Paianios (translator)

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Paianios ( Greek  Παιάνιος ) was an ancient Greek translator and lawyer who lived in Syria in the eastern part of the Roman Empire in the 4th century . He is best known for his translation of Eutropius' brief Roman history ( Breviarium ab urbe condita ), which ranges from the founding of the city by Romulus (753 BC) to the death of Emperor Jovian (364 AD) . In contrast to a later translation of the same work (by Kapiton von Lycia , late 5th / early 6th century), that of Paianios has been preserved in several manuscripts (transmitted directly). The surviving part of the Greek translation goes back to Jovian's predecessor Julian . Like Eutropius ' Breviarium , Paianios' Metaphrasis was a beginner's reading in ancient language lessons in the 17th and 18th centuries, but disappeared from the canon of school authors with new humanism .

Life

Since Paianios made no statements about himself in his work, one can only presumably reconstruct his living conditions. From various details that he added on his own in the translation, it can be concluded that he was familiar with the topography of Asia Minor and Syria, but less with that of the western parts of the empire. From a comment on the grandchildren of the Persian great king Narseh ( Shapur and Hormizd), which Paianios describes as his (still living or recently deceased) contemporaries, the latest date of the death of Shapur II (379 AD) can be determined Set drafting. Paianios wrote ab urbe condita only ten years after the Latin breviary appeared .

On this basis, since a fundamental essay by Ernst Schulze (1870) , Paianios has been generally identified with a lawyer from Syria who is known from several letters by the sophist Libanios . Paianios came from a wealthy and educated family. He was the son of the governor of Bithynia , Calliopius .

Libanios first mentions Paianios in a letter to Lemmatios from the year 363. He describes Paianios as his former pupil, to whom he and the rhetor Akakios of Kaisareia would have tried very hard. Paianios had studied rhetoric in Antioch while Libanios and Akakios taught there at the same time, namely in the years 354–361. For the year 364, Libanios reports on a trip by Paianios to Macedonia and Constantinople , the eastern capital of the empire . After his return that same year he moved to Palestine to work as a lawyer. In the same year (or in the following) he married the daughter of Pompeianus, a wealthy citizen of Antioch.

We have no reliable information about the personal relationship between the translator Paianios and the historian Eutropius. However, it is likely that they knew each other, because in a letter from Lebanios a certain Eutropios is mentioned, a pupil and nephew of Akakios, who was in contact with Emperor Julian and who was in Antioch in 362. If one assumes the identity of this Eutropios with the historian, then both belonged to the circle of disciples of Akakios and Lebanios. Otto Seeck's hypothesis that Eutropius himself commissioned Paianios with a Greek translation is plausible, but cannot be proven. Likewise, it is with a conjecture of the historian Joseph Geiger that both Eutropius and Paianios came from Caesarea Maritima in Palestine.

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Scope and content

Like the Latin breviary ab urbe condita , the Metaphrasis des Paianios also reports Roman history from the founding of the city (753 BC) to the death of Emperor Jovian (364 AD). Both works are divided into ten books, the boundaries of which are each determined by striking events. Paianios, however, dispenses with the introductory dedication to Emperor Valens , as he (unlike Eutropius) did not write on his behalf. The end of the metaphrasis with the reign of Jovian has not survived.

Relation to the Latin original

Paianios 'translation of Eutropius' Breviarium ab urbe condita is a relatively free transcription adapted to the needs of its Greek-speaking readership. Early editors such as Friedrich Sylburg and Hans Droysen judged its value rather negatively, as it is only of limited use for the textual criticism of the Latin breviary . Its Greek text cannot be clearly assigned to any of the various lines of Latin tradition. While Hans Droysen concluded from some binding errors with the Leiden Eutropius manuscript that it represented the same line of tradition as Paianios, Richard Duncker showed in 1880, based on numerous matches with other text witnesses independent of the Leiden manuscript, that Paianios cannot be clearly assigned to any of the traditional lines known today .

