Iamblichus, Proclus and friends

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Andriko
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Iamblichus, Proclus and friends

Post by Andriko »

Hi all,

I am trying to source physical Greek texts of things which are surprisingly hard to find (even in English) - not just Iamblichus, Proclus (and Psellus) but things generally on the late antiquity period, as well as other more obscure philosophical and theological texts and commentaries (and things such at the 'Oneirokritica' by Artemidorus).

Does anyone know any publishing house which specialises in this sort of thing?

There is the Prometheus Foundation, but it's selection of Greek texts is small, and Teubner have a few which are for the most part hard to come by and very expensive, and I have yet to find an easy contents/index of the Patrologica Graeca to hand pick individual volumes (assuming it has any of the things I want).

The only other alternative might be to start loitering in the British Library, but I am not sure if my Greek is good enough to justify that just yet.

Thanks,

A

Hylander
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Re: Iamblichus, Proclus and friends

Post by Hylander »

You're probably aware that Proclus' commentary on Plato's Parmenides is available in three recently published, expensive volumes in the Oxford Classical Tests series. Beyond that, I'm frankly of no help.
Bill Walderman

Andriko
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Re: Iamblichus, Proclus and friends

Post by Andriko »

Hylander wrote: Wed Dec 04, 2019 4:23 am You're probably aware that Proclus' commentary on Plato's Parmenides is available in three recently published, expensive volumes in the Oxford Classical Tests series. Beyond that, I'm frankly of no help.

I wasn't aware of this, so thanks for the info!

A

Andriko
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Re: Iamblichus, Proclus and friends

Post by Andriko »

In an attempt to answer my own question (and to help anyone else) this (ancient) thread has some useful links for book hunting which I will now explore:

viewtopic.php?t=15157

Hylander
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Re: Iamblichus, Proclus and friends

Post by Hylander »

You might also try Abebooks, which I think is owned by Amazon. It offers a large selection of used books from booksellers around the world. Many of the books on offer are cheap reprints of scarce books. The reprints are often produced in India (not to impugn the Indian publishing industry, but that's just a fact) and are of poor quality, with missing and illegible pages, but that may in some cases be your only hope for obtaining these items outside a very well-stocked reference library.

https://www.abebooks.com/?&cm_mmc=ggl-_ ... 3jEALw_wcB
Bill Walderman

markcmueller
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Re: Iamblichus, Proclus and friends

Post by markcmueller »

Based on buying a single book from an Indian publisher, I can say that the book is quite well done. No illegible pages, not even illegible words. Unfortunately I don't recall the publisher. It would be nice to have a place where people could post reviews of the work of reprinters so we could figure out which ones are more careful.

Andriko
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Re: Iamblichus, Proclus and friends

Post by Andriko »

I have a copy of a work by Zosimos from a reprinter, which is actually quite good, so I am not too worried about buying them - they are quite cheap anyway, so it's not a big deal if there is a problem, considering there seems to be few alternatives.

I will definatley make more use of abebooks, I tend to forget that it is there!

@Mark,

A thread where we could review them would be quite good. It would also be useful to discuss the actual contents of them, as there are rarely proper product descriptions of them, and some of my hesitation of buying them previously has been that I am not sure if what I am buying will be in Greek or Latin!

cb
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Re: Iamblichus, Proclus and friends

Post by cb »

Hi, I'd recommend that, instead of looking for a reprint already made and taking your chances, you find a book on archive.org and have it made up into a hardcopy book by a printer and binder online.

I've done this several times—for e.g. the three volumes of Donovan's Theory of Advanced Greek Prose Composition, which I wanted bound into a single leather-bound volume with gold leaf and leather tooling, a silk ribbon as a bookmark, printed on quality paper etc. I've done the same for e.g. Goodwin 1897 on the moods and tenses of Greek verbs, still one of my favourite classics reference books, and some other books.

If you look around online there are lots of people online who can do this for you.

Cheers, Chad

Andriko
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Re: Iamblichus, Proclus and friends

Post by Andriko »

Thanks Chad, that might actually be a good solution.

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Dante
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Re: Iamblichus, Proclus and friends

Post by Dante »

Dodd's edition of Proclus' "Elements of Theology" is excellent and theres even a pdf version to download if you look.

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