A Companion to Late Antique Literature

by Scott McGill

  Consularia are for the most part compilations of consular fasti, imperial proclamations, and accounts of local events such as earthquakes, disease, and celestial and meteorological phenomena. While there certainly was an original author who began a single text at the origin of each of these traditions, the traditions quickly ramified as later readers brought their copies up to date. Some traditions became particularly popular and were copied often, and they traveled widely across the empire. As a result, there is no single “author” or even “text” of such works, since that text was constantly being changed in ways that we cannot now see because of the fragmentary nature of our witnesses.

  The Descriptio Consulum is a complex document based upon consular fasti from 509 BCE to 468 CE. It was originally compiled in Trier in ca. 342, with the compilation of a solid block of detailed and dated entries deriving from imperial proclamations and perhaps local calendars between 286 and 337 and a few less detailed entries between 340 and 342 that were added from local knowledge. It is also probable that the earlier material now found before 286 was also included at the time of the original composition: historico‐literary entries, derived, it would seem, from an early Latin chronicle (112 BCE–19 CE); early Christian and martyrological entries (2 BCE–258 CE); and a random assortment of entries relating to imperial history at the end of the third century (261–284). The original text traveled from Trier to Rome (entries for the years 350–355), Constantinople (356–388.1, with a few earlier additions going back as far as 341.2, hence Mommsen’s title of Consularia Constantinopolitana), Spain (388.2–395), Africa (398–405), and Rome (411–423). Different recensions of the Constantinopolitan text between 370 and 388 served as an important source for many later writers in Latin and Greek. Its unique preservation of many otherwise unknown or corrupt dates and unknown or poorly known events makes it of fundamental importance for the chronology of the fourth and early fifth centuries (Burgess 1993, pp. 175–245; Chron. Min. 1, pp. 199–247; Burgess 2000; Burgess and Kulikowski, forthcoming).

  The Consularia Italica is the collective name, not for a surviving text, but for a tradition whose influences can be traced in over 20 later works in Latin and Greek, in Italy, Constantinople, and Alexandria from the fifth to the ninth centuries. The surviving witnesses show that it covered the period between 379 and 495, though it may originally have begun earlier. It would seem to have ended with references to the birth of the Antichrist in 493 and 495. The date of 379 suggests that its narrative was considered in some ways as a continuation of Jerome (below), even though its fasti begin with Julius Caesar. All the surviving witnesses to this tradition that are discussed below retain the original consularia format. The two other major witnesses do not: chapters 36–38 and 48–56 of the Anonymi Valesiani pars posterior and Agnellus’s Liber pontificalis ecclesiae Ravennatis of ca. 850. It was originally compiled in Trier (like the Descriptio) and then Rome, but it was taken to Ravenna in the early fifth century, which seems to have been the home of the main tradition, though at least twice recensions were taken to Alexandria where they were translated into Greek. Theophanes’s Chronographia of 814 is a witness to the earliest of these. The popularity of the Consularia Italica tradition in late antiquity and its immense importance today are both a result of the fact that it is unique in providing a detailed chronology for the western empire from the end of the fourth to the end of the fifth centuries. Without it our chronology for the emperors of this period would be even more opaque than that for the emperors of the third century (Chron. Min. 1, pp. 251–321; Holder‐Egger 1876, pp. 215–368; RE Suppl. 1 (1903), pp. 296–298 (Hartmann); Muhlberger 1990, pp. 23–46; Burgess 2000; Burgess and Kulikowski, forthcoming).

  The name Consularia Vindobonensia describes a recension of the Consularia Italica that extended that work from 496 to ca. 527. The only reasonably complete witnesses to this text are two separate recensions found in a single late fifteenth‐century manuscript (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek 3416), called priora and posteriora by Mommsen, the priora (CVpr) extending from Caesar to 493 and the posteriora (CVpost) from Caesar to 539. The core of the work is fasti from ca. 44 BCE to the end, becoming consularia in 379, where frequent historical entries first begin to appear. The CVpr prefaces its fasti with a list of the seven kings. This common text is the best and most compete witness we have to the final version of the Consularia Italica. The CVpost is highly lacunose and much more corrupt than the CVpr, which is also lacunose between 403 and 455 and 493 to ca. 575 (Chron. Min. I, pp. 263–264, 274‐334; Frick 1892, pp. 375–418; Holder‐Egger 1876, pp 217–232, 238–247; Cessi 1916; Burgess 2000, 2012; Burgess and Kulikowski, forthcoming).

