor Marcian had appointed him, and he was deeply unpopular among the Alexandrian monophysites.  After the death of Marcian in January 457, without bothering about Proterius they consecrated Timothy Aelurus (Timothy the Weasel) as patriarch, and on 28 March 457, during the celebrations of Maundy Thursday, Proterius was attacked and brutally lynched.

Proterius wrote back, commenting that possibly Leo had a bad copy or that a copyist had made a mistake.  He also sent a copy of his letter in Greek, to make sure that no mistranslations got in the way.  He justified the dating, pointing out that Easter was being celebrated a week late to avoid coinciding with the Jewish passover on 14 Nisan, which in 455 fell on a Sunday.

The online text of the PL is columns 1084-1094, although there are formidable notes so it’s probably about 7 columns of “normal” text. It’s long enough to be divided into chapters.  I suppose a translation would not be that expensive, although I can think of no special reason to translate it.

Few of the letters of Leo have ever been translated into English.  A selection by Edmund Hunt appeared in 1957 in the Fathers of the Church vol. 38.  (I was going to link to a preview of this, which I saw at lunchtime today, but annoyingly I can’t find it on Google Books now!). 

All the sermons of Leo seem to have been translated into German in the old BKV series, in the 2nd edition (vols. 54-55), here.  According to Quasten, the letters were translated by Severin Wenzlowsky in 1869 in the first BKV series.  The way in which the second edition left out material from the first — it applies to material by Tertullian also — has always baffled me.  But I can find no trace online of any such volume.  Wenzlowsky edited Der briefe der Papste in 1878 in this series, so it may be that Quasten was confused.  These are all in a  horrible Gothic font anyway.

I can find no information about French translations. René Dolle in the Sources Chretiennes series translated his sermons, in 4 volumes (22, 49, 74, 200) from 1947-73.  But an earlier translation was made by a certain Pere Quesnel in 1698, and another by Nicholas Fontaine in 1701. 

So … nothing, really.  It is remarkable, tho, that the letters of so important a figure remain inaccessible!

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Copyright claim on all images of Stonehenge ever

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An amusing example of bureaucratic hubris has reached me.  A post here on the fotoLibra blog — a commercial picture library — reveals an email from English Heritage, claiming copyright on all images ever made of Stonehenge.

We are sending you an email regarding images of Stonehenge in your fotoLibra website. Please be aware that any images of Stonehenge can not be used for any commercial interest, all commercial interest to sell images must be directed to English Heritage.

Legally it’s nonsense, of course.  The copyright in images resides always with the photographer, not the ‘owner’ of the site, unless those rights are explicitly transferred.  Just owning something that people photograph gives you no rights (British Library take note please).

But it does show the attitude — it’s all about exploitation, as much as can be achieved.   Not a very good sign, for a world heritage site whose every penny comes from public funds.

For those unfamiliar with it, English Heritage is a quango — an organisation set up and funded by the UK government, but with establishment appointees who are then allowed to run it as they please without government interference. 

UPDATE:  I have just had to delete an abusive comment on this post. I can only suppose from its content is by an EH employee; because I can’t imagine anyone else would care enough about EH to insult me over this.  Nasty people, if so.

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CSEL online again

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Thanks to this post at PLGO, I learn that a vast number of the CSEL volumes have been uploaded to ScribD.  This is excellent news – well done, lads!

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Book on Syriac historiography

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Several people have sent me a link to the Bryn Mawr review of Muriel Debié (ed.), L’historiographie syriaque, published in Études syriaques.  This discusses how historical writing went into the Syriac world, how it changed, how it was influenced by Armenian texts, and what the effect of the Moslem conquest was — which was to isolate it from the mediterranean world, ca. 720.  The review (by Daniel King) is very enticing!  A few snippets:

This latest instalment, on Syriac historiography, succeeds in bringing together some of the foremost scholars in the field, often writing on the very texts they themselves have edited or translated. Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.