The relationship between the translation and the original was systematically examined for the first time by Luigi Baffetti, who described various aspects and sorted them into three categories:

  1. Additions to the original
    1. Explanation of Latin technical terms and Roman realities (e.g. senator , dictatorship , legion , miliarium )
    2. More detailed definition of localities ( Alps , Aquileia , Tarsos )
    3. References
    4. Additions from other sources (presumably from Cassius Dio , for example the capture of Gaius Mucius Scaevola ) or from personal knowledge
  2. Omissions and cuts
    1. Names and parts of names of people (especially prenomina )
    2. Locations
    3. Official title
    4. Redundancies and repetitions
    5. Taken for granted
    6. personal remarks Eutrops
  3. Changes to entire passages through rearrangements, additions, omissions or reformulations

Baffetti explains many of the differences between the translation and the original by the fact that Paianios often misunderstood and misrepresented his original due to his incomplete knowledge of Latin. In contrast to this negative judgment, researchers such as Enrica Malcovati , Elizabeth Fisher, Paola Venini and Giuseppina Matino recognized Paianios' successful endeavors to bring a useful concise historical work to a Greek-speaking audience in an appealing style.

Malcovati characterized Paianios' translation on the basis of its stylistic and content-related peculiarities compared to the original and came to the conclusion that Paianios - apart from numerous insignificant details - on the whole reproduced his original conscientiously and appealingly, if not literally. In contrast, Elizabeth Fisher showed, using the example of a quotation from Virgilence, that Paianios translated literally in places: not only did he reproduce the Latin verse word for word (but not metrically), but he also explained the underlying situation in the Aeneid , which Eutropus tacitly spoke to his Latin readership presupposed.

During an extensive analysis, Paola Venini came to the conclusion that Paianios had taken great care in his translation to make Eutropius understandable or explain misleading formulations and representations. Paianios' translation is characterized in many places by greater clarity and accuracy than its original. Paianios has transformed their bureaucratic and dry style into an elegant Greek, characterized by varied formulas and poetic phrases.

Giuseppina Matino examined above all Paianios' attitude to political and ethical discourses in the Breviarium ab urbe condita . It showed that Paianios like Eutropius rejected totalitarian forms of rule and political terror. On the other hand, Paianios emphasized the dubious origins of the Roman people (through the robbery of the Sabine women ), relativized the importance of an efficient military and emphasized the qualities of the emperor Julian, already praised by Eutropius. In a further essay, Matino analyzed several longer passages in Eutropius and Paianios with the result that Paianios, as a member of a Greek educated elite, took a fundamentally different perspective on the Roman Empire and its history than Eutropius.

Text history

Reception, quotations and indirect transmission

While the Latin breviary was received by other authors early on, the distribution of Paianios' metaphrasis is largely unclear. The church historian Socrates Scholastikos is an exception : he used both the Latin breviary and its Greek translation for the profane historical parts of his Historica ecclesiastica . It is unclear whether occasional correspondences with the breviary ab urbe condita in Philostorgios , Sozomenos and Georgios Synkellos are due to direct use of this work (and if so, whether in Paianios' translation or another).

Direct quotations of Paianios' translation by other authors can only be traced back to the late Byzantine period. There are isolated quotations in the collection of excerpts from Maximos Planudes (end of the 13th century) and some longer excerpts in the biography of Constantine by Nikephoros Gregoras (written between 1334 and 1341), however under the name of Eutropius.

Direct transmission: manuscripts

In contrast to the more recent Eutropius translation by Kapiton (6th century), that of Paianios is not only tangible in quotations, but almost completely preserved. A total of five manuscripts have been preserved that were written between the 12th and 16th centuries. In addition, there is the now lost copy of the first printed edition by Friedrich Sylburg.

  1. I = Athos , library of the Iviron monastery : Iviron 812 (= Athous 4932), written in the 12th or 14th century
  2. L = Florence , Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana : Laurentianus Pluteus 70.5, written around 1334 / 35–1341 / 42
  3. V = Venice , Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana : Marcianus Graecus 583, written in the late 1460s
  4. M = Munich , Bavarian State Library : Codex Graecus 101 , written around 1555
  5. P = Lanvellec , library of the Marquis de Rosanbo: Codex 296 (= Codex Pithoei or Pithoeanus after its previous owner Pierre Pithou ), written in the 16th century
  6. S = Sylburg's copy from François Pithou's library , on which the editio princeps was based, has been lost.

