A Companion to Late Antique Literature

by Scott McGill

  The methodological difficulty in reconstructing these processes of dissociation and reassociation is evident. The obstacle to detecting and describing the working principles and central issues of an epitomator is, in most cases, the absence of the original text. But even without the presumed original, the methods of textual criticism may permit us to deduce that different texts sprang from the same source: An identical or similar choice of words or phraseology, identical mistakes, and the sharing of a similar order are visible signs. These observations may then lead to the assumption of a hitherto unknown source‐text behind the existing abbreviated versions. This was the case with the “Enmannsche Kaisergeschichte” of the late ninteenth century. It is supposed to be the basis for the epitomators Aurelius Victor (ca. 361); Eutropius (ca. 369); Jerome’s chronicle (ca. 380/381); and other authors (Burgess 2005; Bleckmann 1997).

  Florilegia, breviaria, and encyclopedias, then, were already a well‐established and commonly practiced form for dealing with huge bulks of text and information. The techniques of abbreviating and rearranging were at hand when the need arose to reshape the world of information into a Christian context and to appropriate the philosophy and wisdom of the past into the present. This is a persuasive but not comprehensive explanation, because the same strategies were used by the pagan elite for pagan literary production, which continued into the fifth century. In the Latin‐speaking part of the Roman Empire, in centers of Neoplatonic learning in Greece, and in some places in the Eastern Empire, these pagan authors as well Christians continued to compile and excerpt, to select and rearrange texts (Brown 2011).

  Philosophical treatises, historiography, grammar, medical and legal texts, but also letters, laudatory oratory, biography, sayings of famous people, drama, and epic poetry – probably no subject and no literary genre from the late classical period was excluded from excerpting, summarizing, and compiling (Opelt 1962; van Rossum‐Steenbeek 1997a and 1997b; Dickey 2007; Dubischar 2010). It was not the writing and compositional techniques, but rather new forms and contents of texts as well as the quantity of condensed texts, especially of sayings, florilegia, and chronicles, that created a new literary framework in late antiquity which differed from previous periods. Without doubt, the importance of various forms of shorter and compiled texts in the last centuries of antiquity is reflected in the survival of masses of medieval and Byzantine manuscripts with breviaria, epitomai, excerpt‐collections, florilegia, sententiae, chronicles, and encyclopedias.

  27.4 Handbook and Florilegium

  An important genus of short‐form text was the learned person’s literary handbook. From the fourth century BCE on, these handbooks were focused on a specific subject, as is Varro’s De lingua latina (first century BCE). Many “technical” treatises and lexica were based on extracts of their predecessors, combining paraphrases, citations, and summaries, as in Vegetius, Epitoma rei militaris (fourth century), the many legal compendia of late antiquity, and the impressive 70 (or 72) volumes of the Collectiones medicae of Oribasius (fourth century; van der Eijk 2010).

  It has been observed that such handbooks follow various different principles of organization. In the Arabic tradition, the arrangement, even when the subject matter is similar, is very far from the Latin and Greek tradition, which at some point begins to make use of the alphabet (Overwien 2003), though not universally. Is it therefore possible to hypothesize that some of the organizing principles were devised independently in connection with specific handbooks? For example, the early Byzantine encyclopedic lexicon Suda (tenth century) does not seem to have an immediate predecessor. It has an alphabetic order and no specific subject‐focus, whereas most of the known texts in integrating genres had a general overall topic or organized the broader contents under subject headings.

  An example of the nonalphabetical, specific collection are, in the early imperial period, the Fabulae of Hyginus Mythographus, a reference work containing genealogies of deities and heroes, in 220 different short myths/stories (fabulae) and several lists (indices) of words, names, and places. The same Hyginus or a namesake composed the handbook De astronomia (or Poeticon astronomicon), which contained many excerpts, short summaries, etymologies, and lists. The main difference between these more‐focused texts and the fourth‐century Chrestomathoi of Helladius (in four books, composed in iambic meter) is obvious, even though we know his work only through the compilation of Photius: Helladius’s Chrestomathoi seems to present a rather arbitrary choice of noteworthy things and examples explaining orthography, etymology, grammar, and the correct usage of words (forms of address, politeness, euphemisms, compliments, irony). The evolving mixture of notes on different subject matters and anecdotes about famous persons is not always transparent in aim and meaning. This is, at least, the impression we get from Photius, so that Helladius’s work could be associated with the tradition of “Buntschriftsteller” seen in Aulus Gellius’s Noctes Atticae and the “table talk” of Plutarch.

