New Entrants: 388-395

Orosius biased me toward reading through to the death of Theodosius in early 395, because he moved quickly from the restoration of Valentinian II to that monarch's death in 392. In the interim was the usurpation of Eugenius, who ruled in the West from 392 to 394. This is what I read to learn about this period of history:

• Primary narrative histories: Orosius (Book 7, Chapter 35), C. D. Gordon's Age of Attila (to page 8, p. 16-18), and Zosimus (Book 4, p. 88-94)
  
• Chronicles and foreign histories: Chronicon Paschale (years 390-394), John of Nikiu (Chapter 83, Section 37-65), al-Tabari (p. 69-70), Jordanes (Chapter 28, Section 145), and Gregory of Tours (Book 1, Chapter 44-47) [Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle have nothing to report]
  
• Ecclesiastical histories: Socrates (Book 5, Chapter 15-26), Sozomen (Book 7, Chapter 15-29), Theodoret (Book 5, Chapter 16-25), and Philostorgius (Book 10, Chapter 9-Book 11, Chapter 2)
  
• Private views: Libanius' Autobiography (Section 275-285), Letters (154-193), and Orations (47-49); Jerome (Letters 52 & 54); Augustine (Book 10-11); and Claudian's Panegyric on the Consuls Probinus and Olybrius
  
• Modern histories: Montesquieu (Chapter 19) and Gibbon (Chapter 26-28)
  

I have added two new works for this segment. C. D. Gordon is a twentieth-century history. His book is of value, however, because he translates verbatim the literary fragments of the major historians of the fifth century: Olympiodorus, Candidus, Priscus, and Malchus. He also makes use of the later Byzantine historian Joannes Antiochenus. Like Philostorgius, these excerpts are preserved by Photius, in large part, and other compilers of medieval Constantinople. Because these works are not fully extent, Gordon provides his own narrative to connect the fragments. The book was originally published by University of Michigan Press, republished by Barnes & Noble.

The other new work is of a much different flavor. Claudius Claudianus was an Egyptian-born Latin poet. Much of his work is political, with subject matter not all that different from Libanius'. Similarly, he was a pagan, although he did more to try to blend in with Christians than Libanius did. His first long poem is very flowery and of little substance as the brothers Probinus and Olybrius became the consuls for whom the year would be named at the beginning of 395. Theodosius died only a couple weeks later, but I assume that the poem was written while he was still alive; line 113 in the translation names Theodosius, but he is absent from the Latin. Since Claudian's career only lasted about a decade, I don't think this will be much of an issue going forward, but because the poems are backward looking, I may have missed out on some other pieces of useful information from the poetry he wrote after Theodosius' death—Gibbon references two such later poems in Chapter 27. In the introduction, his quality of language is compared with Silver Age (late first century CE) poets like Statius, even as his content is criticized. The introduction begins by saying he "may be called the last poet of classical Rome" (vii); there are a lot of lasts in this time period (although I remember Tacitus was considered a "last" almost 300 years earlier), and it is kind of sad—it may be easier to relate to the end of a literary period, whose work still exists, than a civilization, which does not. I am reading Maurice Platnauer's translation for the Loeb Classical Library.

Platnauer's translation is available online at LacusCurtius.

Philostorgius: History of Heresy

I listed my latest "rotation" in a previous post; before I move on to the next rotation, there are some histories that I am starting and reading up to the point of the Emperor Gratian's death in 383 that I reached in my reading. I have just done that now for the Ecclesiastical History of Philostorgius, or rather what is left of it. As I mentioned below, medieval Byzantine writers made summaries, called epitomes, and collections of excerpts of earlier books. Philostorgius' work only exists today in these forms: a detailed summary by Photius, and some extracts by Suidas. I am reading the translation by Edward Walford for Bohn's Ecclesiastical Library.

Philostorgius is now the fourth church historian I am reading for this period. Like Sozomen, Socrates, and Theodoret, he wrote in the middle of the fifth century as a conscious continuation of the History of Eusebius, the acknowledged father of history for the Christian Church. Even without the fullness of his text, it is clear that Philostorgius utilized the same characteristics of the genre: major imperial affairs and political involvement in the church, succession in major bishoprics, important regional and universal councils, short lives of holy men and women including their miracles and missionary activity, and the waxing and waning of heresies and schisms. (Unlike the Latin-speaking Optatus, the historians all wrote in Greek, and so generally focused more of their attentions in the East, thus make little to no mention of Donatism.)

