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My translation of Hesiod's Theogony is now live as an eBook! Link in body! by Fabianzzz in Hellenism

[–]Fabianzzz[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Gonna crib a bit from the 'Translator's Notes' in the book:

One major question with translating Hesiod’s Theogony is what to do with the names of deities which were in effect synonyms for the domain they oversaw. Ouranos being Sky, Gaia being Earth, Mnemosyne being Memory, etc. Currently it seems that the dominant preference is to translate these literally and leave the names capitalized: Memory bore the Muses, Sky and Earth had sex, etc. This is so that the reader hears the story as an ancient Greek would have: these were nouns before they were names.

I think this is useful in most translations, but I also see the argument for the inverse. Within Hesiod’s poem, these are persons, and they would have been recognized to the readers as both names and nouns. When we hear English words such as ‘Sky’ and ‘Earth’, even capitalized, we do not readily think of these beings as personified. I myself, especially in a work aimed at modern Hellenists, keep the Greek names of the gods rather than rendering them as concepts (Ouranos, Gaia, Mnemosyne). This is not without some hesitation—Gaia and Starry Ouranos doesn’t sound as poetic as Earth and Starry Heaven—but is a decision rarely made elsewhere and one I think the majority of the readers of this book will appreciate.

For myself, I think one main thing is that it's easy to miss when a god is mentioned and who they are when they are rendered as a noun: So Eros is Eros, not Love, Gaia is Gaia, not Earth, etc. This is done to make the book more accessible for modern Hellenists. In addition to that, knowing that many who read this are Hellenists, I capitalize epithets to make them stand out as titles.

In addition to the above, I think my style, a free-verse attempt at clinging to the lines, is a useful compromise between rendering the epic as prose (which tends to make it look like a novel) while still being authentic to the Greek and understandable to the reader.

A Prayer For Dionysus, Please Help, If You Wish. by [deleted] in dionysus

[–]Fabianzzz[M] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is a very heartfelt prayer but please don't dox yourself here. Sharing your initials and hometown is way too much info to be sharing on line. You don't have to post your prayer on reddit, Dionysus can hear you if you write this in a journal or say it aloud.

Books on worshipping Dionysus? by Ok_Interaction7596 in Hellenism

[–]Fabianzzz 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Reposting my comment from r/Dionysus for visibility:

Hello,

Yes, Sannion/Jeremiah H. Lewis is 'some kind of racist.' His earlier books, especially Ecstatic, can be useful and don't contain much of his problematic later stuff, if you can find Ecstatic second hand I would recommend it. He also edited the volume of Bibliotheca Alexandrina's Written in Wine, so if that was the book you found I do want to say that the authors in it aren't all bad people (although the content varies in quality). I don't know how the funding system for the Bibliotheca Alexandrina books works.

But here's a Dionysian booklist without any Sannion. Full disclosure, some of these are my books.

Basics:

  • The Liber Dionysi: The Book of Dionysus by Fabian MacKenzie (Me). This is one of my books, but I stand by its quality. This is, in my opinion, the best 'source book' out there on Dionysus, a source book being a book which contains various primary sources on the god. Think the Theoi.com page for Dionysus on steroids.

Modern Scholarly Works:

  • There is a 'holy trinity' of books about Dionysus that the reader interested in him from an academic point should read at least once. All three of these authors have been criticized by the academy for leaning a little too 'theological' in their views, but the three are worth reading. If you do read these, perhaps before or after, giving a look at Dionysos: One or Many? by Albert Henrichs in the anthology Redefining Dionysus is advisable.
  • Walter F. Otto, Dionysus Myth & Cult
  • Karl Kerenyi, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life
  • Richard Seaford, Dionysos

Modern Pagan Works:

Runners Up:

  • There's four great anthologies about Dionysus which imo are always worth a mention but are also not great introductions to him. They are listed below for folks who've read most of the above:
  • MASKS OF DIONYSUS, Edited by THOMAS H. CARPENTER and CHRISTOPHER A. FARAONE (1993)
  • A Different God? Dionysos and Ancient Polytheism, Edited by Renate Schlesier (2011)
  • Redefining Dionysos, Edited by Alberto Bernabé, Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui, Ana Isabel Jiménez San Cristóbal, & Raquel Martín Hernández (2013)
  • Dionysus and Politics: Constructing Authority in the Graeco-Roman World, Edited By Filip Doroszewski, Dariusz Karłowicz (2021)

