Friday, August 21, 2015

English Translation of "On the Plethron"

After much searching I finally found one of the two translations of Libanius' Oration X, "On the Plethron". The two versions were a French translation by Jean Martin and the English translation was by Glanville Downey. The latter apparently dated from 1960 but I could not find it anywhere until I stumbled on a link to his work:

  1. A History of Antioch in Syria: From Seleucus to the Arab Conquest, by Glanville Downey, originally published: Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1961.
And there as one of the appendices was the translation. 

I have written on this structure before so finally having the text in English is a great help. The Plethron was a form of wrestling arena and was probably located near (or in) the Forum of Valens and was used for the Olympic Games that were held in Antioch.

I pdfed it and uploaded it here .




1 comment:

Unknown said...

I have just come to your ANTIOCHIPEDIA site via AWOL. I have a copy of Downey's "History of Antioch in Syria . . ." in my library which I had photocopied years ago whilst I was preparing an M.Litt. dissertation on the Alexandrian Modern Greek poet Konstantinos Kavafis. He has set many of his historically based poems in a Hellenistic setting and Antioch is one such location. I have visited the city myself (on May Day 2012)although not for long enough to do much more than the Museum and the cave church of St Peter on the slope of Mt Sipylos. Anyway, I have archived this edition of AWOL and will happily go through each year's offerings. With all best wishes, keith G. Walker (Dr.), 13 december 2016.