Paeanius’s Greek translation of Eutropius’s Breviarium

Paeanius’s Greek translation of Eutropius’s Breviarium is a project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG – project no. 555897292) aiming to create a new critical edition (with German translation, notes and indices) as well as a philological study on a remarkable example of Greek literary translation from Latin. Created only ten years after the Latin Breviarium around 379 CE, Paeanius’s Metaphrasis is one of the only examples from antiquity of a near-contemporary translation of a non-Christian literary work from Latin into Greek. And it is the only translation of this work to stand the test of time, as two later translations by Capito of Lycia (around 500 CE) and an Anonymus (before 800 CE) are only attested in fragments, whereas Paeanius’s version survives in a number of manuscripts.

The project, carried out by Jonathan Groß and Alex Savinelli in the virtual research environment of the Göttingen Psalter Edition, will not only procure the first critical edition based on a thorough examination of all the textual witnesses. It will also produce the first translations into modern languages (German and Italian, the latter by Mr. Savinelli) as well as the first in-depth philological commentary of the Metaphrasis, which is the subject of Mr. Savinelli’s upcoming PhD thesis.