XVI PREFACE.
in the manuscript A appears to be of a good antiquity, but contains several bad readings. The aim of the ovidnedl translator appears to have been to make the work as brief as possible, so much so that, without the more discursive | encomium of 'heodotus, it would have been exceedingly difficult to translate portions of it at all. The name of the Coptic translator of the martyrdom attributed to Pasikrates | is not mentioned in the manuscript, nor have I been able to find an allusion in the encomium of Theodotus, Bishop of Ancyra, to any other work on St. George save the en- comium upon him attributed to Uheodosius, Bishop of Jeru-— salem. If this latter encominm, ora Greek original, was : really written by Theodosins it is a very interesting fact, and takes us back to within 150 years of the time when Saint George is said to have been martyred. The enco- mium upon Saint George by Theodotus is clearly based upon an older work, and the original of the Coptic text im A might very well be the older work. It is a significant faet that many of the passages in it which offer difficulties to the modern translator, are either omitted entirely from the eucomium by Theodotus, or are paraphrased. The Greek texts of the encomiums by Simeon Metaphrastes, Andrew of Crete, and Gregory of Oyprus, appear to haye been hased upon some such account of the martyrdom of Saint George as that offered to us by the Coptic text. The Arabic version in A is, on the whole, very good; but at times the translator paraphrased the Coptic so loosely that these parts of his work do not help us to understand the original Coptic. In the spelling of proper names he followed
