The “Vatican Mythographers” is a set of three ancient texts about pagan mythology, all originally published by Angelo Mai from Vatican manuscripts in 1831.[1]   His edition has been reprinted since, and translated into English and French, but no critical edition has ever appeared. A paper appeared by Kathleen Elliot and J. P. Elder in 1947, in preparation for such an edition, which however never appeared.[2]  This contains the following curious remarks: … his transcriptions are frequently incorrect, a fact which will surprise no one acquainted with this industrious prefect’s ha ..read more

Greek mythology was not static.  The stories contained within it could be modified by any poet at their pleasure.  Most of the legends exist in various forms, some of which turn it inside out altogether.  The source of this profusion is probably the need of entertainers to earn a living combined with the Greek fondness for novelty. In the Odyssey, Penelope is faithful to Odysseus despite being pestered by countless suitors for ten years.  She is a type of chastity.  Yet even this legend has been  ruthlessly tampered with.  I thought that it might be interesti ..read more

This afternoon I have been working on the end of Eutychius, chapter one, where we encounter the story of Joseph and his less-than-amazing family problems.  As before I have interleaved the sentences: Italian first, my original translation second, and then the output from ChatGPT. But today it’s not working at all.  Today ChatGPT is generating hallucinations, not just once, but many times.  Here’s one: S’abbatté sulla Siria una grave carestia. Giacobbe disse quindi ai suoi figli: “Andate in Egitto a comprare del grano” (148). I fratelli di Giuseppe andarono in Egitto. A severe f ..read more

I’m working away on revising the translation of Eutychius.  I am glad to say that I am really finding very few outright mistakes, which is encouraging.  I am most of the way through a revised version of chapter 1, and once this is complete then I will update the combined file, and change the version number.  I added a box of version numbers and changes to the back of the file for just this reason. The death of a close family member last year has involved me in endless work to sort out the estate.  It’s going quite well.  The last six weeks have been spent attempting to ..read more

It took me five years to turn Pirone’s Italian translation of Eutychius’ Annals into English, using Google Translate.  That process created 102 blog posts. People complained that they couldn’t find the bits that they wanted.  A kind correspondent wrote and emailed me a zip file of those posts, in 102 word documents. So I’ve done it.  I’ve combined them, straightened the formatting somewhat, and added them to the Eutychius home page.  It’s here.  There’s a .docx and a .pdf. Eutychius – or Said ibn Bitriq – was the 10th century Melkite – Greek Orthodox – “Patriarch ..read more

A twitter post alerts me to the release of the first English translation of Homily 16 by Asterius of Cappadocia (CPG 2815, no.16).  It is one of a collection of 31 homilies which is listed in the CPG, under the title Commentarii in Psalmos, which seems odd.  A translation of an extract from homily 11 is here. The translation is by Nathan Porter, who has kindly made it available on Academia.edu here.  He suggests that it was delivered in the 330s.   His tweet included this lovely image: Note that this is NOT the later author Asterius of Amasea, whose works begin in the ..read more

The word “Easter” is used only in English for the Christian commemoration of the death and resurrection of Christ.  In most languages the word is passover (pasch), or some version of it.  This is indeed what Easter is, the Christian version of passover.  That’s why it moves: Jesus was Jewish, and lived in Judaea, and the events of his life are based around the Jewish lunar calendar, which gives passover as the full moon after the equinox.  Jesus died on passover and rose on the Sunday after, so Easter is in principle the Sunday after passover.  The Julian calendar was ..read more

I have started work on a revised translation of the Annals of the Arabic Christian writer Eutychius.  My approach is  to get the Italian text, get my existing translation, and get a translation from ChatGPT 3.5, and interleave them, sentence by sentence.  I’ve had to make some modifications to the somewhat crude tool that I use to interleave. I had rather hoped to do a whole chapter at a time, but ChatGPT 3.5 does not support more than a certain amount of text.  This is annoying in a way, because fiddling with interleaving takes time away from translating. I must say that I ..read more

When you finish a project, there are always two competing feelings.  The first is to rush into something else, another project of the same kind.  But looking around my desktop, I do seem to have caught up. The only folder left is to the translation of Eutychius “Annals.”  This 10th century Arabic Christian chronicle is one that I turned into English, from the Italian translation by Bartolomeo Pirone, chunk by chunk, on this blog.  I remember that Google Translate was giving erratic results for numerals.  I always intended to go through it and make sure it was correct ..read more

I’ve now completed a draft translation of the medieval “Saint’s Life” of St Mewan, a Welsh saint whose legend is mainly set in Brittany.  St Mewan seems to belong to the early 7th century, but the Life dates to the 10-11th century.  Only one manuscript contains the full text, which is preserved in a manuscript written after 1544 (!), so very late indeed. Here are the files: St Mewan – Life – 2024 (PDF) St Mewan – Life – 2024 (Word .docx) The files are also at Archive.org here.  As usual, this material is public domain.  Do whatever you like with it, personal, educational ..read more