The extent to which literature written in Syriac partook of the Hellenic cultural baggage of late antiquity is still only faintly understood, and even less appreciated, by historians of the Eastern Mediterranean. It is the principal achievement of this excellent and useful volume not only to have provided students and specialists alike with an overview of the subject at the current state of research, but also to have highlighted the lines of transmission that carried Greek historiography into Syriac (and thence Arabic). The point is both to indicate how well integrated was the latter within the cultures of the late antique Empire, and moreover to describe the transformation these forms underwent in their ‘Oriental’ afterlives.

…

We are rightly warned of too easily viewing the Miaphysite (West Syriac) historiography as the expression of a will to ecclesiastical independence – as late as Jacob of Edessa (d.710) the (Greek) universal ecclesia remained the dream of these historians. Yet around 720 a major break seems to have occurred and here, at the moment when Syriac historians cease to note the names of Emperors and Patriarchs and begin to date events according to caliphal years, we can glimpse that self-conscious break from the Hellenic tradition that constitutes the final fracture between East and West. Up to this point, the Fertile Crescent had remained part of a classical (Mediterranean) world.

An example of just this process, the Chronicle of Zuqnin (written in 775), is the subject of the next chapter, again written by the text’s most recent translator. This contributor helpfully surveys the arguments surrounding the authorship and sources of the chronicle, reaffirming his judgment that Joshua the Stylite was its author.

…

The Syriac and Arabic literature of the Eastern Churches remains one of those disciplines in which ancient and mediaeval texts, sometimes of some importance, are still regularly found in previously unexplored manuscript libraries. The next chronicle to be considered is just such a case. The Muhtasar al-Ahbar al-Bi‘iyya was first identified in Iraq in the 1980s, one of many Arabic manuscripts from the monastery of Notre Dame des Semences (Alqosh) later transferred to the Chaldaean monastery in Baghdad. They are now, since 2008, back in Alqosh for safe keeping. Hermann Teule provides an overview of this as yet little considered work which bares a close resemblance to the better known Chronicle of Seert but which is also an independent witness to the events it describes. Among the sources explicitly mentioned by the writer are a number known from catalogues of Syriac authors but whose work has hitherto been unknown.

…

The book is rounded off with a bibliography of editions and translations of all Syriac chronicles, organized by type and tradition (East or West), making the whole a handy instrumentum for the student or non-specialist.

All this sounds most interesting, and I would love to read it.  But how does someone like myself ever get to read such a volume?  It is, admittedly, not that expensive by comparison with the predatory pricing from Brill these days — only 35 euros.  But still…

UPDATE: I have just found the website for the French Societe d’etudes Syriaques, which lists the series Études syriaques.  There are 6 volumes, and they all seem to be of wide interest. 

  • vol. 1 : Les inscriptions syriaques (2004)
  • vol. 2 : Les apocryphes syriaques (2005)
  • vol. 3 : Les liturgies syriaques (2006)
  • vol. 4 : Les Pères grecs en syriaque (2007)
  • vol. 5 : L’Ancien Testament syriaque (2008)
  • vol. 6 : L’Historiographie syriaque (2009)

    • I want copies of them all!  Remarkably the volumes are issued annually free if you are a member of the society.

    UPDATE2: OK, I shall try an old-fashioned inter-library loan for the Historiographie volume.  That will loan me it for 2 weeks.  But really I’d rather have a PDF!

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    Digitizing your own library, and how to build your own book scanner

    Posted on by Roger Pearse

    The existence of Google books is causing some interesting ripples.  Some people are now wondering whether they really need all those books in paper form. From Ancient History Ramblings I learn of this interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Digitizing the personal library:

    Books take up space. That’s a problem for any librarian tasked with finding room on overcrowded shelves. It’s also a problem for a book-loving scholar who lives in a small New York City apartment with a toddler and more than 3,000 books. Under those conditions, something’s got to give. Chances are good it won’t be the toddler.

