Cesti

Iulius Africanus (3rd cent.) is a fascinating writer in a period of transition. Widely travelled, he belongs to the intellectual élite of the second sophistic. His two main works present a similar encyclopedic approach, but very different contents. He can be considered the father of Christian chronography, since he authored the first Christian world chronicle (Chronographiae). However, he also wrote a comprehensive and multifaceted manual of many fields of knowledge, where the religious character is open to debate. The preserved fragments of the Cesti treat military, technical, medical and many other topics. These texts are presented in an entirely new critical edition. The transmission of the texts as well as questions of authenticity are highly complex. Compared to the previous edition (Vieillefond 1970), considerable progress has been reached in terms of both, quantity and quality of the material. Hitherto unknown texts have been included, and in the case of dubious authorship all necessary information is provided for a realistic picture of the transmission. In the introduction, all relevant channels of transmission are discussed. The edition is accompanied by notes and a new English translation.

Die Reihe Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte (GCS) veröffent-licht seit 1897 (zuerst in Leipzig, dann in Berlin, seit 2001 im Verlag Walter de Gruyter) die Er-gebnisse des Akademieprojektes “Griechische Christliche Schriftsteller”, begonnen in der damaligen Königlich Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, fortgeführt in der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Sie bietet in großen kritischen Ausgaben mit historisch orientierenden Einleitungen und Registern diejenigen Werke, die ursprünglich im griechisch-sprachigen Teil des antiken kaiserzeitlichen Christentums entstanden sind und nicht von den anderen großen Editionsreihen herausgegeben werden. Für die ersten drei Jahrhunderte wird dabei Vollständigkeit angestrebt.