Talk:Moral letters to Lucilius

Copies can be found on Archive.org: Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3. They're Loeb Classical Library editions, so they're bilingual. Also, Loeb editions of this era were frequently bowdlerized; if this one has been, then it would be nice if locations were so noted.--Prosfilaes (talk) 18:14, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

On the subject of Bowdlerization, Seneca is relatively prudish, so he doesn't usually need to be censored. I know of one instance where Gummere does this (which he admits to), and that's in Epistle 122.7. Singinglemon (talk) 19:05, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I noticed a (very minor) bit of bowdlerizing in Epistle 66. I've stuck in my own footnote on that page (footnote 16). But I don't know if my own footnotes should be placed among Gummere's like that. Singinglemon (talk) 20:59, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I--User:Prosfilaes--have done a check on Gummere, Seneca, and Loeb in the Gutenberg transcriptions and feel confident in the conclusion that the third volume (the only one published after 1922) was not renewed.--Prosfilaes (talk) 18:14, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes we can be confident that Volume 3 is out-of-copyright. None of the pre-war Loebs ever had their copyright renewed. Whereas modern Loeb translations (such as Aelian's Varia Historia, published 1997) have a formal copyright notice on the front page, reprints of their old translations, including Volume 3 of Seneca's Epistles (I have a 2006 reprint in front of me) have no copyright notice. In other words, Harvard University Press know that they never renewed the copyright, (something they probably regret now). Singinglemon (talk) 19:05, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

It's indicative, but post-1989 printings don't have to have a copyright notice, so it's not probative. The renewals should still be checked, which I'm willing and happy to do, to make sure.--Prosfilaes (talk) 19:50, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Well I had a search for "Seneca" on the Stanford and Rutgers databases, and nothing came up concerning his letters. Are those databases comprehensive enough? Singinglemon (talk) 20:59, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

They only include the book reviews, which is good enough for the Loebs.--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:44, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Corrections

Seneca in Markdown format: https://github.com/vim-voom/Seneca. I also prepared Stewart's De Brevitate Vitae and Basore translations from Loeb 214. I made a bunch of corrections to texts that I originally got from Wikisource, but unfortunately, do not have time to submit them. It should be easy to find my correction by producing a diff between my texts and Wikisource texts. I corrected very many errors in the text of "Moral letters to Lucilius" (originally from Wikisource) with the help of text from loebclassics.com (from Apr 2019). Each correction was verified against book scan. Some representative examples:
Ep.9 (there many instances of missing words):"We are now discussing the question" -> "We are not now discussing the question".
Ep.24 (wrong word): "The grave and wise man" -> "The brave and wise man".
Ep.66 (unneeded capitalization): "gaze upon all its Phenomena" -> "gaze upon all its phenomena".
Ep.96 (footnote): "colentem fata" -> "volentem fata".
Ep.110 (missing italics): "strive not to seem happy" -> "strive not to *seem* happy"
Ep.120 (there are many punctuation errors): "Your letter roamed, over several" -> "Your letter roamed over several"
Schmirmament (talk) 13:30, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I knew there were still issues with this transcription - I've fixed the ones you've listed here. That first type of error - missing words - is especially egregious! Pasicles (talk) 19:21, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

Okay, I've just checked Letter 94 (one of the longer letters) against your version, and there were indeed seven errors to correct. Most are minor, although one involved a change of the word "leap" to "help"! Pasicles (talk) 19:43, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

Edit three: Great! I've now been through all 124 letters comparing and making the necessary corrections (I checked also against the Loeb editions, but there was no need, your corrections were entirely correct). I must have averaged about 4 or 5 corrections per letter. Most were trivial things, like a missing comma or dash, but some were definitely more serious - a missing word, or the wrong word, which either garbled the sentence, or completely reversed its meaning. Thanks a lot for your hard work! Pasicles (talk) 13:03, 10 May 2019 (UTC)