Review: Old English Psalms
In the tenth century, Anglo-Saxons produced two translations of the biblical Psalms, both of which survive in a lone manuscript. The first translation is a prose version of the first fifty psalms, and the second is a rendering into traditional Old English verse forms. […] The resulting complete (small lacunae aside) Old English Psalter is newly edited and translated into Modern English by Patrick P. O’Neill under the title Old English Psalms for the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library series. This edition marks the first
Review: On Plato’s Timaeus
Unfortunately, while Plato’s importance has been largely accepted since the twelfth-century revival of Platonic thought, it was not until Raymond Klibansky reexamined the continuity of the Platonic tradition before its revival that Calcidius’s importance began to emerge. Since then, contemporary scholarship has continued to be limited to those who had command of Greek and Latin, and thus the academy has been slow to dispel the misconception that Calcidius was merely a transmitter of Greek philosophical concepts. With this first-ever English
Review: Poems, by Venantius Fortunatus
Who better to produce the first English translation of the collected poems of Venantius Fortunatus (ca. 540-ca. 600), a late antique poet best known for the Pange Lingua and the Vexilla Regis, than Michael Roberts? Almost thirty years ago, when the old scholarly paradigm’s progression from gold to silver to dark ages in the first millennium AD suggested that we could expect no better than iron, Roberts proposed that we look for jewels in late antique Latin poetry. The fulfillment
Review: Holy Men of Mount Athos
This bulky volume is the work of a team of scholars experienced in the study of hagiographical texts. All translations were undertaken on the basis of extant editions, with the notable exception of the first one. An innovative aspect of this volume is that it includes a new critical edition of the Life of St. Euthymios the Younger, by Alexander Alexakis, who has prepared a markedly better Greek text than the one published by the Assumpsionist Louis Petit in 1903. Unlike
Review: The Old English History of the World
Like its Latin source text, The Old English History of the World maintains a narrative of four successive, war-torn empires, culminating in a Roman empire that becomes more peaceful as it adopts Christianity. The Old English does not extend all the way back to creation as Orosius’s Latin account does but begins with Ninus, King of Assyria, becoming the first king in the world, 1300 years before Rome. This volume will be a useful addition to many libraries, both institutional and personal.
In Praise of Everyone
We’re excited to announce the publication of two new volumes in the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library series: the Latin Poems of Venantius Fortunatus, and a selection of six Christian novels from the Menologion of Symeon Metaphrastes. Both texts, in full English translation for the first time, trace the lives of political and religious figures, with special attention to women testing the gender boundaries of their societies. Christian Novels from the Menologion of Symeon Metaphrastes, edited and translated by Stratis Papaioannou, director of the program of medieval studies at