    Alexander Halavais, an associate professor of communications at Quinnipiac University, found a partial solution to his city dweller’s no-space-for-books dilemma: Slice and scan. A digital file takes up a lot less room than a codex book does.

    In a post on his blog, A Thaumaturgical Compendium, Mr. Halavais described what he had done to some 800 of his books so far: “First I cut the boards off, and then slice the bindings. I have tried a table saw, but a cheap stack cutter works better. Then I feed [the pages] into my little page-fed scanner, OCR them (imperfectly) using Acrobat, and back them up to a small networked attached storage device.” (See before-and-after pictures, above.) Many of the scanned books he also stores as image files. …

    Read the whole article.  It contains much of interest.  Alex Halavais is using a Fujitsu Scansnap, although he doesn’t say which model.  I use one myself, and the speed is definitely a selling point, as is the PDF output.

    The comments on the article are also interesting.  Some worry about whether this is allowed under copyright, although since they aren’t wealthy publishers, and probably never make any money from copyright, you have to wonder why they are rushing to defend someone else’s profit stream.  But comment 27 is perhaps the most relevant:

    I hope after all of the effort and expense put into this project there is a plan in place for preserving the digital files. Digital files are unstable and subject to corruption. It would be unfortunate if the drives on the networked storage device failed and Professor Halavais lost not only his printed books but the digital surrogates as well. With books on the shelf you can be assured that when you open them in 20 years the words are still the same words, without active management of the digital files this simply isn’t true in the digital world.

    When I talk about digital preservation to people I often help people understand the issues by referencing things like eight track tapes, zip discs, floppy discs, Wordstar, etc.

    This issue is a very real one, and I don’t know what the answer is.  I myself had to throw away some old backup tapes from years gone by, being unable to persuade the old tape drive to read them.  Both drive and tapes went into the skip.

    The comments also link to a forum of people engaged in designing and building their own book scanners.  I have not read  through it all, but it is quite clear that it is not difficult to do.  This is what you do with books too large for an A4 scanner.

    Do we want to slice up our books?  I certainly do not.  But I do have quite a lot of academic books which I could really use better in PDF.  It’s interesting.  But scanning a book without cutting it up is very slow indeed.

    The world, once again, is changing.

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    Google translate does Latin?

    Posted on by Roger Pearse

    The Daily Telegraph has an article that Google has added 50 languages, including Latin, to the translator.  It’s here.

    So…. does it work?  Well, not very well as yet.  I grabbed the start of Friderici’s book on ancient books, which starts thus:

    Quamquam plurimae fere quaestiones, quae ad antiquorum rem librariam pertinent, his temporibus pertractatae atque propremodum expIicatae sunt, tamen de una vel altera re disputatio nondum ad finem est perducta. Huc spectant, quas mihi tractandas proposui, quaestiones de libris antiquis in capita divisis, de  capitum inscriptionibus, de indicibus capitum sive summariis.

    This Google gave as:

    And yet the most of, by questions, which the thing to its former secretaries belong, at the present time, and handled propremodum expIicatae are, however, one or two out of the discussion, the thing to the end is not yet degree. Refer to this, which I proposed to me to be treated, the questions concerning the ancient books in the first assigned to the heads of the, of the head of inscriptions, of the informers, heads or summaries.

    Um.  The first sentence should probably be something like this:

    Although most of the questions, which relate to the copying of ancient books, at the present time have been drawn out and explained, however, one or two items of the discussion have not yet been bottomed out.

    Still, it can only get better, and is a very, very welcome addition.  I am using Google translate to work with Albino’s Italian article on chapter titles this morning, and it makes it possible for me to read and understand her article.  I also have Systran translator, which sometimes is better, mostly not so good; and an online dictionary. 

    And it means that ordinary herberts like me can work with information encoded in funny languages!  Magic!

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