"De Emendatione Temporum" has been at the root of modern chronology, i.e. the art of counting the days, connecting ancient and modern dating of documents, and converting dates between calendars.

For centuries this work has been available in libraries for scholars to study.

Since google books published a set of scans of this 1583 work (and later editions of 1598 and 1629) it has become possible for anyone who can download a 75 MByte PDF from the internet to read it.

Unfortunately these scans have a few limitations:

• The scans are occasionally hard to read due to the scanning process: spots, blotches, bits out of focus or moved, fine details that are lost.
• Being mere images of the pages, the texts can not be searched.
• The Latin spelling is irregular, with 'u' and 'v' used interchangeably, and manuscript shorthands such as 'quoq;' for 'quoque' remaining in the typeset book.
• The text is peppered with Greek fragments. These were typeset to immitate the handwriting as closely as possible, making them even harder to read than the typeset Latin.
• There are also (though fewer) fragments in Hebrew, Arabic and other oriental languages, with the same problems as the Greek fragments.
• Most of the book is a wall of text, with no paragraphs and hardly any sectioning.

For the modern reader, this means an examination of this work will be tough going. This project hopes to make the work available to a wider audience, by:

• transcribing to a modern typesetting, with consistent spelling.
• re-publishing the work as a modern electronic book.

File: transscript/de-emendatione-temporum-interpret.tex, the transcript.

Using the scanned original, a version with modern typesetting is made.

• 'v' and 'u' are converted, writing 'u' for a vowel and 'v' for a consonant.
• Ligatures are expanded: 'æ' becomes 'ae', 'œ' becomes 'oe'
• All long s-s are converted to the modern 's'.
• Shortenings are expanded to full words where practical.
• Quotes in Greek are converted to a modern polytonic writing style with only 25 different lower case glyphs.
• A similar simplification will be done with quotes in other languages.

As the most ambitious goal, we aim for a modern re-publishing as an electronic book. This will include a Table of Contents, extensive index and list of references. Annotations will be added with more detail to quotes given by Scaliger. For example: in Book 1, page 4 (De horis et Partibus Diei Reliquis) in the first sentence he writes:

"ut poëta inquit, Demeret emeritis cum iuga Phoebus equis."

He quotes (without exact reference) the poet Ovid from his Fasti, book IV, phrase 688 (April 19). But the original reads:

"dempserat emeritis iam iuga Phoebus equis."

A full annotation would:

• Give details of what is quoted (Ovid, Fasti IV, phrase 688 [April 19])
• Give an external reference to an on-line document containing the work by Ovid
• Give the original quote from Ovid
• Give a comment on why the quote by Scaliger is different from the original (e.g. "Probably quoted from memory".

In the index there will be links to:

• Ovid
• Fasti IV by Ovid
• Latin quotations
• Errors in quotations

On October 2013 the following copies had become available on Google books:

• 1583 Lutetiae - Jos_Scaliger_J_C_fil_Opus_novum_de_emend.pdf (Bib. Coll. Pictav. S. J.; Bibliothèque S.J., Les Fonteines, 60 - Chantilly)
• 1598 Lugduni - Iosephi_Scaligeri_Iuli_Caesaris_f_Opus_d.pdf (Universiteitsbibliotheek Gent 900000105603)
• 1629 Geneva - Josephi_Scaligeri_Opus_novum_de_emendati.pdf (Bibliotheque de la ville de Lyon)
• 1629 Geneva - Opus_de_emendatione_temporum_hac_postrem.pdf (Universiteitsbibliotheek Gent 900000184892)
• 1629 Genevae - Iosephi_Scaligeri_Iuli_Caesaris_F_Opus_d.pdf (Bibliotheca S. J. Maison Saint-Augustin, Enghien)

As time progresses, more copies will become available on Google Books. In June 2015, a search of "emandatione temporum" on Google books gives 10 results, with 6 of the 4 giving "More editions".

Hopefully we can compile a full list of publications. Possibly we can create an overview of the differences between the editions.

For this transcription we will focus on the latest edition available at the start of the project. Presumably in the latest edition the author will have made the most corrections and additions, and best reflect his intentions.

We will be using 1629 Geneva - Opus_de_emendatione_temporum_hac_postrem.pdf. To allow references to page numbers in the scanned PDF, a copy of this file is included in the source package.