  The Excerpta Sangallensia are an early witness to the complete CVpr tradition made by Bishop Walafrid Strabo in the 830 s (Stiftsbibliothek, St. Gallen 878). They include consuls and historical entries relating to unusual natural phenomena such as earthquakes and plagues between 390 and 572, thus showing that the CVpr must originally have extended to ca. 575 (Chron. Min.1, pp. 298–336; Frick 1892, pp. 421–423; Holder‐Egger 1876, pp. 232–247; Burgess 2012; Burgess and Kulikowski, forthcoming).

  The Consularia Scaligeriana is the third part of the Chronographia Scaligeriana, usually called the Excerpta Latina Barbari or the Barbarus Scaligeri, a Latin translation made in Corbie in the 780 s of an illustrated Greek chronograph compiled probably in Alexandria early in the reign of Justinian I (Bibliothèque nationale, Paris lat. 4884). The original consularia were a heavily augmented Greek translation of an earlier and less corrupt recension of the CVpost. The Chronographia is very closely related to the Chronographia Golenischevensis (below). Like the Consularia Berolinensia, Consularia Marsibergensia, and Consularia Golenischevensia, the consularia of this text were originally illustrated, though the surviving manuscript includes only blank spaces and a few captions. It exists for the years 44 BCE–99 CE and 296–387 (Schoene 1875, appendix VI, pp. 177–239 [still the best edition and the basis for the others]; Frick 1892, pp. lxxxiii–ccx, ccxxi–ccxxii, 184–371; Chron. Min. 1, pp. 274–298 [consularia only]; RE 6.2 [1909], pp. 1566–1576 [= Jacoby 1956, pp. 257–262]; Burgess 2000; Garstad 2012; Burgess 2013; Burgess and Kulikowski, forthcoming).

  The Consularia Golenischevensia is known only from a single incomplete folium from the Chronographia Golenischevensis, an illustrated chronograph of the second or third quarter of the sixth century (often called the “Alexandrian World Chronicle”) that survives in a small collection of broken papyrus fragments copied in the second half of the sixth century (Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow 310/8). It is closely related to the Consularia Scaligeriana (above) and thus the CVpost. It only exists for the years 383–392 (Bauer and Strzygowski 1905; Burgess and Dijkstra 2013; Burgess and Kulikowski, forthcoming).

  The Consularia Hafniensia, called the Auctarium Havniense by Mommsen, is preserved in a unique late twelfth‐century Copenhagen manuscript (Copenhagen, Royal Library 454). In ca. 626 a recension of the Consularia Italica that is very closely related to the Consularia Vindobonensia and had been extended to 523 was interpolated into and after a copy of the chronicle of Prosper along with excerpts from the Liber Pontificalis, the chronicle epitome of Isidore, and other Gallic sources. The text for the years 458 to 473 is now missing. This text was continued with a short narrative account from the death of Theoderic, also heavily dependent on Isidore and a known continuation of Isidore, down to 619, with a concluding sentence to 626 and an interpolated date of 639/640 at the end. The text between 475 and 489 exists in duplicate and triplicate versions, the remnants of attempts by the original author (pre‐626) to improve and flesh out the bare entries of the source into a narrative, as was done in the Anonymus Valesianus. As a result, the extra material in these expanded entries is highly suspect (Chron. Min. 1, pp. 266–271, 298–339; Holder‐Egger 1876, pp. 259–268; Cessi 1922; Muhlberger 1984 [with translation]; Burgess and Kulikowski, forthcoming).

  The Consularia Marsiburgensia occupies the lower half of a mid‐eleventh�
�century parchment folium preserving three columns covering the years 411–413 (no consuls for 412); 421–423 (no consuls for 422); 427–429; 434–437; 439 (illustration only)–443; and 452–454 (Merseburg Cathedral Chapter House Library 202). This fragment is our purest and oldest witness to the Consularia Italica tradition and fills an important lacuna in the tradition. As noted above, many entries are illustrated with stereotypical drawings (Bischoff and Koehler 1939; Burgess and Kulikowski, forthcoming).

  The Paschale Campanum is a continuation of the 466 continuation of the Vatican epitome of Prosper (Vatican Library, Reginae 2077, copied in 585). It is a combination of a recension of the Consularia Italica from 464 to 504 and an annotated Campanian recension of the Easter table of Victorius of Aquitaine from 464 to 566, to which was attached the preface to a completely different chronological work that covered Creation to 464. It was first compiled in 543, probably in Vivarium, and later extended many times down to 613. The most interesting entries concern the birth of the Antichrist (493 and 496) and two eruptions of Mount Vesuvius (505 and 512) (Chron. Min. 1, pp. 305–334, 492–493, 744–750; Troncarelli 1989; Burgess and Kulikowski, forthcoming).

