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The Attitudes of the Secular Historians of the Age of Justinian Towards the Classical Past

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2016

J. A. S. Evans
J. A. S. Evans*
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
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Extract

I shall begin with a definition. I am dealing with ‘secular historians,’ and thus I am excluding ecclesiastical history, and chronography. The second of these two genres, chronography, continued a tradition which goes back as far as Thucydides' contemporary, Hellanicus, but under a Christian empire it acquired a Christian bias and dropped any pretence of literary style. ‘Ecclesiastical history,’ which, as far as we know, was invented by Eusebius of Caesarea, and displays a somewhat unclassical passion for documentation, dealt with the church and history as it affected the church. Its presuppositions about historical causation were Christian. The secular historians, on the other hand, continued the classical traditions of historiography begun by Herodotus and Thucydides, and their subject matter was war and politics, and the cross between the two, which was diplomacy.

Type
Miscellany
Information
Traditio , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , 1976 , pp. 353 - 358
Copyright
Copyright © The Fordham University Press 

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References

1 This paper, in a slightly different form, was first presented to the Mediaeval Workshop, 1974, held at the University of British Columbia.Google Scholar

2 See Averil, and Cameron, Alan, ‘Christianity and Tradition in the Historiography of the Late Empire,' Classical Quarterly (CQ) n.s. 14 (1964) 316 ff., Evans, J. A. S., Procopius (New York 1972) 39 ff., Cameron, Cameron, Agathias (Oxford 1971) 75 ff.Google Scholar

3 Thompson, E. A., The Historical Works of Ammianus Marcellinus (Cambridge 1947) passim; ‘Olympiodorus of Thebes,’ CQ 38 (1944) 43 ff.; Matthews, J. F., ‘Olympiodorus of Thebes,’ Journal of Roman Studies 60 (1970) 79 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 This is the conclusion of Thompson, E. A., ‘Priscus of Panium, Fragment Ib,’ CQ 39 (1945) 92 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Wars 2.8.14.Google Scholar

9 Wars 2.20.10.Google Scholar

7 This is the conclusion of Thompson, E. A., ‘Priscus of Panium, Fragment Ib,’ CQ 39 (1945) 92 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Wars 2.8.14.Google Scholar

9 Wars 2.20.10.Google Scholar

10 Anekdota 14.11.Google Scholar

11 Wars 2.9.14; See J. A. S. Evans Procopius 40.Google Scholar

12 Wars 5.11.26; see also 5.14.4, where Silverius is called ‘the high-priest of the city.’Google Scholar

13 Wars 8.25.13; possibly also Anekdota 11.33.Google Scholar

14 We should note that, although Procopius drew his literary models from the classical past, he was well aware of the dangers of excessive adulation. In Wars 8.6.9 he protests against the tendency to treat all ancient sources as sound, while at the same time putting slight value on contemporary evidence. Google Scholar