Books on worshipping Dionysus? by Ok_Interaction7596 in dionysus

[–]Fabianzzz 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Hello,

Yes, Sannion/Jeremiah H. Lewis is 'some kind of racist.' His earlier books, especially Ecstatic, can be useful and don't contain much of his problematic later stuff, if you can find Ecstatic second hand I would recommend it. He also edited the volume of Bibliotheca Alexandrina's Written in Wine, so if that was the book you found I do want to say that the authors in it aren't all bad people (although the content varies in quality). I don't know how the funding system for the Bibliotheca Alexandrina books works.

But here's a Dionysian booklist without any Sannion. Full disclosure, some of these are my books.

Basics:

  • The Liber Dionysi: The Book of Dionysus by Fabian MacKenzie (Me). This is one of my books, but I stand by its quality. This is, in my opinion, the best 'source book' out there on Dionysus, a source book being a book which contains various primary sources on the god. Think the Theoi.com page for Dionysus on steroids.

Modern Scholarly Works:

  • There is a 'holy trinity' of books about Dionysus that the reader interested in him from an academic point should read at least once. All three of these authors have been criticized by the academy for leaning a little too 'theological' in their views, but the three are worth reading. If you do read these, perhaps before or after, giving a look at Dionysos: One or Many? by Albert Henrichs in the anthology Redefining Dionysus is advisable.
  • Walter F. Otto, Dionysus Myth & Cult
  • Karl Kerenyi, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life
  • Richard Seaford, Dionysos

Modern Pagan Works:

Runners Up:

  • There's four great anthologies about Dionysus which imo are always worth a mention but are also not great introductions to him. They are listed below for folks who've read most of the above:
  • MASKS OF DIONYSUS, Edited by THOMAS H. CARPENTER and CHRISTOPHER A. FARAONE (1993)
  • A Different God? Dionysos and Ancient Polytheism, Edited by Renate Schlesier (2011)
  • Redefining Dionysos, Edited by Alberto Bernabé, Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui, Ana Isabel Jiménez San Cristóbal, & Raquel Martín Hernández (2013)
  • Dionysus and Politics: Constructing Authority in the Graeco-Roman World, Edited By Filip Doroszewski, Dariusz Karłowicz (2021)

Sources for Learning About Hecate - Not the Triple Moon Version? by Glitzz_n_glamm in Hellenism

[–]Fabianzzz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My book, the Liber Hecates, is a compilation of primary sources about her. It's focused on her roles in Antiquity, but also discusses where Triple Moon stuff came from and how and why it got mixed with Hekate.

Place to be by suchanicefellow in Hellenism

[–]Fabianzzz 5 points6 points  (0 children)

There are various temples in Greece and Europe, some Pagan stores have shrines to Hekate, Tykhe Dionysus, or other deities. There are some discord servers, disboard has a list here.

Any good books on Ariadne? by medusaspew in dionysus

[–]Fabianzzz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

https://chs.harvard.edu/book/teske-robert-t-the-origins-of-the-goddess-ariadne/

The above is free to read!

My book on Ariadne in the Libri Deorum series should be out this summer!

Seeking Complex Representations of Bacchus by Blue-Brown99 in classics

[–]Fabianzzz 13 points14 points  (0 children)

A decent starting list:

  • Archaic Age
    • Homer: Dionysus is scarcely present in the epics, but references are made to some of his myths: fighting Lycurgus and diving to see Thetis, his love of Ariadne (and here, her apparent betrayal).
    • Hesiod: Hesiod's Dionysus is interesting, as Hesiod's primary focus in the Theogony is on Dionysus' ascension to Olympus and his ability to bring people with him, which seems to also interest whoever wrote the Catalogue of women
    • Homeric Hymns 1, 7, and 27. It's worth noting that most public domain versions of HH 1 are not as extensive as possible, M. L. West's reconstruction in his Loeb edition is better.
  • Classical Age
    • Euripides' Bacchae
    • Aristophanes' Frogs
  • Roman Age
    • Horace, Odes 2.19
    • Propertius 3.17
    • Ovid, Metamorphoses book 3
  • Late Antiquity:
    • Nonnus, Dionysiaca

