Search results for ""author n. g. wilson""

Corpus Christi College was founded at a time when universities were putting considerable effort into providing better facilities for the study of Greek and Hebrew. Bishop Richard Fox, the founder of Corpus Christi, and John Claymond, the college's first President, therefore ensured that the library should be adequately stocked with Greek printed books and manuscripts. In a famous letter to Claimond in June 1519, Erasmus predicted a great future for the College and alluded to its well-stocked library. Claymond gave the library more than half the present collection of Greek manuscripts, besides seven in Hebrew. His Greek books came largely from the collection of William Grocyn, who had gone to Florence in 1488 to study with Angelo Poliziano and Demetrius Chalcondyles, and doubtless acquired some of his manuscripts there. Remarkably, at the end of the fifteenth century there was a local source of supply for some Greek texts, in the person of Ioannes Serbopoulos, a refugee from Constantinople who had taken up residence near Reading, who supplied Grocyn with MSS 23 and 106 in 1499 and 1495 respectively. It is worth noting in passing that when Grocyn arrived in Florence the printing of Greek texts had barely begun, but by the time the College was founded the demand for manuscript copies of the principal texts used by students and scholars was much reduced, thanks largely to the editions issued by Aldus Manutius After the substantial initial acquisitions of manuscripts the College was not fortunate enough to attract significant additions to its collection, and there is nosign that it contemplated an active policy of enlarging this element of the library's holdings. But it is worth noting that the one manuscript in the collection which is of truly outstanding importance, the ninth-century copy of Aristotle's zoological works (MS 108), was given by one of the Fellows in 1623.

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This new edition of Aristophanes is intended to replace the previous Oxford Classical Text published in 1900-1. Since that date it has been possible to construct a far better picture of the transmission of the text from antiquity to the age of printing and to obtain reliable reports of other significant manuscripts. While some of the new information has been taken into account for recent commentaries on individual plays, there is no easily available complete edition. Though the text of the plays is better preserved than that of Greek tragedy, the editor has thought it desirable to record or adopt a fair number of conjectures, some of them little known or unjustly disregarded; in a few passages he has ventured to offer suggestions of his own.

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Aldus Manutius (c. 1451–1515) was the most important and innovative scholarly publisher of the Renaissance. His Aldine Press was responsible for more first editions of classical literature, philosophy and science than any other publisher before or since. Aldus was particularly concerned to preserve through the printer’s art the most important remains of Greek literature that had survived the age of the manuscript book, and to provide the literati of his own time with the tools they needed to keep the knowledge of Greek alive. This edition contains all of Aldus’s prefaces to his editions of the Greek classics, translated for the first time into English, along with other illustrative writings by his collaborators. They provide unique insight into the world of scholarly publishing in Renaissance Venice.

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A literary cabinet of curiosities.Aelian’s Historical Miscellany is a pleasurable example of light reading for Romans of the early third century. Offering engaging anecdotes about historical figures, retellings of legendary events, and enjoyable descriptive pieces—in sum: amusement, information, and variety—Aelian’s collection of nuggets and narratives could be enjoyed by a wide reading public. A rather similar book had been published in Latin in the previous century by Aulus Gellius; Aelian is a late, perhaps the last, representative of what had been a very popular genre. Here then are anecdotes about the famous Greek philosophers, poets, historians, and playwrights; myths instructively retold; moralizing tales about heroes and rulers, athletes and wise men; reports about styles in dress, food and drink, lovers, gift-giving practices, entertainments, religious beliefs and death customs; and comments on Greek painting. Some of the information is not preserved in any other source. Underlying it all are Aelian’s Stoic ideals as well as this Roman’s great admiration for the culture of the Greeks (whose language he borrowed for his writings).The Historical Miscellany is now added to the Loeb Classical Library, the Greek text facing a skillful and helpfully annotated new translation by Nigel Wilson. In his trenchant Introduction he discusses the literary genre of Aelian’s miscellany, its style and historical setting.

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One of the remarkable facts about the history of Western culture is that we are still in a position to read large amounts of the literature produced in classical Greece and Rome despite the fact that for at least a millennium and a half all copies had to be produced by hand and were subject to the hazards of fire, flood, and war. This book explains how the texts survived and gives an account of the reasons why it was thought worthwhile to spend the necessary effort to preserve them for future generations. In the second edition a section of notes was included, and a new chapter was added to deal with some aspects of scholarship since the Renaissance. In the third edition (1991), the authors responded to the urgent need to take account of the very large number of discoveries in this rapidly advancing field of knowledge by substantially revising or enlarging certain sections. The last two decades have seen further advances, and this revised edition is designed to take account of them.

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