John of Nikiu: Rome and Macedonia

This is the final post on John of Nikiu. After the round-up of the final Persian emperors, John moves backward in time the better part of a millennium to introduce Aeneas as the beginning of Roman history. In between three chapters (52-54) on The activities of Aeneas and what would appear to be his son – though without anything close to associating the son as the ancestor of Julius Caesar – and the foundation of Rome itself, he takes Chapter 55 to relate the foundation of Carthage by Dido, mixing as best I can tell the mythology of her as a contemporary of Aeneas and the history that placed the city's foundation less than a century before Rome's.

Romulus and Remus are placed contemporary to the Judean king Hezekiah, continuing John's method of Biblical dating for events outside the scope of Jewish history. While skipping the fabulous elements of their birth and infancy, their adult career is more or less traditional. Just as Chapter 56 shows how Romulus instituted Rome's institutions for war, Chapter 57 shows how his successor Numa Pompilius instituted Rome's institutions for peace.

John then skips back ahead about three centuries to King Philip of Macedonia; because his reign was either after or just at the cusp of the end of the Jewish Bible's time period, he can only date it by explaining, "in the days of the high priest of Jerusalem," to begin Chapter 58, which isn't very specific as whenever the Temple stood, there was a high priest. His main point for Philip was the foundation of Thessalonica after defeating the people of Thessaly. His son, Alexander, arrives in the next chapter, with his first act recorded being the foundation of Alexandria after conquering Egypt. Early attention is also paid to events near Byzantium. He calls Roxana a daughter of Darius that he married after he defeated him, when Roxana was actually a Bactrian. He also spends time on an adventure wherein a Candace, queen of Ethiopia – like Philostorgius, it seems likely Ethiopia and India are being confused because he went to India but not Ethiopia, although a Wikipedia search suggests otherwise – who was able to capture Alexander. He considers a relatively clean division on Alexander's death of his empire, quite a historically, with the single exception of warring between Antigonus and Seleucus over Syria (Chapter 61). In Chapter 62, he tells us that the Chronicle genre was invented by "Seleucus, that is Pausanias"; because this is in the midst of Syrian history, which contained many kings named Seleucus, it is unclear whether this was one of those kings, or even a Syrian. Chapter 63 says that Antiochus Epiphanes persecuted with Maccabees, without any indication that the latter ended up victorious.

Perhaps the greatest proof of the exclusive interest in kingship for John is that he skips over the entire Republican period of Rome. Under the Republic, Rome grew from an individual city to an empire that encompassed nearly the entire Mediterranean (and of course the three Punic Wars would make the inclusion of Carthage's founding more important), although with at least a de jure exception of Egypt. Yet, after the second king of Rome and the excursus on Macedonia, he goes directly to Julius Caesar in Chapter 64. And even with Caesar, whose life is one of the best attested in all of antiquity, his description reads as much of romance as history. He begins by insinuating a portent from his birth by Caesarian section, saying, "The birth of Julius was not like the birth of (ordinary) men." His first act as an adult is to be "named" a Triumvir, as if it were an official office rather than an informal political alliance, and directly from that to king – even Shakespeare knew better than to think he became a king! John seems to say Caesar fought the Persians, which he did not, and then that he actually married Cleopatra, when their affair was extramarital. He then takes two chapters to explain how two client kings, Archelaus of Cappadocia and Herod of Judea, gave him support. Chapter 67 then talks about the works of Cleopatra, giving an extremely positive assessment, likely out of national pride. Her death – no reason given – segues into Augustus taking possession of the country. All the civil wars, Julius Caesar's assassination, and even Cleopatra's relationship with Mark Antony, are completely scrubbed from the Chronicle.

Augustus is most important to Bishop John because it was during his reign that Jesus was born. Following Luke, he was born in Bethlehem during the census; for good measure, he adds that Augustus decreed the census on the advice of a certain Eumenes and Attalus. As there is no testimony to the census outside of the Christian tradition, it is assuredly fictional, as the names of Eumenes and Attalus suggest – they were the names used by the kings in the 3^rd and 2^nd century BCE dynasty ruling the Roman-ally and Hellenistic kingdom of Pergamum in Asia Minor. As even John recognizes, the purpose of a census was to determine tax levels at a time when taxation was indirect; place of family origin was irrelevant. What's more, Nazareth and the rest of the Galilee, had once been part of the Northern Kingdom of Israel that was exiled (and lost) by the Assyrian Empire. Thus, every Jew living there had an ancestral home in the south, not just Jesus' family. The chapter ends returning to Augustus and his machinations with the calendar.

Chapter 69 briefly relates the reign of Tiberius, mainly some tributes to him, and, of course, the crucifixion of Jesus in Jerusalem. He skips completely over Caligula to the death of Claudius and the reign of Nero. He explains, in Chapter 70, that Nero "was a pagan and an idolater" as if this somehow made him unique; in fact, his Stoic teaching from Seneca and marriage (odd as it was) to the enigmatic Poppaea Sabina probably made his paganism less egregious than many for most of his reign, but more on this in the future. John includes his marriages to men, for which reason he says that after his flight from Rome "his belly grew distended and became like that of a pregnant woman" so his doctor opened it thinking a baby would be born, but Nero died. Again, John has included as much of the fantastic as the historic.

All four emperors of 69 CE and their civil wars are again ignored, as is the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, moving to Titus' death and Domitian's reign at Chapter 71. He is condemned – somewhat surprisingly unlike Nero – for his persecution of Christians, including John the Evangelist. He was put to death for his misdeeds and the "very excellent, humane, and wise" Nerva was chosen to be the next emperor. After his short reign, the "idolatrous" Trajan appears in Chapter 72, mostly for his persecutions of Christians. A Jewish rebellion in Alexandria and Cyrene also leads to some building activity in Egypt, which was added to by his successor Hadrian in the next Chapter. Chapter 74 explains the reigns of Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius: the former "was the first to do justice" in Rome and "punished…evil" in Egypt; the latter followed in his footsteps. For centuries (although not, to my knowledge, in antiquity itself), the rulers from Nerva to Marcus Aurelius have been known as the "Five Good Emperors." Finally, in these chapters, John and I are in basic agreement that the really good ones were Nerva, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius, although I think it was Hadrian (whom he treats neutrally) that was the worst.

Chapter 75 skips ahead about seventy years, including the entire period of the Severan dynasty and very close to the period written about by the very competent Herodian. Decius was solely important for his persecutions of Christians; these were, historically, of a much more widespread and official nature than their predecessors (of course, Christianity was much more widespread by 250 CE, too). The next chapter considers Aurelian, and the next Diocletian. The beginning of Diocletian's reign is still a century before my stopping point in 383, but as this is where the next book I will be writing about picks up, I will reserve anything of salience from John during the Diocletian to Gratian period to that post.