  The Florilegia in the Greek and Latin tradition (Ihm 2001) usually followed in their content and organizing principles the same two formats: either thematic chapters (as in the Sacra Parallela) or alphabetical order, as determined by first words (as in the Florilegium Marcianum of the early ninth century [?]) or by authors’ names (Gnomica Basileensia). Sometimes both methods were combined; thus an alphabetical order of chapters would be internally organized by subject matter, as in the early Byzantine Florilegium Laurentianum. In addition, these collections organize quotations into a hierarchy. The Old Testament is usually separated from quotations from the New Testament, and the Scriptures are then followed by quotations from patristic literature, which precede those from pagan texts. Subcategories might exist: for example, the excerpts from male philosophers first, followed by those from women (Apophthegmata Vindobonensia), and poets’ verba first, followed by quotations from prose authors, as in Orion’s Antholognomicum of the fifth century. Even though the Corpus Parisinum seems to have no such ordering principle, Gerlach (2003) assumes that the three main structural devices (author, subject, alphabet) still existed in the earlier florilegia integrated into the Corpus, but were artificially hidden in the later text.

  Another example in which the ordering principles are less obvious is the anthology by Johannes Stobaeus (fifth century). It contains excerpts from more than 500 authors with a focus on philosophy and ethics, taken from poetry, history, oratory, philosophy, and medical authors (Bowie 2010). One might characterize Stobaeus’s anthology as philosophical paraliterature. The new text, with its combination of citations, excerpts, compilation, and apothegms, and with its innovative organization by intertitles, created an original and hitherto unknown way for the reader to understand philosophy in a Stobaean manner (Konstan 2011; Searby 2011). This approach enabled the reader to forgo the individual philosophical treatises, each introducing a different philosophical school. Instead, the collection offered a well‐organized repository of knowledge from which the fifth‐century reader might make his choice. According to Rosa Piccione (2002, p. 169), Stobaeus set about instructing his audience by creating a “general inventory of the logically ordered world.” His interpretation had a focus on “order” and thereby intensified the educational aspect.

  Different didactic aims underlie Antiochus of Palestine’s early seventh‐century compilation known as the Pandects of Holy Scripture, in 130 chapters. The historical context for the book was quite dramatic, as Antiochus tells his reader: In 619, Ancyra was destroyed by the Persians, and the monks in the nearby monastery were forced to take refuge in other monasteries. As they could not manage to take all the books of the monastery library with them, the abbot Eustathius asked Antiochus to compile all the important texts into one. Even if Antiochus had a sharp intellect and was a quick reader and writer, this ambitious compilation could hardly have been the result of a life‐threatening situation. In fact, the story is a telling metaphor for the process of collecting and storing knowledge that would otherwise be threatened with destruction: The collect
ion serves as a refuge for texts and their content, protecting them from danger and preserving them from loss. The Pandects combine texts of early Christian authors with those of the Bible and create a list of moral sayings from the early prophets to the Church Fathers, organized under thematic headings. The last chapter, with a list of heretics, is an integral part of a text composed with the aim of becoming an authoritative guide to the “dos and don’ts” of a theologically and politically unstable world.