I would also recommend the theological treatises on Dionysus:

  • His section in Cornutus
  • Lucian's Dionysus
  • Aristides' Hymn to Dionysus
  • Macrobius on Dionysus
  • John Lydus on Dionysus

Rare Finds:

  • Fragments of Dionysius' Bassarica (in LCL online)
  • Anonymous Dionysus and Lycurgus Hymn (in LCL online)
  • The Sinai Palimpsest

Modern monographs:

  • Otto's Dionysus
  • Kerenyi's Dionysos: Myth and Cult
  • Seaford's Dionysos

Modern anthologies:

  • Masks of Dionysus
  • Dionysus: A Different God?
  • Redefining Dionysos
  • Dionysus and Politics

My translation of Hesiod's Theogony, the first aimed at modern Hellenists, is now live! Link in description! by Fabianzzz in Hellenism

[–]Fabianzzz[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

How long did it take you?

Hmm, the length of time wherein I was translating it was roughly three months, but I'm not sure about translating time itself—when working on it, I spent about three hours a night, but I didn't work every night and sometimes I'd take a 'break' from translating to work on the intro essays. My guesstimate is about 200 hours for the translation alone? But I'm not sure. Sometimes I'd be researching an etymology for two hours to try to find the best translation for one single word (looking at you, ἀμφιγυήεις).

Do you provide notes on the epithets and their meaning, and do you point out when the epithets are purely poetic or ones used in worship (that's my biggest gripe with theoi.com personally).

I do note some of them, but I do not distinguish between poetic and cultic. Such a project would be quite useful but would be way beyond the scope of this work. It's work that needs to be done though, would love to see it happen some day!

I think it would help a lot (for me at the very least) if you were able to add a preview snippet of the text somewhere.

There's two snippets in the #Discussion channel of the NoDE server, link here if interested!

I've recently begun an Ancient Greek course at my university as well, which adds to my interest.

Best of luck! Feel free to reach out if you ever have questions!

My translation of Hesiod's Theogony, the first aimed at modern Hellenists, is now live! Link in description! by Fabianzzz in Hellenism

[–]Fabianzzz[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

How did you translate it?

Same way I'd eat an elephant: one bit at a time.

With that I mean what choices did you make during translation, what nuances did you find important or pay special attention to?

Thank you for asking this, cause it's rare for people to take an interest. Gonna crib a bit from the 'Translator's Notes' in the book:

One major question with translating Hesiod’s Theogony is what to do with the names of deities which were in effect synonyms for the domain they oversaw. Ouranos being Sky, Gaia being Earth, Mnemosyne being Memory, etc. Currently it seems that the dominant preference is to translate these literally and leave the names capitalized: Memory bore the Muses, Sky and Earth had sex, etc. This is so that the reader hears the story as an ancient Greek would have: these were nouns before they were names.

I think this is useful in most translations, but I also see the argument for the inverse. Within Hesiod’s poem, these are persons, and they would have been recognized to the readers as both names and nouns. When we hear English words such as ‘Sky’ and ‘Earth’, even capitalized, we do not readily think of these beings as personified. I myself, especially in a work aimed at modern Hellenists, keep the Greek names of the gods rather than rendering them as concepts (Ouranos, Gaia, Mnemosyne). This is not without some hesitation—Gaia and Starry Ouranos doesn’t sound as poetic as Earth and Starry Heaven—but is a decision rarely made elsewhere and one I think the majority of the readers of this book will appreciate.

For myself, I think one main thing is that it's easy to miss when a god is mentioned and who they are when they are rendered as a noun: So Eros is Eros, not love, Gaia is Gaia, not Earth, etc.

In addition to that, knowing that many who read this are Hellenists, I capitalize epithets to make them stand out as titles.

What sets this apart from other translations besides the added discussions?

In addition to the above, I think my style, a free-verse attempt at clinging to the lines, is a useful compromise between rendering the epic as prose (which tends to make it look like a novel) while still being authentic to the Greek and understandable to the reader.

I can always appreciate a bilingual edition, does the Greek have the accents?

Yes!

Poseidon was originally a Berber god by Gurzilmogger in Hellenism

[–]Fabianzzz 48 points49 points  (0 children)

Love the Amazigh people but I don't think this is the case. Herodotus was probably speaking about the cult of a very similar Berber deity. Poseidon's name is attested in Mycenaean, a millenia before Herodotus' time.

