Translations are indispensable. Very few people have the time to become fluent in every ancient language they need, and without translations most Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic texts would remain inaccessible to almost everyone. But a translation is not the original text. It is a series of decisions made by another person. Usually those decisions are sensible. Sometimes they are excellent. Sometimes a translator has to choose between two meanings because English cannot repr

Ancient texts did not survive because they were written. They survived because people with money, scribes, libraries, and power kept them alive. The same problem applies to how early Christian texts were written and preserved. Writing a book in the Roman Empire was hard. Getting it into circulation was harder. That may sound obvious, but ancient texts are often discussed as if they simply appeared. Someone wrote a history, a speech, a biography, a poem, a philosophical essay,

How Ronald Syme showed how power worked in ancient Rome through texts, inscriptions, and coins.