Ernst Schulze and Hans Droysen fundamentally clarified the relationships between most of the manuscripts in the 1870s. Schulze found M and S to be copies of Laurentianus, Droysen found the same ratio for V. The manuscript P was determined by Lucarini in 2012 as a direct copy of L on the one hand and a template for S on the other. All these manuscripts (LVMPS) have two common gaps in the text, the chapters 9-11 of the 6th book and the end from the 12th chapter of the 10th book.

The only manuscript without these gaps (I) did not become known until 1897, when Spyridon Lambros published excerpts of their text in the course of cataloging and evaluating the Greek manuscripts of Athos. However, Lambros took no notice of Schulze's and Droysen's work. He independently confirmed their assessment of the relationships between the LMS manuscripts and formulated a hypothesis on the identity of the lost manuscript S with P. This thesis was corrected in 2012 by Lucarini, who proved S to be a copy of P. Lambros' judgment on the two oldest manuscripts I and L, that they were witnesses to two independent strands of tradition, was refuted in 2020 by Jonathan Groß, who proved the manuscript L to be a direct copy of I.

Printed editions

The first printed edition ( editio princeps ) came from Friedrich Sylburg (1590), who after diligent efforts received a manuscript from François Pithou from Paris . Like most of the others, this manuscript had major gaps in the 6th and 10th books and also some special errors. Sylburg reported in detail on the text of his original and corrected a large number of damage caused by tradition. He did not document his suggestions for improvement directly in the text, but in the appendices ( notations and indices ).

From the late 17th century to the early 19th century there were other editions, all based on Sylburg's text. Its authors were teachers in high schools and wanted to make the Metaphrasis useful primarily as a beginner's reading in Greek lessons. Accordingly, they provided their editions with historical commentaries, but hardly got beyond Sylburg in textual criticism. The latest edition of this direction was created in the context of the Greek Enlightenment ( Diafotismós ): The scholar Neophytos Doukas (1760 / 62–1845), who worked in Vienna, published a two-volume edition in 1807 with the ancient Greek text of Paianios and a modern Greek translation on opposite pages (in Katharevousa ) and explained with an extensive topographical and prosopographical lexicon. Doukas' edition largely followed on from Sylburg, but supplemented the passages that were unusual in the tradition with their own translations back into Attic .

All editions up to 1807 went back to Sylburg and its lost copy, without the editors bothering to use other manuscripts. The assumption of the philologist Siwart Havercamp that Sylburg's copy was identical to the Munich manuscript (known to him only from a catalog) turned out to be incorrect. Following the fundamental essay by Ernst Schulze (1870), which clarified the tradition of the LMS manuscripts, Theodor Mommsen prepared a critical edition of the Metaphrasis on a broader handwritten basis. It appeared as part of the large-scale Eutropius edition of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH) edition project carried out by his student Hans Droysen (1851–1918 ). Droysen's edition was based on the oldest and best manuscript available to him, Laurentianus. Although he had learned of the existence of the Iviron manuscript through a tip from Carl de Boor , he could not get hold of it, since the manuscripts of Athos were hardly accessible or indexed at the time.

This changed with the research trips of the Athens history professor Spyridon Lambros (1850-1919), who opened up the Greek manuscript holdings of the Athos monasteries for science from 1880 with state and church support and gave decisive impulses for their preservation. As early as 1880 Lambros discovered the manuscript Iviron 812 with the complete Paianios text, but was not able to evaluate it immediately. In the summer of 1896, his pupil Philippos Georgantas compared the manuscript with the Paianios edition by Doukas and carefully copied the parts of the 6th and 10th books that were missing in the other manuscripts. Lambros published the results of this collation in German in an English journal in 1897. He delivered a complete edition in 1912 in his own magazine Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων ( Néos Ellínomnímon ). In either publication, however, he took no notice of Schulze's basic essay and Droysen's edition. Other disadvantages of Lambros' edition, such as misprints, involuntary text changes and omissions, an unreliable critical apparatus and, last but not least, the remote place of publication (the Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων was hardly widespread outside Greece) meant that his edition was either ignored or used only as a supplement to Droysen's edition has been.

