Nicole Eddy

The Soliloquies of St. Augustine are a philosophical dialogue between Augustine’s mind and his faculty of reason concerning the nature of God and the immortality of the soul. The Soliloquies was translated into Old English in the late ninth century as part of King Alfred of Wessex’s (r. 871-899) program to revive learning and literacy in his kingdom. This volume contains complete texts of the Latin and Old English Soliloquies, as well as original, facing-page translations of both. 

Leslie Lockett’s elegant, readable, and accurate translation of the Latin text compares favorably to previous editions. Moreover, her clear rendition of the Old English will assist non-experts in that language to work their way through the original text, whose difficulty is amplified by the fact that it contains features characteristic of early Middle English that were introduced by the scribe. Lockett’s skill as a translator in both languages is impressive indeed, and I could not find any scope for improvement. Having the Latin and Old English versions (accompanied by accurate and idiomatic translations) together in the same volume makes cross comparison possible in a way that has not previously been the case, and this work will prove a boon both to scholars and students of Old English literature.

Justin Lake
Bryn Mawr Classical Review
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Few medieval authors make it as easy for historians to crawl inside their minds as Ekkehard IV of St. Gall (c. 980–c. 1057). He gets as close as possible to becoming an actual person—which is, all things considered, quite a rarity in medieval historiography. However, tempting as it may be to get swept up in the life and thoughts of this author, it is precisely this “personality” that makes it so important to not simply take his texts for granted, but to study them as closely as possible. The two works under review here, both translations and commentaries of one of Ekkehard’s most famous works, will allow future generations of researchers to continue these studies.

Both publications fill an important niche in the field. Ekkehard’s Casus Sancti Galli is an important and interesting narrative (and great for teaching!). Both the MGH edition by Hans F. Haefele, Ernst Tremp, and Franziska Schnoor and the Dumbarton Oaks translation by Emily Albu and Natalia Lozovsky (itself based on the aforementioned MGH edition) make this text and its author accessible to a new generation of scholars. The edition and facing translations are up to the usual standards we have come to expect from these series. It is the translations that take the spotlight, however, and the way both bring the idiosyncrasies of the narrative to the fore. Each on their own will certainly push research on the monastery of St. Gall in new and exciting directions. When the two are taken together, however, that research will become that much deeper and more engaging.

Rutger Kramer
Speculum
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This book comprises the first English translation of John Tzetzes’ Allegories of the Odyssey, a long allegorical commentary on Homer’s Odyssey in 15-syllable verse. It is the authors’ second work on Tzetzes to be published in recent years, following their translation of the Allegories of the Iliad (Cambridge 2015). Tzetzes divides his commentary into 24 sections corresponding to the Homeric books. After a short summary of each book, he interprets allegorically the Homeric verses that refer to the pagan gods.

The authors have done an admirable job of rendering such a difficult composition into clear and understandable English while remaining faithful to the Greek text. This English translation of Tzetzes’ Allegories of the Odyssey is welcome in the fields of Byzantine and classical studies, as it makes available to a broader audience an atypical medieval text that can redirect our ways of approaching Homer, while offering us insight into the interesting methods of an idiosyncratic philologist.

Maria Tomadaki
The Journal of Hellenic Studies
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The neat, readable, scholarly, affordable Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library series has made an immense contribution to my students’ experience of medieval literature. This volume of 22 anonymous prose Old English saints’ lives supplements the three-volume set of Ælfric’s Lives of Saints and together they provide (almost) complete coverage of early medieval vernacular hagiography. This is a remarkable achievement. Most texts presented here have not been edited for at least a century, and the editors point out six (Chad, James the Greater, Machutus, Neot, Pantaleon, and a fragment on Quentin) that have not been previously published in translation. The editors have worked with sixteen manuscripts along with a range of editions to provide not only a readable set of translations, but ideal initial guides for their further study and excellent, thoughtful, editions. The notes to the texts, in particular, are superb and provide material for much further investigation into scribal interactions with these texts. Editing from manuscripts like these, which have often been subject to different programs of revision and annotation as well as experiencing different forms of damage, is immensely challenging, and the editors deserve credit both for their careful thought about whose text they want to present and for how clearly they explain those choices.

This volume is a truly monumental achievement. It not only achieves the by-now standard practicality of the series; it also brings together genuinely obscure and vastly understudied texts together with more well-known pieces and renders them all readable and accessible. By contextualizing anonymous Old English saints’ lives with one another, it also calls attention to both the consistency of early medieval interest in hagiography and to the varied nature of that interest, with different styles and modes of translation on display. It is a fine platform for further and deeper exploration of translation practices, manuscript culture, linguistic variation, and hagiography in the period and is indispensable for any scholar working on or teaching these issues.

S. C. Thomson
The Medieval Review
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Aelred, a native of the Scottish border regions of Northumbria, entered Rievaulx abbey north of York in 1134, just two years after its founding by French Cistercians. After a trip to Rome in 1142, Aelred became the third abbot of Rievaulx in 1147. He was a powerful abbot who lived in the perilous times of the anarchy, when Stephen and Mathilda contended for the throne. Aelred chronicled these struggles; he wrote a life of Edward the Confessor and also a quantity of biblical and devotional works. Four in that category are expertly translated in this volume: A Pastoral Prayer, Spiritual Friendship, A Certain Marvelous Miracle, and Teachings for Recluses. As is customary with the handsome Dumbarton Oaks volumes, the Latin and English are on facing pages. 

Bruce Venarde’s translations are skillful and vivid: ne videamur in inani pingere becomes “so we don’t seem to write on the wind.” The striking use of the verb evaporare in the phrase cui evaporet becomes “to whom he can vent [his mind],” honoring the metaphor. In every regard Venarde meets the high standards of the Dumbarton Oaks series.

James H. Morey
The Medieval Review
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The Book of Syntipas the Philosopher (BSP) tells the dramatic story of the young son of King Kyros, who is falsely accused by one of the king’s wives of having raped her, and therefore faces capital punishment. This is a fascinating text, due to its intriguing narrative structure (multiple short stories embedded in a frame story) and the dramatic character of the embedded short stories, which frequently are about sex and crime, topics rarely found in Byzantine literature. In two of the oldest witnesses, BSP appears together with a collection of fables usually referred to as the Fables of Syntipas.

Jeffrey Beneker and Craig A. Gibson translate both of Andreopoulos’s texts into readable and lively English, without departing too far from the Greek original. The amusing stories together with insightful remarks on human nature make BSP and the Fables of Syntipas entertaining and also morally edifying reads. (Despite their occasionally frivolous and lascivious [at least to us moderns] content, one must not forget that the manuscript tradition clearly shows that both texts were primarily understood as advice literature.) It is to be hoped that more such texts in equally competent translations will appear soon.

Martin Hinterberger
Speculum
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