  The Consularia Berolinensia survives for the years 251–273, 306, 312–338, with 10 historical entries and four illustrations, written in two columns on one side of a single damaged piece of fifth/sixth‐century parchment in Berlin. This is an odd text, since it is a Greek translation of two unrelated Latin traditions: consular fasti that are closely related to the precursor of the fasti found in the Consularia Vindobonensia and Prosper with historical entries that, for the most part, derive from a Greek translation of the Descriptio Consulum, whence, therefore, must come the illustrations (Lietzmann 1937; Burgess and Dijkstra 2012; Burgess and Kulikowski, forthcoming).

  Cassiodorus, the famous author and statesman of the Italian Gothic court, wrote his consularia for presentation to the consul Eutharicus on 1 January 519. They cover the period from Creation to 519. Although it is always referred to as a chronicle, it is, in fact, minimalist consularia with a very short account of the period between Creation and 510 BCE appended to the beginning. The unique consular list, derived chiefly from Livy and Victorius of Aquitaine, has been lightly annotated in the manner of consularia with text from Jerome, Eutropius, Prosper, and a unique recension of the Consularia Italica also used by Paul the Deacon (Chron. Min. 2, pp. 111–161; Klaassen 2010).

  The Consularia Caesaraugustana is a collection of excerpts covering the years 451–567, preserved only as notes copied no later than the early eighth century into the margins of a now lost manuscript of Victor of Tunnuna and John of Biclar (below). Although the style is similar to earlier consularia, the content does not derive from imperial proclamations, though the nature of the original text is difficult to determine since the excerptor was chiefly interested in Gothic history. It probably represents a later continuation of earlier consularia like the Descriptio Consulum (Chron. Min. 2, pp. 221–223; Cardelle de Hartmann 2001, 79*–80*, 115*–124*, 4–47, 61[entries in italics], 95–109; Burgess and Kulikowski, forthcoming).

  11.3 Chronicles

  All of what most readers would consider to be typical late antique chronicles are the direct descendants of Eusebius’s Chronici canones.

  The Chronographia and Chronici canones of Eusebius of Caesarea were a two‐part chronological work presenting in volume 1 the raw material and sources for composing a chronology and in volume 2 the compilation and synthesis of that material into a universal chronicle covering the years 2016 BCE to 325 CE. This second volume marks the confluence of three distinct streams of Greek chronography: Hellenistic chronicles, Christian apologetic chronology, and canones (regnal lists), of which Claudius Ptolemy’s Royal Canon is the most famous example. Strangely, it marks both the end of the Hellenistic chronicle tradition in Greek and the beginning of the late antique and medieval chronicle traditions in Latin and Syriac (see Burgess and Kulikowski 2013, pp. 99–131; Burgess, in press).

  The Canones was not well received in the Greek world, chiefly because its columnar format required too much space and was therefore too expensive to maintain; because it was too complicated to copy accurately and was therefore open to corruption; and because its antimillenarian chronology went against the great tide of chronological thinking at the time. It was, for the most part, attacked and reworked, chiefly in the fourth century. In spite of this, its impact on later Greek chronography was enormous, since Eusebius’s individual chronologies became the de facto standard against which all other chronologies were measured. In addition, its universal and compact nature spearheaded the shift away from full blown narrative history to the more abbreviated historical forms that dominated later Byzantine historiography. It had no imitators that we know of in Greek (Schoene 1866, 1875; Gutschmid 1889; Keseling 1927‐28; Mosshammer 1979; Croke 1982; Adler 1992; Burgess 1997; Witakowski 1999–2000; Burgess 1999, pp. 21–109, 2006; Armenian translation: Karst 1911; Greek fragments of Chronographia: Cramer 1839, pp. 118–163).

  Jerome produced his augmented and extended Latin translation of Eusebius’s Chronici canones, in 380–381, in the lead‐up to the Council of Constantinople. It seems to have become immediately popular. The Descriptio Consulum predates Jerome by about 40 years, and so it would seem that the West was already experimenting with chronicles and ready for the reintroduction of a Latin chronicle based on Hellenistic exemplars, a genre that appears to have been moribund in Latin since Nepos and Atticus in the first century BCE (Burgess and Kulikowski 2013, pp. 91–97; Cornell 2013, sections 33 and 45).

  Jerome’s major sources for his additions and continuation were (1) a compendium of Roman Republican history from the earliest inhabitants of Italy, used also by Eutropius; (2) Enmann’s famous Kaisergeschichte; (3) a Constantinopolitan recension of the Descriptio Consulum to 370; (4) the Continuatio Antiochiensis, a Greek continuation of Eusebius down to 350 (Burgess 1999, pp. 113–305); (5) Suetonius’s De Viris Illustribus; and (6) a similar work, covering famous writers of the reign of Constantine. There were also other nonhistorical sources, such as earlier patristic writings and contemporary ecclesiastical documents, as well as his own knowledge.