Lambros' edition was included in the Canon of the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae at the University of California, Irvine in the 1970s . With the publication of this database on the Internet (from 2006) it became accessible to more circles. Lambros' magazine itself was digitized in 2015 and made available in Open Access in the Greek online directory Olympias .

literature

Editions
  • Friedrich Sylburg: Romanae Historiae Scriptores Graeci minores . Volume 3, Frankfurt am Main 1590, pp. 63-132 (first edition).
  • Hans Droysen (Ed.): Auctores antiquissimi 2: Eutropi Breviarium ab urbe condita cum versionibus Graecis et Pauli Landolfique additamentis. Berlin 1879 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized version): Critical edition based on the incomplete manuscripts. The translation of Paianios is on the right-hand pages from 9–179.
  • Spyridon Lampros: Παιανίου Μετάφρασις εἰς τὴν τοῦ Εὐτροπίου Ῥωμαϊκὴν ἱστορίαν . In: Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων . Volume 8 (1912), pp. 1–115 (first complete text edition).
Secondary literature
  • Wilhelm Enßlin : Paianios 2. In: Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume XVIII, 2, Stuttgart 1942, Col. 2374 f.
  • Jonathan Groß: On the Transmission of Paeanius . In: Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies . Volume 60,3 (2020), pp. 387-409. doi : 10.5281 / zenodo.3960021
  • Paweł Janiszewski, Krystyna Stebnicka, Elzbieta Szabat: Prosopography of Greek Rhetors and Sophists of the Roman Empire . Oxford 2015, p. 271 (no.766).
  • Enrica Malcovati: Le traduzioni greche di Eutropio . In: Rendiconti dell'Istituto Lombardo, Classe di Lettere e Scienze Morali . Volume 77 (1943/44), pp. 273-304
  • Giuseppina Matino: Due traduzioni greche di Eutropio . In: Fabrizio Conca, Isabella Gualandri, Giuseppe Lozza (editors): Politica, cultura e religione nell'impero romano (secoli IV – VI) tra Oriente e Occidente. Atti del Secondo Convegno dell'Associazione di Studi Tardoantichi . Napoli 1993, pp. 227-238.
  • Giuseppina Matino: Peanio e il Latino . In: Κοινωνία . Volume 41 (2017), pp. 43-59.
  • Ernst Schulze: De Paeanio Eutropii interprete . In: Philologus . Volume 29 (1870), pp. 285-299.
  • Paola Venini: Peanio traduttore di Eutropio . In: Memorie dell'Istituto Lombardo, Accademia di scienze e lettere, Classe di lettere, scienze morali e storiche . Volume 37, 7 (1983), pp. 421-447.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Arnold Hugh Martin Jones , John Robert Martindale, John Morris : Paeanius. In: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (PLRE). Volume 1, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1971, ISBN 0-521-07233-6 , pp. 657-657.
  2. ↑ Ernst Schulze: De Paeanio Eutropii interprete . In: Philologus . Volume 29 (1870), pp. 285-299, here 285-286.
  3. ↑ Ernst Schulze: De Paeanio Eutropii interprete . In: Philologus . Volume 29 (1870), pp. 285-299. See also Paul Petit: Les étudiants de Libanius . Paris 1957, pp. 22-25; 52.
  4. ^ Arnold Hugh Martin Jones , John Robert Martindale, John Morris : Calliopius 1. In: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (PLRE). Volume 1, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1971, ISBN 0-521-07233-6 , pp. 174-174.
  5. ↑ Libanios, Epistula 1307.6 Foerster.
  6. ↑ Libanios' letter to Eutropios: No. 27 Fatouros / Krischer = 754 Foerster.
  7. ↑ Fatouros / Krischer 321–322.
  8. ↑ Otto Seeck: The letters of Libanius arranged in time . Leipzig 1906, p. 15.
