The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville

Stephen A. Barney is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine. He edited and annotated Chaucer's Troilus for The Riverside Chaucer (1987) and also as a Norton Critical Edition (2006). He is also the author of The Penn Commentary on 'Piers Plowman', Volume 5 (2006). W. J. Lewis is a translator and editor. Her previous translations include two works by Galen: Hippocrates on the Nature of Man and On the Elements According to Hippocrates and she co-translated On the Properties of Discourse: A Translation of Tractatus de Proprietatibus Sermonum with Stephen Barney, Calvin Normore and Terence Parsons (1997). Jennifer Beach is an independent classics scholar and senior documenter for a software engineering company. She worked for several years at the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae and continues to explore the relationship between classics and computer technology. Oliver Berghof is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at California State University, San Marcos, and Lecturer in Humanities at the University of California, Irvine. His previous publications include Georg Forster: A Voyage Round the World (edited with Nicholas Thomas, 2000).

• Introduction; Correspondence of Isidore and Braulio; The Etymologies: I: Grammar and its parts; II. Rhetoric and dialectic; III. Mathematics, whose parts are arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy; IV. Medicine; V. Laws and the instruments of the judiciary, and chronology; VI. The order of scripture, cycles and canons, liturgical feasts and offices; VII. Gods and angels, prophetic nomenclature, names of the holy fathers, martyrs, clerics, monks, and other names; VIII. Church and synagogue, religion and faith, heresies, philosophers, poets, sibyls, magicians, pagans, gods of the gentiles; IX. Languages of the nations, royal, military, and civic terminology, family relationships; X. Certain terms in alphabetical order; XI. Human beings and their parts, the ages of humans, portents and metamorphoses; XII. Four-footed animals, creeping animals, fish, and flying animals; XIII. Elements, that is, the heavens and the air, waters, the sea, rivers and floods; XIV. Earth, paradise, the regions of the whole globe, islands, mountains, other terms for places, and the lower regions of the earth; XV. Cities, urban and rural buildings, fields, boundaries and measures of fields, roads; XVI. Earthly materials from land and water, every kind of gem and precious stones, ivory likewise, treated along with marble, glass, all the metals, weights and measures; XVII. Agriculture, crops of every kind, vines and trees of every kind, herbs and all vegetables; XVIII. Wars and triumphs and the instruments of war, the forum, spectacles, games of chance and ball games; XIX. Ships, ropes, and nets, iron workers, the construction of walls and all the implements of building, also wool-working, ornaments, and all kinds of clothing; XX. Tables, foodstuffs, drink, and their vessels, vessels for wine, water, and oil, vessels of cooks, bakers, and lamps, beds, chairs, vehicles, rural and garden implements, equestrian equipment.

'This extraordinary mix of encyclopaedia and dictionary must be the most historically important work never to have been translated into English until this fine collaborative work.' Spectator