Gildas De Excidio Brittaniae [Paperback]

Gildas (Author), J. A. Giles (Translator)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: British Amer Books (June 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0899790143
• ISBN-13: 978-0899790145
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,856,623 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Unsatisfactory for scholarly use, October 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Gildas De Excidio Brittaniae (Paperback)

As the other reviewer notes, it is an incomplete version, lacking the Epistle addressed to the five tyrants. Furthermore, certain passages in Giles' translation seem to be shaped by the academic studies of his time, rather than a direct translation.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars aren't Penguin ashamed of themselves?, May 16, 2003

By 

F. P. Barbieri "Fabio Paolo Barbieri" (London UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gildas De Excidio Brittaniae (Paperback)

This translation was first published in 1844. It is, as the other reviewers pointed out, incomplete, missing one of the most important pieces - the peroration to the Five Tyrants. Gildas himself wrote in extraordinarily complicated and idiomatic (if grammatically perfect) Latin, whose understanding has greatly improved (as if you couldn't guess) in the years since 1844, and certainly needs a better translation. And as if that wasn't enough, there are at least two more recent and perfectly functional translations, Williams (1899) and Winterbottom (1978), the earlier of which is out of copyright, perfectly available and has a commentary parts of which are still valuable. So why did Penguin resurrect this prehistoric oddity? They must be mad.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars It's not the whole book!!!!!!!!, May 17, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Gildas De Excidio Brittaniae (Paperback)

This is the J.A. Giles translation, written in the nineteenth century, but it isn't the whole text! It includes the history, but not the part addressed to the five tyrants!