31
Deb wrote:It is a shame about the Rhetorius project ? but what about the fact that there are many recently translated astrological texts, that have been declared ?out of print? within just a few years of their initial publication? Most of the medieval track translations produced by Project Hindsight are now listed as out of print and unavailable, with a statement that there is no plan to reprint them any time soon. In this day and age of economical print on demand, I don?t understand why this should be the case.
Hi Deb,

You've probably heard the story that Hindsight is sitting on the copyrights & intends to go on sitting. A LOT of people are unhappy about that. Someone might be able to sweet talk Johnson (David, I think) who is in charge of some of these things. I was invited to their confab a year ago. It's in western Maryland, ie, about 90 minutes away, but passed it up. You & everyone should be unhappy with me that I did. I should give Johnson a ring, see when the next potluck is scheduled, invite myself into it & then wheel & deal.

Heck it's worth a try.

Dave
www.AstroAmerica.com
Better books make better astrologers. Treat yourself!

32
I haven?t heard the stories and I don?t think I want to hear them either. But I?m sure I?m not the only one who subscribed to the project in the beginning purely to support the mission statement of making these texts available to astrologers. I have more sympathy for translations that are held up in production than I have for translations that have already been done but which get withdrawn from sale for reasons that are hard to understand. Maybe there are good reasons, but I feel sorry for students, some of whom I know get very frustrated at seeing the promotion of recent translations that are not available for purchase anymore.

BTW, when are you going to sort your picture out ? :)

33
Deb wrote:I haven?t heard the stories and I don?t think I want to hear them either. But I?m sure I?m not the only one who subscribed to the project in the beginning purely to support the mission statement of making these texts available to astrologers. I have more sympathy for translations that are held up in production than I have for translations that have already been done but which get withdrawn from sale for reasons that are hard to understand. Maybe there are good reasons, but I feel sorry for students, some of whom I know get very frustrated at seeing the promotion of recent translations that are not available for purchase anymore.

BTW, when are you going to sort your picture out ? :)
Hi Deb,

The trick is to persuade them to part with books they feel may be beneath their own high, Hellenistic standards. That's a tricky negotiation.

I think I've reinstalled my photo. Only 15 years old - one of the younger snaps, or so I imagine. I've seen a good past life portrait of moi, but so far I've only seen a bad b&w repro of it. Since it didn't turn up on the preview, exactly how do you format the internet address?

Dave
www.AstroAmerica.com
Better books make better astrologers. Treat yourself!

37
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

Further delay to critical edition of Rhetorius

39
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.

Re: Further delay to critical edition of Rhetorius

41
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
www.AstroAmerica.com
Better books make better astrologers. Treat yourself!

Re: Further delay to critical edition of Rhetorius

42
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.
Gabe