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.

The retired Byzantine bureaucrat, Zosimus, wrote his New History in the early sixth century. This work is not only one of the primary sources for the history of the Later Roman Empire in the fourth and early fifth centuries a.d., but it is also the primary witness to the now fragmentary Histories of Eunapius of Sardis which it faithfully epitomizes. In the last part of the New History which depends upon Eunapius, two lacunae have been detected which are of (...) interest with respect to the original texts of both authors. (shrink)

In a recent article, Dr. A. F. Norman has attributed to Eunapius the authorship of a fragment in Suidas , which clearly relates to the siege of Maiozamalcha. His arguments are cogent and must, I think, be accepted. Some slight additional support for the attribution is provided by the fact that it contains the adverb of which, as Vollebregt pointed out, Eunapius was particularly fond. Norman compares this fragment with the relevant passages in Ammianus Marcellinus and Zosimus and points (...) out that if the attribution is correct, ‘now, and for the first time, we have a reference to the same incident of this campaign from the narratives of Ammianus, Eunapius, and Zosimus’. (shrink)

Zosimus, after recording the foundation and immense growth of Constantinople, introduces a digression directed towards his purpose of justifying paganism against Christianity. ‘It has often indeed occurred to me to wonder how, when the city of the Byzantines has grown, so that no other can compare with it for prosperity and size, there was no prophecy delivered from the gods of our predecessors about its development to a better fortune. With this thought in mind I have turned over many (...) volumes of histories and collections of oracles, and with difficulty I happened upon one oracle said to be of the Sibyl of Erythrae or of Phaennis of Epirus. Nicomedes, the son of Prusias, put his confidence in this oracle, and interpreting it in an advantageous sense he took up war against his father, Prusias, at the persuasion of Attalus.’ Zosimus proceeds to quote twenty-one lines of hexameter verse, which have come down in a rather corrupt state, but of which the general sense is reasonably clear. They consist mainly of an obvious post eventum forecast of the Gallic invasion of Asia Minor in the third century B.C. (shrink)

This passage seems to have escaped identification so far. This is somewhat surprising, since it clearly refers to an incident at the sack of Maiozamalcha during Julian's Persian campaign which has been much discussed by editors ind critics of Ammianus and Zosimus. The reason may well be that in some ilder editions of Suidas the name appears as.

Augustine’s Epistulae 23A*, 23*, and 22*, written in late 419 and early 420, present his involvement in the dispute concerning the translation of Honorius to Caesarea Mauretaniae (modern Cherchell), a city Augustine had visited in September 418 while fulfilling a commission from Zosimus of Rome. The translation of bishops from one church to another had been condemned by the 325 Council of Nicaea. The three letters are difficult to interpret because the information to his three correspondents (Possidius of Calama, (...) Renatus, a monk of Caesarea Mauretaniae, and Alypius of Thagaste, who was in Italy at the time) seems to differ. A careful reading reveals that not only did Augustine’s knowledge of the situation change over time, but that the stress he placed on differing elements of that situation also changed depending upon the correspondent. The letters also disclose the involvement of Boniface I of Rome, Zosimus’ successor, and the complex relationship of the African churches with the bishop of Rome, especially in the matter of judicial appeal. What is suggested here is that Augustine, without saying so, seemed to be aware of the criteria Boniface had employed in another translation controversy, which was the approved translation of Perigenes as bishop of Corinth, and that, if applied to Honorius, this would lead the Roman bishop to reach a very different conclusion. (shrink)

Republican sacrifices held at the Tarentum in the Campus Martius constitute part of the lineage of the imperial ludi saeculares. Through an investigation of fragmentary and sometimes corrupt historical texts pertaining to the ludi saeculares, especially Verrius Flaccus, Varro, Valerius Antias, Valerius Maximus, Zosimus, and Plutarch, this article demonstrates that the Tarentum sacrifices were originally called ludi Tarentini, and were a cult of the Valerian gens that came under civic supervision in 249 bce. These ludi Tarentini were not associated (...) with the concept of performance once per saeculum until Augustus created the ludi saeculares from Republican models in 17 bce. (shrink)

The history of the terms ‘elixir’ and ‘alchemy’ seems paradoxical; derived from Greek, the Arabic al-iksīr signified a dry powder capable of transforming base metals into gold or silver. Evolving through the European languages, elixir has come to mean a magic liquid that can be ingested to cure illness. The second term, al-kīmiyāʼ, which was in its Arabic beginnings almost synonymous with elixir, took a different turn and changed its meaning from a miraculous substance into an abstract noun connoting the (...) art of alchemy. This article intends to show that these changes of meaning are linked to inevitable interrelations between the two synonyms and, consequently, the generally assumed etymology of the Arabic alkīmiyāʼ from the seemingly corresponding Greek expression χυμεία must be questioned. Of particular interest is the hitherto overlooked fact that al-kīmiyāʼ ends in a glottal stop, indicated by the hamza and being a consonant in its own right, which ultimately points to a non-Greek origin. (shrink)

A. F. Norman has recently suggested that a hitherto overlooked passage in Suidas is a fragment from the history of Eunapius of Sardis. He is clearly correct in referring the passage to an incident at the siege of Maiozamalcha during the Persian campaign of the emperor Julian, but I am not so sure that he is right in ascribing it to Eunapius, or in the conclusions he draws from this ascription. I give in parallel columns the accounts of Ammianus Marcellinus, (...) Zosimus, and the passage from Suidas, together with a further version of the incident, unfortunately without names, from the pen of Libanius. (shrink)

A. F. Norman has recently suggested that a hitherto overlooked passage in Suidas is a fragment from the history of Eunapius of Sardis. He is clearly correct in referring the passage to an incident at the siege of Maiozamalcha during the Persian campaign of the emperor Julian, but I am not so sure that he is right in ascribing it to Eunapius, or in the conclusions he draws from this ascription. I give in parallel columns the accounts of Ammianus Marcellinus, (...) Zosimus, and the passage from Suidas, together with a further version of the incident, unfortunately without names, from the pen of Libanius. (shrink)