  The threat of theological dissent was also the background of the Breviarium causae Nestorianorum et Eutychianorum collectum by Bishop Liberatus of Carthage in the mid‐sixth century (Blaudeau 2015), even though he himself stated that writing was for him a distraction from the fatigue of traveling (as an ambassador of the African bishops to Rome). While writing about the two heresies of Nestorianism and Eutychianism, Liberatus was probably indirectly criticizing the schism and persecutions in the wake of Justinian’s dealing with the “Three Chapters” (Leppin 2010; Keough 2011). The subject of theological authority and the right faith connects Liberatus to Procopius of Gaza (ca. 465–525), author of the Eclogarum in libros historicos Veteris Testamenti epitome for the book of Genesis. Procopius combines the catena tradition (though without mentioning the excerpted or cited predecessors) with a selection of lines from Genesis (Metzler 2015). Like Antiochus’s text, Procopius’s selection creates religious priorities and a hierarchy of theological and patristic thinking. Other Christian compilations include the two short versions of the martyrdom of Perpetua, which were created at an unknown date. These “Acta” had at least one more source than the main text of the Passio Perpetuae, as textual criticism has made evident (Kitzler 2007).

  27.5 Other Forms of Compilation

  Encyclopedism was another manifestation of the condensing impulse in late antiquity (although it was not exclusive to it; cf. e.g. the Historia naturalis of Pliny the Elder [23–79 CE]). As the intellectual concept of an all‐embracing, universal, deeper knowledge of why and how things human and divine exist, encyclopedism is opposed to the selectivity and eclecticism of the etymologies and handbooks of the time. Encyclopedism seeks to unify knowledge, whereas other forms select from the universal cosmos of knowledge.

  The aim of presenting masses of alternative, different, and even opposing explanations for the main questions concerning the visible world, mankind, God, and heaven, in combination with other physical, philosophical, and theological subjects, does not always lead to a reduction in the complexity of content or to a text in short form. The erudite Constantinopolitan patriarch Photius in the ninth century structured his Bibliotheca (Library) neither by content nor by alphabetical order nor by any other detectable system. He presents 279 reviews and book‐summaries (epitomes) of varying length (Schamp 2010). His reviews probably lean on two types of predecessor: Alexandrian hypotheseis and the Alexandrinian pinakes, as the following example may illustrate. Photius’s introduction to Memnon’s work (FGrH 434) and his concluding remarks after summarizing the books give an idea of his working method:

  We read the historical work of Memnon from the ninth book to the sixteenth book. This history sets out to describe the noteworthy things which happened in Heracleia Pontica. It lists the tyrants of Heracleia, their character and deeds, the lives of the other [distinguished citizens], the manner of their death, and the sayings which were associated with them. (trans. Smith 2004)

  There follows the epitome of Memnon’s history. Photius then concludes with this:

  This history is intelligent and written in a plain style, with attention to clarity. It avoids digressions, except if its purpose necessitates the inclusion of some external events; and even then, the digression does not last for long, but concentrating on what is essential it returns neatly to the main course of the narrative. It uses a conventional vocabulary, though there are a few unusual words. We have not found a copy to read of the first eight books, or of anything after the sixteenth book. (trans. Smith 2004)

  Products with less stylistic aspirations than Photius’s eloquent summaries and reviews are chronicles and the notitiae. Some of these were bare lists, mainly produced to serve administrative needs, but they obviously circulated in copies as well. The so‐called Notitia dignitatum (which had been originally two lists) is one such example; it explains in its first sentence what it is about: notitia dignitatum continet omnium tam civilium quam militarium dignitatum utriusque imperii occidentis orientisque (the list of dignitaries contains all civilian and military positions of both the eastern and the western parts of the empire). The following indices reflect the status of the structure and administration of the empire after 395 to 425–433. Though adorned with illustrations at the chapters’ headings, the lists are simple and plain in wording and present the “skeletal elements of the administrative structure” of the Greek East and the Latin West (Brennan 1996, p. 149).

  More complex but similar in its “subliterary” presentation and form is Jerome’s Chronicon, based on Eusebius’s early fourth‐century Greek chronicle, but reworked and with additions up to the year 378. In his preface he describes his work thus:

  And so from Ninus and Abraham to the captivity of Troy it is a simple translation from the Greek (pura Graeca translatio est): from Troy to the twentieth year of Constantine many things are added or modified (nunc addita, nunc mixta sunt plurima), which we have carefully excerpted from Tranquillus and the other illustrious historians (quae de Tranquillo, et caeteris illustribus historicis curiosissime excerpsi[mus]): but from the aforementioned year of Constantine down to the sixth consulate of the Emperor Valens and second of the Emperor Valentinian, it is totally my own (totum meum est). (Jer. Chron., praef. 4)

  Jerome’s chronicle is at the same time interpretatio, imitatio, and a new creation. The combination of various techniques in composing these texts (excerpts, additions, translations, completely new parts) form the basis not only of extended lists and chronicles but also of breviaria and epitomai, as some of their authors make explicit in their prefaces.