  9. ↑ Joseph Geiger: How Much Latin in Greek Palestine? In: H. Rosén (editor): Aspects of Latin. Papers from the Seventh International Colloquium on Latin Linguistics . Innsbruck 1996, pp. 39-58, especially pp. 39-41.
  10. ↑ Richard Duncker: De Paeanio Eutropii interprete . School program, Greiffenberg in Pomerania 1880. So does Carl Wagener: Annual report on Eutropius. Part 1 . In: Philologus 42 (1884), pp. 379-400, especially 394-402.
  11. ↑ Luigi Baffetti: Di Peanio traduttore di Eutropio . In: Byzantine-Modern Greek Yearbooks . Volume 3 (1922), pp. 15-36.
  12. ^ Enrica Malcovati: Le traduzioni greche di Eutropio . In: Rendiconti dell'Istituto Lombardo, Classe di Lettere e Scienze Morali . Volume 77 (1943/44), pp. 273-304, especially pp. 278-297.
  13. ↑ Elizabeth Fisher: Greek Translations of Latin Literature in the Fourth Century . In: John J. Winkler , Gordon Willis Williams (editors): Later Greek Literature . Cambridge (MA) 1982, pp. 173-216, especially pp. 189-192.
  14. ↑ Paola Venini: Peanio traduttore di Eutropio . In: Memorie dell'Istituto Lombardo, Accademia di scienze e lettere, Classe di lettere, scienze morali e storiche . Volume 37, 7 (1983), pp. 421-447.
  15. ^ Giuseppina Matino: Due traduzioni greche di Eutropio . In: Fabrizio Conca, Isabella Gualandri, Giuseppe Lozza (editors): Politica, cultura e religione nell'impero romano (secoli IV – VI) tra Oriente e Occidente. Atti del Secondo Convegno dell'Associazione di Studi Tardoantichi . Napoli 1993, pp. 227-238.
  16. ↑ Giuseppina Matino: Peanio e il Latino . In: Κοινωνία . Volume 41 (2017), pp. 43-59.
  17. ^ Paul Périchon: Eutrope ou Paeanius? L'historien Socrate se référait-il à une source latine ou grecque? In: Revue des études grecques . Volume 81 (1968), pp. 378-384. Günther Christian Hansen : Socrates. Church history . Berlin 1995 (= The Greek Christian Writers , New Series, Volume 1), S. LI.
  18. ↑ On Philostorgios compare Peter Van Nuffelen : Un héritage de paix et de piété. Étude sur les histoires ecclésiastiques de Socrate et de Sozomène (= Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 142). Leuven / Paris / Dudley (MA) 2004, p. 437 Note 5. On Sozomenos Georg Schoo: The sources of the church historian Sozomenos . Berlin 1911 (= New Studies on the History of Theology and the Church 11), p. 86. On Synkellos Alden A. Mosshammer: Georgii Syncelli Ecloga chronographica . Leipzig 1984, p. XXIX.
  19. ↑ On the quotes from Paianios in the Excerpta Planudea, see most recently Panagiotis Manafis: (Re) Writing History in Byzantium. A Critical Study of Collections of Historical Excerpts . Oxford 2020, pp. 191-195.
  20. ^ Pietro Luigi M. Leone : Nicephori Gregorae Vita Constantini . Catania 1994, p. IX.
  21. ↑ Overviews of the surviving manuscripts: Paeanius: Eutropii Breuiarium ab urbe condita (Paeanii translatio) , entry in the Pinakes database (accessed on August 19, 2020). A complete list with explanations and further reading can be found in Jonathan Groß: On the Transmission of Paeanius . In: Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies . Volume 60,3 (2020), pp. 387-409, especially 394-398. doi : 10.5281 / zenodo.3960021 .
  22. ↑ Diktyon number 24407, entry at Pinakes (accessed on August 19, 2020). On the dating approaches with further literature Jonathan Groß: On the Transmission of Paeanius . In: Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies . Volume 60,3 (2020), pp. 387-409, especially 394-395. doi : 10.5281 / zenodo.3960021 .
