You're not the only one with an out-of-date photo here, Dave!

Mine is now four years old - it was the most recent one I had when I first submitted an article to Deb at the start of 2004, but I'm feeling and looking the difference between being 29 and fancy-free (as then) and 33 and married, and with the additional responsibility of a lively Aries-sun daughter having a Virgo ascendant and Mars conjunct her MC.... Always having been a camera-shy person preferring to live in the mental realms, I had that one taken by the passport machine at Bristol railway station in England only when I thought I might need it because I was applying for teaching jobs in Poland and Estonia.

Philip

Hello Philip,

You do look like a man about to be shell-shocked, but as I well-know, a good photo is a rare photo.

Dave

The publication of the Teubner critical edition of Rhetorius, originally slated for 2007 (with pre-orders having been accepted by Amazon in the latter part of 2006), has now been postponed to July 2015, a date so far off into the future that I have to wonder what is going on at Walter de Gruyter (the publisher that inherited the project).

http://www.degruyter.de/cont/fb/at/deta ... 10195095-1

A delay of eight years from the original publication date is quite something. We can be thankful at least that James Holden's translation from the working manuscript of the scholarly editor of the critical edition has now been in print for a couple of years (since May 2009). It is not normally the case that translations appear six years and two months before the editions on which they are based, but this now appears set to happen with Rhetorius.

Philip, how odd about the Teubner publication postponement! Thank you for this update, I hope that the lengthy delay doesn't bode ill for the project.

Philip Graves wrote:The publication of the Teubner critical edition of Rhetorius, originally slated for 2007 (with pre-orders having been accepted by Amazon in the latter part of 2006), has now been postponed to July 2015, a date so far off into the future that I have to wonder what is going on at Walter de Gruyter (the publisher that inherited the project).

This points to problems with the source materials themselves. In Holden's Preface to his 3rd Edition (2005), he writes,

I had hoped that I would be able to read the few chapters that had not previously been edited and translate them. Unfortunately as mentioned above, MS 2425 is written in a miserable semi-cursive hand that sometimes degenerates into a mere scribble. Since I am not a trained paleographer, I have only been able to decipher a portion of the words in the MS. Consequently I have not been able to profit from it as much as I had hoped.

In the Preface to the 4th Edition (2009) Holden continues with,

Recently, Stephen Heilen has undertaken the laborious task of preparing for publication Pingree's edition of the Greek text of Rhetorius's Compendium as it is contained in Books 5 and 6 of MS 2425. . . . Therefore, the present translation of Chapters 1-118 is now complete. However, it does not reflect other changes that Pingree [deceased - Dave] may have made in his edition of the earlier Chapters, since I have not yet seen the complete edition being prepared by Heilen, which is expected to be published in the latter half of 2009.

Which, as Philip has now told us, is not scheduled to come to pass for some time.

Different sorts of problems seem to have delayed the Anthologies of Vettius Valens, Mark Riley's translation of which I will publish later this year. The language in the book is sophisticated and I believe has eluded amateur astrological translators. On the other hand, the sheer complexity of the many astrological techniques overwhelm translators - as well as all astrologers, frankly. The result is very nearly incomprehensible. There are a great many tiny details that you must note and remember that turn up without warning many books later. In the Riley edition there will be certain problems with language. Where Helenists use "bounds", Riley used houseruler, which I rendered as house ruler. I queried Riley once or twice about specific terms. His answer always was that he was translating what was in front of him. Which makes me wonder where "bounds" came from.

It's also clear that an ideology is being imposed on Greek texts. "Greeks used this kind of equal houses," for example. Well, no, they didn't. The school in Alexandria might have, but Valens, who turns out to have been born in the Ukraine and who lived in the Crimea, did not. At 45 degrees north, you really need an MC.

