XII

Introductlon

Inoductlon

XIII

ward, la I hnve enclenvourecl at all timcs, therefore, to correct all sudr

involuntnry ulips on the port of my predecessors and to avoid introducing

original name or made possible some useful distinctionl thus ,,wilgang" ancl
not "Uligangus", "Ahuramazda" fot the god and ,,I{ormizd,, foi thi man
rather than "Hormisdates" used indiscriminately for both, et cetera.22
A more complicated issue is raised by Agathias' frequent recourse to
cumbersome and unnatural paraphrases in order to avoid using the normal
everyday word and thus sullying the arclaizing purity of hisltyre by the
adoption of a barbarous neologism. 23 (/herever iudr a circumlocution can
le-replaced by a single English word without loss of meaning or emphasis,
I have done so. Thus I have had no qualms about translatiirg "dome', in
v,9,30 rather than employing the absurd paraphrase "the ciicle or hemisphere, or what have you, which projects in the middle". on the other hand,
even though it is partly love of archaism which leads Agathias to call the
inhabitants of Lazica by their ancient name of "colchians", the word does
seem to have emotive overtones and so has generally been retained.

ony new ones

of my own.

Despite the invaluable help afiorded b], professor Keydell,s Index.

Graecitatis the would-be translator of Agathias does still oicasionally run
into the odd unsolved linguistic difiiculty and will turn in vain ro earlier
translations for enlightenment. rn suc.h cases I have done my best, but I do
not claim to have always found the right answer. The type of difiiculty I
have in mind is well illustrated by the following quotationi

"torou novru .x, rdtv flgoxonlor 6yrov groro v r.oyvo[r1;,

fetuep re rv Bqvlov zol Koplq6v, tfir, n6i,rv xoi r{v [ptnooov
1d:pu, t' "Aqgror, r Bovrqorlou re z,oi le(eql1ou zoi tfl v tp 16.r
&noorrosur( no}"o {lorepor, ypvot 'rouorlvLsv6 ou?,<rl8eToov noi nd,rv

(:

di_'Pcopolrrrv nrzgarelo pQo

Preface, 24,2_5) vhich
^Teyevqpvqv"
Vulcanius translates as follows:
"Haec omnia e Procopii scriptis optime cognoveris et Gelimer vandalum,
carthaginemque urbem atque universam Afrorum regionem Justiniano subiugatum, rursumque Romani imperii partem factam, post multos annos quam,
Bonifacii Gesericique aetate, inde avulsa fuerat".
Now the words "inde avulsa fuerat" are nowhere to be found in the
original and have been produced with the same improbable sleight-of-hand
with rvhich one might expecr a coniuror to produce a rabbit from a hat.
Everything falls into place, horvever, the moment one realizes that n and
tloregov go together ancl that 6orepor,
&16 means the same thing as the
Modern Greek toreos &n6 i. e. n aftef .
Finallv, it is hard rvhen translating a work as long as the Histories, ne,er

2a

to.be misled through momentrarv inattention into omitting, distorting or

simplv misunderstancling even s,hat is perfectlv obvious an.l straishifor22

on

the other hand

have retained the well-know name *Mermeroes" in preference

to the mote cortect but

less familiar form ."Mihr-Mihroe".

2r cf. Mrs. Cameron; op. cit. C. VIII "Classicisrn and Affectation" pages 77-BB.

e,g. in connection with the phrase "rp axo?,on trvo" (IV,23,3) we find the
words "scopulo' in the Latin and 'rocher" in the Frendr translation! Numbers seem
especially liable to mistranslation, which is unfottunate in view of the notorius unreliability even of some of the actaal figures given by ancient authorities. I have made
a special e{ort, therefore, to get my figures right and hope that I have succeeded in
doing so.

#,