Complete Works XVIII: Against Celsus I-IV (Lommatzsch)

hardly anyone has enriched this art with more monuments. He was considered eloquent in particular and elegant: bold in binding several periods into one, or in separating them, he reworks meanings that he did not always understand according to his own pleasure." I had therefore hoped, relying on the name of such a man, that his translation could be retained by changing and emending a few places whose meaning he had not grasped very well. But when it came to the emendation of these places, and it was discovered that there was hardly any page where he did not depart from the true sense of Origen once or more often, I immediately understood that a new translation could be prepared more easily than the old one could be emended. Add to this that correcting the translation of others seemed as odious as it was troublesome and difficult in itself. For to each man is owed his own praise, his own honor, by us, whose labor they tried to relieve and diminish with their own. Therefore, the work of each translator should be praised by us rather than interpolated, especially if the interpolations are to be frequent. I was revolving these things in my mind when, behold! Master Vincentius Thuillier, joined with me in old friendship, with whom I had shared my emendations of the Greek text, suddenly offered a new Latin translation which he had undertaken both for the sake of testing his own strength and for the sake of gratifying me. I immediately read it greedily and maturely weighed each part against the faith of the Greeks; and since three things are required in a translation—that it be faithful, elegant, and clear—I discovered with great pleasure of mind that none of these gifts were missing in his writing. He does not slavishly adhere to the words, but faithfully expresses the sense, and renders it in such a way that, although sometimes in a different order, never,