Philostorgius, however, has an important difference from the other authors. Whereas as those three were all orthodox Christians, defenders of the Nicene creed, and for whom the oft-exiled Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, was the hero of the era, Philostorgius was an adherent of the Arian heresy. Arius, a fellow Alexandrian and arch-rival of Athanasius, objected to what was becoming – and was codified at Nicaea – the orthodox understanding of the metaphysics of the Trinity in the early fourth century. Athanasius and his allies took the position of "consubstantiality," or homoousian in Greek; basically, this means that all three "Persons" of the Trinity were of the same "substance." More importantly, it places Jesus in a position of equality with G-d the Father when it comes to creation. Arius and his followers denied this sameness. Following his death, the Arian heresy split further between homoiousians (sometimes called semi-Arians) who believed the Son was of "similar" substance to the Father, and heteroousians who claimed their substances were completely different. Philostorgius was a heteroousian.

This controversy is archetypal for why metaphysics has a bad name. G-d has no part in physicality, so I don't know how to conceive of a non-physical substance, let alone the possibility of multiple non-physical substances.

Photius (a leader in the Byzantine church) and Walford (a man of the Victorian era) also don't like what Philostorgius has to say on these matters, but for a different reason. Whereas Optatus argued with Parmenianus but stilled called him "brother," Photius is full of insults for Philostorgius as he summarizes his work, chapter by chapter. Starting in the third chapter of the first book, Photius calls him "impious," and then again many times thereafter. I suppose that with the historian long dead, Photius saw no need for charity. Walford, in his notes, always compares Philostorgius unfavorably to the three orthodox historians, and uses the notes for some apologetics of his own.

While discussing some missionary activity in Book III, Philostorgius goes into some geography. This brings up some fantastic beasts he had seen, which had been brought back to the Rome or Constantinople, where he had seen them. Though some of this is clearly made-up, considering his inclusion of a unicorn, one animal brings with it an interesting story. He claims, in the eleventh chapter of the book, that an Indian (it's unclear whether he actually means India, as there seems to be confusion between that country and Ethiopia) king had sent the Emperor Constantine the Great a kind of ape, which was preserved after its death. He says,

"It seems to me that the Greeks must once upon a time have seen this monster, and, amazed at the strangeness of its appearance, adopted it as a god, in accordance with their ordinary practice of making a god out of everything strange and wonderful...The sphinx, too, is a kind of ape, as I myself can testify from what I have seen. The rest of the body of the sphinx is covered with hair, just as all other apes, but from its head to its breast it is free from hair, and has the breasts of a woman. Where its body is bare, it has a raised portion of red, like millet, running round it, which elegantly harmonizes with the fleshy colour in the middle, and improves it. Its face is tolerably round, and inclining to the form of a woman. Its voice is very like the human voice, though not articulate; it most nearly approximates that of a woman uttering her words in a hurried and indistinct manner under the influence of anger and grief, and it is rather flat than sharp; the beast moreover is very savage and cunning, and cannot be tamed without difficulty."

He then rationalizes the myth of Oedipus and the Sphinx at Thebes. This monkey, he supposes, had somehow reached the city and was terrorizing the residents with its wild, aggressive, and violent behavior. Having a nearly human voice, the legend turned its wordless noises into the famous enigma. Oedipus was able to kill it, and the rest was legendizing. This seems to me to be a good illustration of how educated Christians understood Greek mythology, without either turning everything into demons or claiming the whole thing is made up.

Following the death of Constantine I in 337, through the death of Valens in 378, Constantius II and Valens had power in the Eastern Empire for all but a couple of years. Both of these Augusti were, at times, sympathetic to or active partisans for the Arian heresy. Thus, despite the so-called orthodoxy of the followers of the Nicene faith, they were often out of power and influence. These were years of fast growth for the Christian religion, as with the exception of Julian, it seems that each Christian emperor was more and more fully Christian and less and less pagan; the laity being full of new converts were probably easily swayed to believe as the reigning bishops taught, despite their divergence from what had been agreed to at Nicaea. The Western Emperors, very much including the brothers of Constantius and Valens, were steadier with the consubstantial party.

Both sides proved quick to use the coercive power of the state against both intra- and inter-faith enemies, so soon after the persecutions by the pagans. Perhaps this justifies, in some small degree, the desire for revenge by the pagans when Julian came to power as their last hope. I would not, at this point, call it bloody, but I also wouldn't quite call it clean. There was somewhat more liberty than under the magisterial confessionalization system of post-Reformation Europe, but maybe only because the different religions, within Christianity and without, were harder to reconcile. It is also clear from Nicene, Arian, and pagan writers that everyone took a providential view of events in the declining days of the Empire. Political leaders of all stripes, to say the least, each made their share of mistakes.

An internet version of the same translation I used can be found at the Tertullian Project.