Abstract

In one of his latest papers, published the year before his death, Sir Ronald Syme surveyed the modern scholarly literature on ‘The date of Justin and the discovery of Trogus’ and argued that Justin's abbreviated version of the Historiae Philippicae of the Augustanhistorian PompeiusTrogus was composed in the later fourth century, specifically in ‘the vicinity of 390’ not in the Antonine or Severan period, as so many have contended. Syme's central argument was lexicographical: he drew attention to a number of words in Justin's vocabulary which point to a date in the fourth century rather than the second or third.