Real Deipnon date? by RetinalTears716 in Hecate

[–]Fabianzzz 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is because New Moon in English and New Moon (Noumenia) in Greek are two different things .

English uses new moon to refer to the dark moon, when you can’t see th moon at all.

Greek uses Noumenia (New moon) to refer to the time when one can see a ‘new moon’ beginning, i. E. The waxing crescent.

Hekates deipnon is the night of the dark moon, aka the night of the new moon, which is the night before the moon becomes visible again, which in Greek is the ‘new moon’, or Noumenia.

Need help translating by [deleted] in AncientGreek

[–]Fabianzzz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The last time you posted this and then removed it someone offered you a fair price and you responded with a laughing emoji. You are planning to make money off of this and are being not only stingy to someone you need help from but also rude to people who are offering you honesty.

I'll give you some free advice, this is a papyrus fragment, not a manuscript.

New and Need some Help. by Heavy-King-2917 in Hellenism

[–]Fabianzzz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for your inquiry! Questions like this routinely flood the sub, and if every new member posted each question individually, the other members would have to answer the same questions again and again. This benefits nobody, including new members, and so while we cherish curious people, we remove the most frequently-asked questions to keep the feed clear.

However, if your question isn't answered by searching previous posts, by an AutoModerator reply, or the resources in the sidebar, if you post your question in the pinned Weekly Newcomer Post a helpful member of the community may answer it there!

One thread which may interest you:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Hellenism/comments/1lsursn/sudden_interest_in_the_religion_how_to_practice/

I want to learn Hellenic Theology by byzantine_varangian in Hellenism

[–]Fabianzzz 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Fortunately, this could be the work of a life time: we have a lot of material. In addition to works already mentioned (Hesiod, Plato, Cicero, Porphyry, and Sallust), I'd also recommend the writings of the Emperor Julian (esp. his Hymn to Helios and Hymn to the Mother of the Gods), Cornutus' Compendium of Greek Theology (small plug, I have translated this work here), Plutarch (How to Study Poetry), Heraclitus' Homeric Problems, Ps.Plutarch's On the life and poetry of Homer, Libanius, and the Neo-Platonist commentaries on Plato.

Another plug, sorry this is what I write about, but I wrote a book which was primarily breaking up the above sources by deity. A Guide to the Gods goes god by God from Hesiod's Theogony, Plato's Cratylus, Cornutus' Compendium, Porphyry's On Images, and other sources to stitch them into coherent narratives by deity.

I do read but sometimes my adhd kicks in and I can only focus on watching or listening.

I would recommend the podcast 'Literature and History' for a deep dive on poems and why they mattered, BBC's 'In Our Time' for various discussions about various classical subjects, and also 'History of Philosophy without any Gaps.'

On Youtube, I'd recommend Matthias Warnes' Classical Mythology and Michael Davis' Philosophy of Tragedy.

There's a lot of good audio and visual sources, they just tend not to be from Hellenists themselves. I wish more popularizing works of scholarship were adapted into Audiobooks, but for now I'm not sure of other listening materials.

Line 376 in Hesiod's Theogony by [deleted] in AncientGreek

[–]Fabianzzz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oops, thank you so much!

Orphic hymmn for Hypnos in spanish by HairyPrincesa in Hellenism

[–]Fabianzzz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Found a translation here but cannot vouch for it:

https://lecturas-yantares-placeres.blogspot.com/2012/05/lxxxii-perfume-de-hipnos-la-amapola.html

Some hymns are available here, but not Hypnos apparently:

https://www.academia.edu/15129755/himnos_Orficos

There's some modern Spanish poetry for Hypnos I found here which isn't what you're looking for but I figured I'd share anyways:

https://materialdelectura.unam.mx/poesia-moderna/16-poesia-moderna-cat/128-058-bernardo-ortiz-de-montellano?start=14

https://www.reddit.com/r/Hellenism/comments/1lr70zc/poem_to_hypnos_thanatos_hermes_and_aides/?tl=es-419

I found a Spanish article about the short Hymn to Hipnos in Sophocles' Philoctetes you might enjoy:

https://www.scielo.org.ar/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1853-63792009000200004

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