Chronicon Completed (Finally!)

I have posted the final version of Hippolytus of Rome’s Chronicon here.  Though I essentially finished in 2009, it took me a while to get posted.  I would like to thank Roger Pearse, Nick Nicholas, and Yancy Smith for their help, advice and encouragement.  I would also like to thank my brother and my wife for helping me type up a rather monotonous text!  Still, there are some good interesting bits in it, I can’t say that my translation lacks errors, I’m sure some are there, with all of the hundreds of place names and proper names its nearly impossible to get them all right without a small team of people.  Let me know what you all think of this.

My translation of Hippolytus’ Commentary on Daniel should be posted in the next 4 weeks (I promise!).

Here is my introduction to the text:

Hippolytus wrote his Chronicon in the year 235AD as he himself tells us.  His goal seems to have been threefold: to make a chronology from the beginning of the world up until his present day, to create a genealogical record of mankind, and to create a geographical record of mankind’s locations on the earth.  For his task Hippolytus seems to have made use of the Old Testament, to research the chronology and genealogies, and a nautical dictionary, to research the distances between locations in and around the Mediterranean Sea.

Though Hippolytus published his Chronicon several years after Julius Africanus published his own Chronicon, Hippolytus does not, as far as I can tell, reference his contemporary’s work nor does he seem to write in response to it.  Despite not gaining the level of prestige as Africanus, Hippolytus’ Chronicon seems to have been fairly successful.  Many historians made use of it, such as the author of the Chronography of 354, Epiphanius of Salamis, the author of the Chronicon Paschal, and George Syncellus.

For this translation the GCS (Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller) series number 46 was used.  From lines 1 to 613 the Greek of two manuscripts H1 and H2 were used.  From lines 614-720 the Latin translation from the Liber Generationis 1 of the Chronography of 354 was primarily used.  Whenever this was nonsensical, I attempted to compare it with a German translation of the Armenian or the Liber Generationis 2. From lines 721-741 a Greek fragment was used, and from lines 742-778 the Latin from the Liber Generationis 1 was used again.

The footnotes are not exhaustive, they are meant only to point out difficult readings, suggest possible translations of people groups and locations not found in William Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, and occasionally provide references to other ancient authors.  The maps by Heinrich Kiepert can be used to find many of the people groups and locations mentioned in this work.  These maps are in the public domain can be found on many websites.

The form we have the Chronicon in today contains errors and the reader is cautioned against using Hippolytus’ dates, names, and locations without further research. Additionally, this is my first attempt at translating a work from Greek and Latin into English, and no doubt many of the errors are due to my own inattentiveness and not the editors of the GCS or Hippolytus.

This translation needs one more revision using the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG) database to truly ensure a proper translation, but I do not have the time for such a task at the moment.

I would like to thank Nick Nicholas and Yancy Smith for their help and advice, Roger Pearse for his inspiration, which led me to take up this task, and my brother Mike, for recording my dictation.  Lastly, and most of all, I thank my very pregnant wife, who spent countless hours typing up a work that, by any standard, is not a pleasant read!

T.C. Schmidt

-Update-

I am already noticing errors in my text, so I am noting them and then will incorporate corrections into my next edition.  Nick Nicholas also made several good suggestions which I forgot to include and will put these into the next edition as well.  If any of you notice errors please email them to me.  My address can be found here