Archivum Lithuanicum

In 1846, Simonas Daukantas (1793–1864) published his translation of Cornelius Nepos’ Lives of Eminent Commanders (in Lithuanian Giwatas Didiujû Karwaidû, GDKs) at Christian Hintze’s printing press in St Petersburg. This study analyses the orthography in GDKs. There was a previous translation of the book by Daukantas in around 1834 (about 12 years earlier), and most of it survives in the shape of a copy by an anonymous hand. The book was printed from a later manuscript that did not survive. It is obvious that Daukantas had the earlier translation in front of him while preparing the publication. But even if he copied some features of his old orthography, he also often changed the orthography according to his later altered preferences. Another book by Daukantas published the same year (1846) was Pasakas Phedro (PaPhs), a translation of The Fables of Phaedrus. The manuscript of PaPhs was prepared in Daukantas’ own quite renewed orthography (compared to his older manuscript of the same fables Pasakas Padraus from the first half of 1836).