Download PDF | (Dumbarton Oaks Studies) Alice-Mary Talbot, Denis F. Sullivan, George T. Dennis, Stamatina McGrath - The History of Leo the Deacon_ Byzantine Military Expansion in the Tenth Century.
281 Pages
Preface and Acknowledgments
The History of Leo the Deacon presented here in annotated translation is one of the most important sources for the transitional years of the Macedonian dynasty. It covers the reigns of Nikephoros Phokas and John Tzimiskes, a period in which the future Macedonian emperors, Basil II and Constantine VIII, were in their minority, and the empire was ruled by highly successful military officers who had usurped the imperium.
The appearance of this translation has been long delayed, and a few words of explanation are in order. In 1970—1971, Dr. Nicholas Panagiotakes spent a year as a fellow at Dumbarton Oaks working on a critical edition of the Greek text of Leo. For his doctoral dissertation at the University of Athens he had prepared the prolegomena to this edition, consisting of a biographical essay and a discussion of the manuscripts and previous editions. The dissertation was published in 1965 in the Ezetnpts tng Etaipeiag BuCavtwov Laovdeav, vol. 34, under the title Aéwv 6 Aidxovoc, and also appeared as a separate volume (Athens, 1965). In the fall of 1970 Dr. Panagiotakes invited me to prepare an English translation to accompany his Greek text. When I agreed to do so, he sent me a photocopy of his handwritten new Greek text, complete with critical apparatus and fontes et paralleles. | finished a first draft that same academic year, most of which Panagiotakes was able to review before his return to Greece. Subsequently he discovered that de Gruyter, with which he had a contract to publish his text in the Series Berolinensis of the Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, was unwilling to include an English translation, and he therefore released me to publish the translation on its own.
Since my translation was, however, based on Panagiotakes' new edition, with different paragraphing from the Bonn edition of Hase, and with a number of different readings and punctuation, I decided to wait for Panagiotakes' Greek text to appear before publishing my translation. Alas, this never came to pass, since Panagiotakes' interests turned away from Byzantium in the 1970s, and he devoted the rest of his career to research on the post-Byzantine history and literature of his beloved homeland of Crete. After his untimely death in 1997, Prof. Athanasios Markopoulos undertook responsibility for completing the posthumous publication of the Greek text of Leo, and it is my fervent hope that this critical edition will soon see the light of day.
About five years ago, at the urging of some of my colleagues at Dumbarton Oaks and in the Washington area, in particular Professor George Dennis of The Catholic University of America, I decided to make Leo's History the focus of our weekly Byzantine Greek reading group at Dumbarton Oaks. Over a period of eighteen months we read the text and took turns making oral translations into English.This exercise gave me the opportunity to review my translation, and to discuss problem passages with colleagues. To speed up preparation of the final publication, four of us agreed to share the work of annotation and writing the introduction.The initial division of labor was as follows: Stamatina McGrath drafted the preliminary version of notes to Books I and HI, Denis Sullivan Books II and IV, George Dennis Books VI and VII, and myself Books VIII—X. The annotation of Book V was a joint effort. Thereafter Denis Sullivan meticulously reviewed the entire translation and all the notes, and made so many additions, corrections, and suggestions for improvement throughout that he must be considered a coauthor of the translation and all the notes; he is also the principal author of the Introduction.
I undertook the final editorial coordination of our contributions. I should also like to acknowledge the active engagement in this project of Alexander Alexakis, an original member of the team, who had to withdraw during the final phase of preparation, but was an invaluable collaborator in the earlier stages, especially in matters of translation and emendations to the Greek text. Let me add a note of gratitude to the two anonymous readers who carefully reviewed the initial draft of the manuscript and made valuable suggestions for corrections and improvement.
Because of uncertainty about the eventual date of publication of the new Greek edition, I have decided to revert to the Bonn text as the basis for the translation, using Hase's paragraphing. Where, however, I felt that Panagiotakes' edition offered a better reading (based either on a more accurate transcription from the manuscripts, an emendation, or a conjecture), I have adopted it and so indicated in a footnote. In a few cases I have suggested readings different from those of Hase and Panagiotakes.
I should also acknowledge my extraordinary debt to the efforts of Panagiotakes to identify fontes et paralleles, atask undertaken well before the advent of the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, whichhas been so beneficial for Greek philologists. The online version of the 7ZG has enabled our team to identify numerous citations that Panagiotakes did not find, and we have also rejected a number of his fontes as being too far removed from the text of Leo. Nonetheless his labors have greatly eased our work, and we stand in awe and admiration of his deep knowledge of Greek literature.
Last but not least, I would like to express our appreciation to Leslie MacCoull, who served as copy editor, and to the staff of the Dumbarton Oaks Publications Office, especially Joel Kalvesmaki, for their care in preparing the manuscript for publication and shepherding it through the press.
Alice-Mary Talbot Dumbarton Oaks, May 2004
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