  27.6 Epitome – the Transformation of Texts into a New and Condensed Form

  A specific form of epitome is the condensation and abbreviation of literary texts, including poetry. Various influences triggered the need for such texts as the Periochae Homeri Iliadis et Odyssiae ascribed to Ausonius (fourth century). But in the Ilias Latina, a short version of the Homeric Iliad in 1070 hexameters, we have an example of an epitome of Homer that dates much earlier (ca. 68). This Latin Iliad from the Neronian period can be considered a rhetorical exercise that became a key text for the Middle Ages in the non‐Greek‐speaking part of Europe (Reitz 2007). The prose summaries of Pseudo‐Ausonius, on the other hand, may already announce the decline of an audience that was equally familiar with Latin and Greek. They provide the reader of Homer with a guide through the long text. But the awareness that the Homeric epics and the history of Troy were part of an important cultural heritage generated not only these but also other texts. Thus the Ephemeris belli Troiani (fourth century) in Latin purports to be a translation of an earlier Greek version (itself, it is claimed, a translation of a Phoenician text) that gives an account of the Troy saga; the work is said to be a diary of the war from the mythical Greek hero Dictys Cretensis. Aligned with the Ephemeris as a piece of pseudepigraphy connected to the Trojan War, though with differences from that text in style, selection, and composition, is the account of the destruction of Troy supposedly told by the Trojan priest, Dares (fifth or sixth century); again, the claim (perhaps true) is that this is a Latin translation of a Greek source‐text. These condensed accounts of events around the Trojan War (the term “novel'” does not seem appropriate for these texts) rely on their Homeric pre‐text, but in the course of events they substitute for the original.

  As already mentioned, such abbreviated texts (breviaria, epitomai) were already widespread during the Roman imperial period, such as Galen’s medical auto‐epitome, Justin’s short history of Philip II, or Florus’s Epitome in two books (d
e T. Livio Bellorum omnium annorum DCC, first–second century). These traditions were continued by the late antique Metz epitome on Alexander the Great (late fourth century with later additions), the epitomes of Valerius Maximus’s Facta et dicta by Julius Paris, Januarius Nepotianus (fourth/fifth century), and Titius Probus (presumably fifth century), the epitome of Sallust’s histories by Julius Exuperantius (fourth/fifth century), and the extremely short compilation of 1000 years of the history of the Roman people by Rufius Festus. The source of this fourth‐century Breviarium de brevario rerum gestarum populi Romani is still disputed. Another example of a later historiographical condensation is Jordanes’s (sixth century) epitome of Cassiodorus’s History of the Goths. Short histories in the tradition of the imperial biographies include Aurelius Victor’s Liber de Caesaribus or Historiae abbreviatae (fourth century), the anonymous Epitome de Caesaribus (fourth century), and Eutropius’s Breviarium ab urbe condita in 10 books that ended with the year 369. They also include short Christian church histories like that of Epiphanius Scholasticus, who composed a Historiae Ecclesiasticae Tripartitae Epitome in Latin, based on the Greek church histories of Socrates Scholasticus, Sozomen, and Theodoret.

  Theological treatises were also subject to epitomizing. Like the medical author Galen, Lactantius (ca. 250–320) saw the need for a shorter version of his own work, the Institutiones divinae, and described the technique and its consequences in the preface to the dedicatee (ep. pr. 2–3):

  faciam quod postulas, etsi difficile videtur ea quae septem maximis voluminibus explicata sunt, in unum conferre.

  I will do as you wish though it seems difficult to bring the content of seven voluminous books together in just one.