Aphorisms 4 and 5 from Ptolemy’s Ὁ Καρπός

Let’s follow our reader through a couple more aphorisms from Ptolemy’s Ὁ Καρπός. Again he glosses most of the Greek with Latin translations and, once again, corrects a couple scribal errors by writing the correct Greek word above the mistake (though he seems to miss a couple other mistakes).

And here’s a transcription of these two aphorisms:

ἡ ἐπιτηδία ψυχὴ πρὸϲ γνωσιν μάλλον τυγχάνει τοῦ ἀληθοῦς ἢ ὁ ἄκροϲ ἀσκήσαϲ τὴν ἐπιστήμην.
δύναται ὁ ἐπιστήμων πολλὰϲ ἀποτρέψασθαι ἐνεργείας τῶν ἀστέρων, ὅτε ἐστὶν ἠδήμων τῆσ φύσεωϲ αὐτῶν, καὶ πρὸ παρὰσκεβασαι ἑαυτὸν πρὸϲ τὰϲ συμπτώσεισ τῶν ἐνεργειῶν.

Our reader seemed to think the “τὰϲ συμπτώσεισ” in aphorism 5 should be “τῆς συμπτώσεως” and made the correction above the Greek. But he didn’t correct the “παρὰσκεβασαι,” which should have been “προπαρὰσκευασαι” (though he glossed it acceptably as “preparare”).

This copy of the text varies in different ways from other copies. Here, for comparison, are aphorisms 4 and 5 from two other manuscripts:

And once again, here are initial English translations of these two aphorisms.