It is customary to consider late Imperial historiography as a barren waste of meagre and inaccurate chronicles and incompetent rhetorical epitomes, all overshadowed by the giant figure of Ammianus Marcellinus, the greatest literary genius, as E. Stein has called him , between Tacitus and Dante. In fact, however, the fifth century A.D. produced at least one writer who was, in the words of Niebuhr, ‘second to no historian even of the best ages in talent, good faith and wisdom; elegant and (...) very pure in style, he justly acquired praise and glory both among contemporaries and succeeding ages’. Niebuhr was referring to Priscus of Panium in Thrace, but Priscus was a member of a school of historical writing which had been founded earlier in the fifth century by Olympiodorus, an historian of scarcely less merit than Priscus and author of what J. B. Bury called ‘a highly important work’. Since even Schmid-Stahlin are not able to refer to a single essay or mono-graph on Olympiodorus, it may not be amiss to assemble the facts which are known about him and to try to discover, so far as the scanty materials permit, what sort of man he was and what sort of work he produced. (shrink)

Since it is only natural that lovers of a great poet's work should seek to defend their favourite from the charge of plagiarism, most of the scholars who have discussed the problem of the relationship between the Medeas of Neophron and Euripides have, whether consciously or unconsciously, approached their task in no very impartial spirit. Yet the prejudice against acknowledging Euripides' indebtedness to his predecessor is an unreasonable one, for a great tragedy or a great work of art of any (...) kind must be aesthetically judged without regard to its forerunners. For instance, we do not think any the worse of Antony and Cleopatra or of its author when we notice that ‘The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne’, etc., and many other fine passages in that play are taken almost verbatim from Sir Thomas North. If we bear in mind then that whatever the result of our inquiry it will not affect adversely the reputation of Euripides' great work, we cannot fail to be impressed by the tenuous nature of the arguments by which scholars have convinced themselves of the chronological priority of Euripides' Medea as against Neophron's. (shrink)

Procopius, Bell. Goth. 8.20 , gives us information about Britain which is of the first importance, but I have not seen a convincing interpretation of what he says. Since the standard English translation, that of H. B. Dewing in the Loeb series , includes a number of unfortunate mistakes I rive a literal translation of some of Procnnius' sentences.

Procopius,Bell. Goth. 8.20, gives us information about Britain which is of the first importance, but I have not seen a convincing interpretation of what he says. Since the standard English translation, that of H. B. Dewing in the Loeb series, includes a number of unfortunate mistakes I rive a literal translation of some of Procnnius' sentences.

Although students of the fifth century A.D. have not been slow to recognize the merits of the ͉στορα Βυζαντιακ of Priscus, few efforts seem to have been made to under-stand this historian's methods of composition. The purpose of the present note is to indicate that the literary fashions of his time have exercised an unfortunate influence on at least one part of Priscus' work.

It is, I think, generally believed that the last oracle delivered at Delphi was that given to Oreibasios announcing the inability of Apollo to prophesy there again. This oracle begins with the line: επατε τ βασιλϊ· χαμα πσε δαδαλος αλ and has been translated by Swinburne as The Last Oracle. Of it Myers wrote: ‘ the last fragment of Greek poetry which has moved the hearts of men, the last Greek hexameters which retain the ancient cadence, the majestic melancholy flow.’ (...) But there is evidence which suggests that this was, in fact, not the last prophetic utterance of the Pythian god, and no ancient authority implies that it was. (shrink)

Zosimus is speaking in this passage of the activities of Alaric in Aemilia as he tried to win Italian support for his puppet emperor, Priscus Attalus. ‘The other cities he won over with no trouble; but Bologna he besieged, and when it held out for many days and he was unable to take it, he went to the Ligurians, forcing them, too, to accept Attalus as emperor.

Zosimus is speaking in this passage of the activities of Alaric in Aemilia as he tried to win Italian support for his puppet emperor, Priscus Attalus. ‘The other cities he won over with no trouble; but Bologna he besieged, and when it held out for many days and he was unable to take it, he went to the Ligurians, forcing them, too, to accept Attalus as emperor.