De operatione daemonum

JEAN FRANÇOIS BOISSONADE SENDS GREETINGS TO THE READER.

The same reason that recently drew me to edit Theophylactus Simocatta, Aeneas of Gaza, and Zacharias Boissonade refers to his previous editions of Byzantine and Late Antique authors has now led me to publish Psellus’s book On the Operation of Demons: its rarity. For I would not want anyone to imagine that I suffer from a singular admiration for such authors. I frequently publish authors who are not good—even bad ones—and I myself am perfectly aware that they are not good, or even bad. However, since even in their "infancy" original: "infantia"; likely referring to the perceived decline or "childishness" of later Greek style compared to Classical antiquity they ought to be regarded as instruments of erudition and learning that are not entirely to be despised, it is of great interest to scholars that they be available to read, and therefore that copies of them be renewed by the press from time to time. Since the year 1615, when the edition by Gilbert Gaulmin appeared, only one person has been found—Hasenmüller—to reprint the book at Kiel original: "Kiloniae" in the year 1688, but with such extreme carelessness that he hardly deserves the name of an editor. Indeed, he contributed nothing new, except for new typographical errors, of which Gaulmin’s edition had already been most fertile ¹). As for myself, what I—

¹) "Michael Psellus . . . wrote the Dialogue On the Opera-
"tion of Demons; a dialogue in which, in its own genre,
"scarcely anything more elegant has appeared . . . . . He is certainly worthy—