Crepereius calpurnianus

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Crepereius Calpurnianus was allegedly a Roman historian believed to have lived in the 2nd century AD. However, its existence is controversial in modern research.

Crepereius Calpurnianus is only mentioned by the satirist Lukian of Samosata in his work How to write history in connection with some other historians who are said to have described the Parthian War of Lucius Verus in close reference to the style of Thucydides . Lukian allegedly quotes from the (Greek-language) work of Crepereius:

Krepereios Kalpurnianos from Pompeiopolis has described the war that the Parthians and Romans waged against each other from the outbreak of the war.

Every educated reader of Lucian immediately realized that Crepereius was only rewriting the beginning of the great historical work of Thucydides, where it says:

Thucydides of Athens recorded the war the Peloponnesians and Athenians waged against one another. He started doing it right from the outbreak ...

Lukian found this imitation of Thucydides, which sometimes took on bizarre forms, only ridiculous. In his work he mocked this "Parthian war historian" (besides Crepereius Calpurnianus he names others who he also makes fun of), who based his presentation on the work of Thucydides and took over entire passages only slightly changed. Karl Strobel noted that Lukian criticized slavish imitation above all: the historian Crepereius Calpurnianus did not imitate the style of Thucydides (in the sense of mimesis ), which many Greek historians were to do well into late antiquity and into the Byzantine period, but in fact he wrote a mindless plagiarism that was only set in another time.

However, it is controversial in research whether the historians mentioned in Lukian ever existed. Some researchers deny the existence (for example, Gerhard Wirth only saw caricatures in these that are supposed to refer to Arrian ), while other researchers (according to CP Jones) advocated their existence. It is entirely possible that Lukian cited fictional historians in order to underpin his portrayal with a parody, but their existence cannot be ruled out in the end.

The “fragments” of the historical work are collected in: The Fragments of the Greek Historians (No. 208) and in Brill's New Jacoby (No. 208, with English translation, commentary and research discussion by Michel Cottier).

literature

  • Barry Baldwin: Crepereius Calpurnianus. In: Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica 27, 1978, pp. 211-213.
  • Karl Strobel : Contemporary history under the Antonines. The Historians of the Parthian War by Lucius Verus . In: Wolfgang Haase (Hrsg.): Rise and decline of the Roman world . History and culture of Rome as reflected in recent research . Part II: Principate . Volume 34, Berlin 1993, pp. 1315-1360.

Remarks

  1. ↑ Lukian: How to write history , 15th translation after Helene Homeyer : Lukian. How to write history . Munich 1965, p. 115.
  2. ^ Thukydides I 1. Translation after Georg Peter Landmann: Thukydides. History of the Peloponnesian War . Reinbek 1962, p. 7.
  3. ^ Strobel: Contemporary history under the Antonines , p. 1342f.
  4. ^ Strobel: Contemporary history under the Antonines , p. 1335ff.
  5. ^ Overview in Strobel: Zeitgeschichte unter den Antoninen , pp. 1339f. and p. 1343f.
personal data
SURNAME Crepereius calpurnianus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Roman historian
DATE OF BIRTH 1st century or 2nd century
DATE OF DEATH 2nd century or 3rd century