And it wasn't hard to get a midheaven: Any sundial will mark noon with great precision. In fact, with tables set for your klima, if your sundial is big enough, you can read the ascendant degree directly from the gnomon's shadow. Nor was it hard to trisect the arc from MC to Asc, as Valens explicitly says to do. Which are Porphyry cusps. Valens backs that up with Alcabitius houses, in other words, the time it takes a sign to rise. This was based on the work of Hypsicles (2nd century BC) who worked out the rising times in a 360 degree day. Valens gives his rising times in this system, which results in mysterious "20 minute rising" for various signs. He presumes you know this system, he presumes you know that each of these "minutes" are equal to four ordinary ones. On the other hand, and what intrigues me, is that "Hypsicles units" are more or less equal to degrees of right ascension. Hypsicles might be set for a comeback.

There are puzzles in Book 8 of the Anthologies that still elude me, even after constructing two of the tables. I need to construct the hidden table of rising times (from Book 1) and then see if I can puzzle out a missing third table from Book 8.

Which are some of the reasons why these books can be so hard to publish.

Dave Roell

Hi Philip,

Sad to hear about the delay, must be a chore to try to make sense of the manuscripts.

Hi Dave,

Dave, I love you as a bookseller, but you're full of all sorts of odd biases, and reading a 1st draft of a rushed translation isn't helping. Also, where the hell are you getting the idea that Valens is from the Ukraine??? His is the Feb 8 120AD chart in the text, set for Antioch. I do hope you sell a lot of this book as much as I hope no one tries reading it.

GR wrote:Hi Philip,

Sad to hear about the delay, must be a chore to try to make sense of the manuscripts.

Hi Dave,

Dave, I love you as a bookseller, but you're full of all sorts of odd biases, and reading a 1st draft of a rushed translation isn't helping. Also, where the hell are you getting the idea that Valens is from the Ukraine??? His is the Feb 8 120AD chart in the text, set for Antioch. I do hope you sell a lot of this book as much as I hope no one tries reading it.

As the second shipwrecked sailor, Valens gives the klima of his birth as 7. It's on page 303.

He repeatedly sets charts, including those of infants deceased days after birth, as at klima 6.

Alexandria is klima 3. These are actual locations.

Work it out. I have no patience for ignorance. I am in a rush to get books in print while there is still time.

David R. Roell

This is exactly why we need more than one person translating these books in a transparent fashion. It doesn't have to be vastly. We all benefit from it.

David, Antioch <> Alexandria.

GR wrote:David, Antioch <> Alexandria.

Thank-you for the geography lesson. You have read the nine books, I presume?

David R. Roell

Enough to know he was born in Antioch.

GR wrote:Enough to know he was born in Antioch.

Valens gives his chart data in numerous places in the book. He never once states where he was born. To the best of my knowledge, we have no other biographical information about him.

He does, at one single place, give his klima of birth.

You do know what klima is?

Valens sets his charts in klimas 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7, with other charts even further north.

You do understand, when sundials set the time and that time is Local Apparent, why latitude alone is sufficient in setting a chart? You do know what klima is?

I went to Wiki for klima and used its klima markers:

1 - Khartoum
2 - Aswan
3 - Alexandria
4 - Rhodes
5 - (not used by Valens)
6 - the Crimea
7 - somewhere north of the Crimea. As far north as Paris, actually. Wiki breaks down at this point.

The total number of charts in Valens is, for another week or so, unknown, as I have not yet sorted the duplicates. The raw number is over 100. There are not that many charts from klima 4. Which could be Rhodes, or could be Antioch or could be anywhere else at the same latitude, but none of those charts were Valens'. And again, there were not that many of them. While Antioch was a very big city, it, like Rome, does not seem to have been a port. By contrast there are a lot of charts from klima 6.

If you have evidence Valens was born in Antioch, you should share it. That he is known today as "Vettius Valens of Antioch" is not of itself conclusive. And yes, I did look for any evidence he was from or lived in Antioch. Or Alexandria. Valens' remarks about Egypt are disparaging.

Vettius Valens, by his own account, was presumably born in a Greek colony on the Dnieper, a navigable river, in the vicinity of Dnepropetrovsk, which is klima 7 & which is in keeping with known Greek whereabouts. He lived in a Greek colony in the Crimea and as a youth was a sailor. Even today these colonies are not well-known. Russia has swallowed them up and hidden them from western eyes. Publication of his Anthologies will open new avenues for research.