By Christopher Francese
This edition of Eutropius is intended for readers of Latin. No full translation is provided, although potentially difficult phrases are translated in the notes. The Latin text conforms to that of B. Bleckmann and J. Groß, Eutropius: Breviarium ab urbe condita (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2018), with the addition of macrons on all long vowels, and occasional slight changes in punctuation and orthography.
The historical notes draw on the excellent English translation with notes by H.W. Bird, Eutropius: Breviarium (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011, orig. 1993), and on the old school edition of J.C. Hazzard, Eutropius Edited for School Use (New York: American Book Company, 1898). The edition of Fabrizio Bordone, Eutropio: Storia di Roma (Santarcangelo di Romagna: Rusconi Libri, 2014) was also consulted. These editors are credited in the notes themselves as appropriate.
Kristin Masters wrote an introduction and original notes on grammatical and cultural matters; she selected and edited notes from the editions of Bird and Hazzard; she selected and translated parallel passages from other ancient authors; and she added many hyperlinks to Allen and Greenough’s Latin Grammar (for points of Latin grammar), Logeion (for lexical matters), Wikipedia (for historical persons), Pleiades (for ancient places), and to translated versions of parallel ancient texts in ToposText or the Perseus Digital Library.
Several Dickinson students made important contributions. Nicholas Morris ('24) wrote an essay on Eutropius' historiographical aims, and a guide to the dating systems employed in the work. Claire Jeantheau (’19) created the web pages in Drupal. Drew Kaplan (‘20) read and critiqued the notes for Books 8–10. Nicholas Morris (’24), Jocelyn Wright (’23), Jack Tigani (‘22), and Ivy Johnson (’24) read and critiqued the notes, edited the vocabulary lists (see below) and translated some parallel texts included in the notes. A full list of contributors can be found on the credits page.
The genesis of the vocabulary lists was briefly as follows. I began by having professionally digitized A.H. Moser’s Index Verborum Eutropianus (Ph.D. Thesis, New York University, 1931) and Hazzard’s edition of Eutropius, which includes a full vocabulary. Moser’s Index provides full citations by Book and chapter for all examples of every dictionary headword (lemma) in the text. For our purposes, Moser’s alphabetical list of lemmas and citations needed to be converted into a list of lemmas ordered by citation, i.e., by Book and chapter of Eutropius. Michael Skalak of Dickinson’s Computer Science Department performed that operation using Java. (For other efforts to convert old print concordances into lemmatized digital texts, see the Concordance Liberation Project).
Once Moser’s data was in sortable spreadsheet, Hazzard’s display lemmas and definitions were added. Location-sorted lists were further processed by Patrick Burns using Python to approximate the running order. Dickinson students Jack Tigani (‘22), Jocelyn Wright (’23), Ivy Johnson (’24), and Nicholas Morris (’24), edited and refined the lists to make sure they were in proper running order. In final editing I refined some of the definitions to modernize and clarify the English.
Funding for the digitization of Moser and Hazzard, and to hire student workers during school breaks, came from the Roberts Fund for Classical Studies at Dickinson College.
I am most grateful to all the contributors for making possible what I am confident will be a useful resource for all students of Latin. I hope in coming years to add images, custom maps, and audio recordings. If you spot an error, or would like to suggest an improvement, please do not hesitate to email DCC at dickinsoncommentaries@gmail.com, or reach out to me directly at francese@dickinson.edu.
Carlisle, Pennsylvania, December 27, 2023
Cover Image: Panel with Warrior Resting (Late Roman/Early Byzantine, 4th–6th century), detail. New York, Metropolitan Museum, Accession Number: 2021.37.5. (Image in the Public Domain). "Carved in relief on the convex side of a bone panel, a male warrior leans heavily to his left side as though resting on his shield and spear. His face, seen in three-quarter view, angles downward as though he is indisposed because of sleep or injury. He wears only in a long cape that gathers across the chest and drapes behind the body, revealing his nakedness from the waist down. This panel recalls classical ideals of heroism and male beauty that remained popular throughout the late Roman world."