  There are two standard editions of Jerome’s Chronici canones: Rudolf Helm’s of 1956 (the first edition of which originally had appeared in two handwritten volumes in 1913 and 1926) and John Knight Fotheringham’s of 1923. Helm’s edition is the most useful and easily cited, but Fotheringham’s has a better text and is more attractive (Helm 1956; Fotheringham 1923; Schöne 1900 [out of date]; Helm 1929; Kelly 1975, pp. 72–75; Mosshammer 1979, pp. 37–73; Donalson 1996; Burgess 1999, pp. 90–98; Burgess 2002; Vessey 2010).

  Prosper of Aquitaine, a well‐known supporter of St. Augustine from Marseille or its environs, first composed a continuation of Jerome’s Chronici canones in 433. Instead of attaching his continuation to the end of Jerome, as later chroniclers would, he composed a slightly augmented epitome of that work to take its place, adding a short account from Creation to the birth of Abraham. Mommsen’s mistaken title of the chronicle as a whole (Epitoma Chronicon) is actually just a reference to this epitome in the manuscripts’ preface. This continuation he himself continued in 445 and again in 455, the latter existing in two recensions and involving extensive revision to earlier material. There is no evidence for an edition of 451. Prosper shows the great influence of consularia in his substitution of Jerome’s regnal years with consular dates.

  Even though it is still often said that Prosper worked in Rome for Pope Leo, there is no credible evidence for any connection with Leo (Markus 1986, Salzman 2015), and errors of fact in the chronicle—e.g. the death of Valentinian and the date of the Council of Chalcedon, and his attack on Leo at the very end—show that he could not have been in Rome working for Leo.

  The only modern edition is marred by Mommsen’s belief that Prosper never revised his work and by his consequent failure to publish different texts for the two surviving editions. Prosper’s chronicle was recomm
ended along with Marcellinus’s by Cassiodorus in his Institutes, and after Jerome it was the most popular and well known of all the late antique chronicles during the Middle Ages (Chron. Min. 1, pp. 343–485 [486–493, the continuations, for which see Burgess and Kulikowski, forthcoming]; Holder‐Egger 1876, pp. 15–90; Valentin 1900, pp. 195–204, 411–441; RE 23.1 [1957], 880–997, esp. 894–896 [Helm]; Markus 1986; Muhlberger 1990, pp. 48–135; Hwang 2009 [biography]; translations: De Paor 1993, pp. 72–87 [very poor, from the PL edition]; Murray 2003, pp. 62–76 [excerpts]).

  The anonymous Gallic Chronicleof 452 is a continuation of Jerome, written in Valence or Marseille and attributed to Prosper in the manuscripts. It is a pessimistic account of the collapse of Gaul and the entire Roman Empire in the face of barbarian invasion and the spread of heresy, and, as such, it is a valuable and unique window into the events of and provincial mindset during the middle of the fifth century. There are three different groups of manuscripts, all descending from a single exemplar of the sixth or seventh century. With the exception of Sigibert of Gembloux, who used it as a major source for his famous chronicle, no medieval author presents any direct knowledge of this work (Chron. Min. 1, pp. 617–125, 646–662; Burgess 2001a; Holder‐Egger 1876, pp. 91–20, 324–327; Muhlberger 1990, pp. 136–192; Murray 2003, pp. 76–85 [translation]).

  As bishop of Aquae Flaviae in Gallaecia (modern Chaves in northern Portugal) Hydatius played a leading role in defending his city and territory against the depredations of the Sueves, having been sent to Gaul on an embassy to Aëtius in 431–432. He completed his chronicle in 468/469, and it begins in 379, in continuation of Jerome, with a typical account of the history of the Roman Empire. As the chronology advances, events in Spain begin to take center stage. It ends focused almost entirely on a decidedly isolated and battered post‐imperial Gallaecia, thus making it the earliest extant example of post‐imperial (and thus medieval) literature. The situation seemed so hopeless that Hydatius believed that the end of the world was approaching (in 482) and structured his work with an eye to demonstrating this. The chronicle was used by a number of later chroniclers, like the author of the Gallic Chronicleof 511, Isidore, Fredegar, and Sigibert (Chron. Min. 2, pp. 3–35; Burgess 1989; Muhlberger 1990, pp. 193–312; Burgess 1993; Cardelle de Hartmann 1994; Murray 2003, pp. 85–98 [translated excerpts]).