Hesychios of Miletus
Hesychios of Miletus was a late antique historian who lived in the 6th century.
Hesychios came from Miletus in Asia Minor, his father was also called Hesychios, his mother Philosophia. It is unclear whether Hesychios was a Christian or not; Both assumptions can be found in research. Hesychios, who carried the high rank of vir illustris and therefore belonged to the senatorial imperial elite of Ostrom , was quite active in literature; his three works were written in ancient Greek and have only survived in fragments.
In his world history (the title is given differently by the Middle Byzantine lexicon Suda and the Byzantine scholar Photios ), Hesychios described the time from the legendary Assyrian king Belos to the death of the emperor Anastasius (518) in six sections . The first book ended with the fall of Troy , the second with the founding of Rome . From the third book onwards, Hesychios seems to have focused on Roman history. Book 3 describes the time of the Roman kings, book 4 the time of the republic up to Gaius Iulius Caesar , book 5 the imperial time up to the founding of Constantinople 330 and book 6 finally the time from Constantine to Anastasios. The presentation must have been very brief. Photios, who still had the works of Hesychius, remarked that Diodorus was much more detailed, but praised the style of Hesychios.
Hesychios also wrote a classicist work on contemporary history that included the reign of Emperor Justin and the first years of Justinian , but is only known to us through excerpts from Photios. According to him, it was rather brief but elegantly worded. Finally, Hesychios wrote a rich and important literary-historical lexicon ( Onomatologos ), which contained the biographies of Greek writers and was arranged according to literary genres. It was later shortened and reworked by an editor. In the Suda , Heychios was probably used as a source more often, but probably in the form of an epitome . Hesychius may have used the lost chronicle of Heliconius of Byzantium as a source .
The historical fragments are collected in The Fragments of the Greek Historians (No. 390) and in Brill's New Jacoby (there with English translation and commentary by Anthony Kaldellis).
literature
- Tiziano Dorandi: Hésychius "Illustrius" de Miletus. In: Richard Goulet (ed.): Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques . Volume 3, CNRS Éditions, Paris 2000, ISBN 2-271-05748-5 , pp. 678-680
- Anthony Kaldellis: The Works and Days of Hesychios the Illoustrios of Miletos . In: Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies. Vol. 45, 2005, ISSN 0884-7304 , pp. 381-403.
- John Robert Martindale, John Morris: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (PLRE). Volume 2, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1980, ISBN 0-521-20159-4 , p. 555.
- Hermann Schultz : Hesychios 10. In: Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume VIII, 2, Stuttgart 1913, Sp. 1322-1327.
- Warren Treadgold: The early Byzantine Historians. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke et al. 2007, ISBN 978-1-403-93458-1 , pp. 270-278.
Remarks
- ↑ Only recently, Anthony Kaldellis pleaded for Hesychios - and a whole series of other intellectuals of Justinian times - to be regarded as secret pagans, see Kaldellis (2005), p. 392ff. Against this is Treadgold (2007), p. 270, who represents the communis opinio .
- ↑ On this question cf. the discussion in Kaldellis (2005), pp. 385–388.
- ↑ Schultz (1913), Col. 1323f.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hesychios of Miletus |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | late antique historian |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 5th century or 6th century |
| DATE OF DEATH | 6th century |