Search

A CENTURY HAS PASSED SINCE Martin von Schanz published the first volume of his "history of Roman literature as far as the legislative work of the emperor Justinian" (Geschichte der romischen Litteratur bis zum Gesetzgebungswerk des Kaisers Justinian). This first volume, published in 1890, dealt with Republican literature; a second two years later covered early imperial literature from Octavian's final victory in 30 B.c. to the death of Trajan, while the third volume, published in 1896, went from the accession of Hadrian in 117 to Constantine's conquest of the East in 324. The fourth volume proved to be a much more difficult enterprise: the first part, on Latin literature of the fourth century, appeared in 1904, but the second was not yet finished when Schanz died in 1914 and it was prepared for its eventual publication in 1920 by Carl Hosius and Gustave Kriiger. Schanz's history was both an academic and a commercial success. It immediately established itself as the authoritative handbook of Latin literature, rapidly eclipsing its predecessor and only serious rival, W. S. Teuffel's Geschichte der romischen Literatur, which had been translated both into French and twice into English (in 1873 and again in 1891/2 from the fifth edition). Teubner of Leipzig brought out no fewer than five editions of Teuffel's work in the twenty years before Schanz's appeared (in 1870, 1872, 1875, 1882, and 1890, the last two revised after Teuffel's death by A. Schwabe), but only one further edition thereafter, the sixth, revised by Wilhelm Kroll and Franz Skutsch (three volumes: 1910-1916). The third volume of this last edition, though published in 1913, was not completely superseded by its competitor and still retains scholarly value, not least because it goes far beyond the sixth century, its last paragraph being a notice of Paulus Diaconus, an older contemporary of Charlemagne.1

Discussion des vers 506-607 du Livre I. Identification des senateurs dont ces vers exaltent la conversion; notamment celui du vers 552 qui doit etre non pas Sex. Anicius Paulinus, consul en 325, mais deja Anicius Faustus, consul en 298; le vers 551, mal adapte, est une interpolation sous l'influence de Claudien, panegyrique d'Olybrius et Probinus, 1 er janvier 395. Datation des premiers jets et remaniements du « Contra Symmachum »

O F THE original twelve books of Tacitus' Histories, only the first four and part of the fifth have survived the hazards of textual transmission, and that by the thread of a single manuscript. The continuous text thus breaks off in the course of the year 70 (5. 26). Eight fragments are also printed in the standard modern editions, viz., the Teubner of C. Halm (4th ed., Leipzig, 1912), C. Fisher's Oxford text (Oxford, 1910), and E. Koestermann's Teubner (2d ed., Leipzig, 1969).1 But the editors dispense with an apparatus criticus and conceal the principles according to which these fragmenta "Historiarum" are included. To be sure, Fisher states, "Vide Bernays, de chronicis Sulpicii Severi, p. 53," in annotation on the first two fragments. Yet he (like other editors) prints as Tacitus' own several words and phrases which Bernays expressly denied that Tacitus either wrote or could have written. More surprising still is the editors' treatment of Orosius. They print five passages from his Historiae adversum paganos (frags. 3-7). But other passages too were long ago signaled as deriving from Tacitus' Histories, not only in the standard edition of Orosius (by C. Zangemeister, CSEL, vol. 5 [Vienna, 1882]), but also in a dissertation of 1888, which still appears to be the only systematic treatment of the knowledge of Tacitus in late antiquity.2 The standard "fragments" of the Histories clearly need a reconsideration which proceeds from what is known about the habits and sources of the two historians from whom they are mainly culled: Sulpicius Severus and Orosius. First, however, two allusions to Tacitus may be considered which it is hard to describe as fragments, even on the broadest possible definition of the term.

Claudian's poem In Rufinum is a historical epic with at least two unusual features: the first book contains many of the standard elements of a formal invective, and the two books were composed and recited some eighteen months apart, since Book One celebrates the death of Rufinus on 27 November 395 as a very recent event (i, pr. 15 ff.), while the preface to Book Two refers explicitly to Stilicho's expedition to Greece in 397. The interval in composition is matched by a gap in content: Book One treats Rufinus' career down to 393, with some forward references to 395, explicitly marked as such (especially lines 321/2: Hunnorum laturus opem, quos adfore bello norat), while the narrative of Book Two begins from the death of Theodosius on 17 January 395 (ii. 1 ff.) and ends with the lynching of Rufinus on 27 November 395. Claudian thus omits any account of Rufinus' activities during the campaign of Theodosius against Eugenius in 394 and the emperor's last months in Italy. Claudian's careful chronological ordering of his material is deliberate, but since it has been obscured in recent discussions of the In Rufinum, it needs to be reinstated.

I SPENT TEN YEARS in collecting all the achievements of the Romans from the beginning to the death of Severus, and another twelve in writing my history: subsequent events will be recorded to wherever it may be possible." So Cassius Dio, in the summary by Xiphilinus, describes the composition of his Roman History (72.23.5). To what period of twentytwo years does he refer? Until very recently, modern scholars who wrote about Dio adopted chronologies which exhibited an unusually high degree of unanimity. Eduard Schwartz, in what long remained the authoritative study of the historian (published in 1899), dated the beginning of Dio's enterprise to 194, the year after the accession of Septimius Severus, the completion of Book LXXVII, which ended with Severus' death, to 216. Schwartz, however, also believed that Dio subsequently made substantial additions, including the whole of Book LII, in the reign of Severus Alexander.1 Emilio Gabba in 1955 and Fergus Millar in 1964 adopted a chronology very close to that of Schwartz, but without the concession that Dio revised his History systematically: Gabba and Millar identified the twenty-two years as 196-218 and 197-219 respectively, and allowed no later revision to Books I-LXXVII beyond the addition of a very few brief sentences or clauses.2 Even G. Vrind, who wished to bring the decade during which Dio collected material down to the death of Severus to an end after 4 February 211, made the minimum modification necessary to Schwartz's chronology