State of The Text
The original poem has not come down to us in any connected form, and is known through quotations in the works of the Neoplatonists.
W. Kroll published an edition arranging all known fragments in order of subject, and this is the basis of most later scholarly work. It does not purport to be a reconstruction of the original poem.
Summaries of the poem (and of the related "Assyrian Oracles", not known from elsewhere) were composed by Psellus, and attempts have been made to arrange the surviving fragments in accordance with these summaries: Westcott's translation (above) is an example of such an attempt. These reconstructions are not generally regarded as having scholarly value, but sometimes surface in theosophical or occult use.
Read more about this topic: Chaldean Oracles
Famous quotes containing the words state of, state and/or text:
“Men cannot conceive of a state of things so fair that it cannot be realized.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“So that the life of a writer, whatever he might fancy to the contrary, was not so much a state of composition, as a state of warfare; and his probation in it, precisely that of any other man militant upon earth,both depending alike, not half so much upon the degrees of his WITas his RESISTANCE.”
—Laurence Sterne (17131768)
“Don Pedro. But when shall we set the savage bulls horns on the sensible Benedicks head?
Claudio. Yes, and text underneath, Here dwells Benedick, the married man?”
—William Shakespeare (15641616)