Gregorii Nysseni in Hexaemeron. Edited by HUBERTUS R. DROBNER.

Abstract

This excellent edition of Gregory's addendum to his brother Basil's great work is an important further step in the modern reinterpretation of Gregory and indeed of the collective achievement of the Cappadocian Fathers. Drobner dedicates it to the memory of the much missed Andreas Spira, to whom, as to Drobner of course also, and to all his modern editors, you might say that the sainted doctor himself owes a debt of gratitude. The edited series of Gregory's writings in which this book belongs was begun by Werner Jaeger in 1920 on a proposal from Wilamowitz eleven years earlier. A hundred and more years do not suffice in modern times for a task completed (unsatisfactorily it must be admitted but much more speedily) in the seventeenth century. In more recent times Forbes produced an improved edition of the In Hexaemeron in 1855 and latterly in 1999 F. X. Risch published a German translation which I have not seen; it has apparently been drawn on, to some extent, by Drobner, who also, of course, takes note of Forbes's edition, standard until the present and inconvenient of access.