  23. ↑ Diktyon number 16570, entry at Pinakes (accessed on August 19, 2020). Digital copy : Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Digital Repository (accessed on August 20, 2020). For the dating, see Jean-Baptiste Clérigues: Nicéphore Grégoras, copiste et superviseur du Laurentianus 70.5 . In: Révue d'histoire des textes . New series, Volume 2 (2007), pp. 21–47, especially 43.
  24. ↑ Diktyon number 69994, entry at Pinakes (accessed on August 19, 2020). For the dating, see the description by Ciro Giacomelli, Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca et Byzantina , November 2017 ( web link , accessed on August 19, 2020).
  25. ↑ Diktyon number 44545, entry at Pinakes (accessed on August 19, 2020). Digitized (microfilm): Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, urn : nbn: de: bvb: 12-bsb00130913-8 . For the dating see Marina Molin Pradel: Catalog of the Greek Manuscripts of the Bavarian State Library in Munich . Volume 2, Wiesbaden 2013, pp. 279–286.
  26. ↑ Diktyon number 37456, entry at Pinakes (accessed on August 19, 2020). For the dating see Henri Omont : Inventaire sommaire des manuscrits grecs de la bibliothèque nationale . Volume 3, Paris 1888, p. 381 (number 105).
  27. ↑ Ernst Schulze: De Paeanio Eutropii interprete . In: Philologus . Volume 29 (1870), pp. 285-299, especially 293.
  28. ↑ Hans Droysen (ed.): Auctores antiquissimi 2: Eutropi Breviarium ab urbe condita cum versionibus Graecis et Pauli Landolfique additamentis. Berlin 1879 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized version ), especially p. XXI note 11.
  29. ^ Carlo Martino Lucarini: Il Codex Pithoei di Peanio el'apografo di Sylburg . In: Giornale italiano di filologia . New series, Volume 3 (2012), pp. 267–271.
  30. ↑ a b Spyridon Lambros: A new Codex of Päanius . In: The Classical Review . Volume 11 (1897), pp. 382-390.
  31. ↑ Spyridon Lambros: Παιανίου Μετάφρασις εἰς τὴν τοῦ Εὐτροπίου Ῥωμαϊκὴν ἱστορίαν . In: Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων . Volume 8 (1912), pp. 1–115, here 4–5.
  32. ↑ Spyridon Lambros: Παιανίου Μετάφρασις εἰς τὴν τοῦ Εὐτροπίου Ῥωμαϊκὴν ἱστορίαν . In: Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων . Volume 8 (1912), pp. 1–115, here 113.
  33. ↑ Jonathan Groß: On the Transmission of Paeanius . In: Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies . Volume 60,3 (2020), pp. 387-409. doi : 10.5281 / zenodo.3960021
  34. ↑ Bibliographical information on these editions from Jonathan Groß: On the Transmission of Paeanius . In: Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies . Volume 60,3 (2020), pp. 387-409, here p. 391 note 18. doi : 10.5281 / zenodo.3960021
  35. ↑ For this edition see Vasilios Pappas: Modern Greek Translations (1686–1818) of Latin Historical Works ” . In: Studia Philologica Valentina . New series, Volume 14 (2015), pp. 257–272, especially pp. 261–263.
  36. ↑ Dionysios Trivolis, for example, criticized this: Eutropius Historicus καὶ οἱ Ἕλληνες μεταφράσται τοῦ Breviarium ab urbe condita . Athens 1941, p. 165.
  37. ↑ Examples in Jonathan Groß: On the Transmission of Paeanius . In: Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies . Volume 60,3 (2020), pp. 387-409, especially 393, note 26. doi : 10.5281 / zenodo.3960021 .
  38. ↑ DOI: 10.26268 / heal.uoi.7762 (accessed on August 19, 2020).
personal data
SURNAME Paianios
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Paeanius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION late antique Greek translator and lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH 4th century
DATE OF DEATH after 379