Onasimos

Onasimos ( Greek Ὀνάσιμος Onásimos , Latin also Onesimus ) was a late antique historian . He lived in the early 4th century.

Onasimos is mentioned in the Central Byzantine lexicon Suda . According to the information provided there, he came from Cyprus or Sparta . He worked at the time of Emperor Constantine , i.e. in the early 4th century. Onasimos is known in the Suda as a historian and sophist . Several works are ascribed to him there, none of which have survived. His father and son were both called Apsines and also worked as sophists.

Furthermore, a historian named Onesimus is mentioned repeatedly in some of the later vitae of the Historia Augusta , which deal with the last soldier emperors. This onesimus is very often considered a fictional author, especially since the studies of Ronald Syme . However, in recent research it is not ruled out that this Onesimus refers to the historian mentioned in the Suda and that he served as a source for the anonymous author of the Historia Augusta . If this assumption is correct, then Onasimos wrote the biographies of the emperors Probus and Carus , perhaps also the emperors Carinus and Numerian, in addition to the rhetorical works mentioned in the Suda .

Edition with translation

Bruno Bleckmann , Jonathan Gross: Historians of the Imperial Crisis of the 3rd Century I ( Small and fragmentary historians of late antiquity ). Paderborn 2016, ISBN 978-3-506-78490-2 , pp. 151-165.

literature

Paweł Janiszewski: Onasimos. In: Paweł Janiszewski, Krystyna Stebnicka, Elżbieta Szabat: Prosopography of Greek Rhetors and Sophists of the Roman Empire. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2015, ISBN 978-0-19-871340-1 , pp. 267-269.
Paweł Janiszewski: The Missing Link. Greek Pagan Historiography in the Second Half of the Third Century and in the Fourth Century AD. Warszawa 2006, pp. 332-352.

Remarks

↑ Suda O 327 .
^ The Fragments of the Greek Historians , No. 216.
^ Ronald Syme: Bogus authors . In: Ders .: Historia Augusta Papers . Oxford 1983, pp. 98-108, here p. 102.
↑ See Pawel Janiszewski: The Missing Link. Greek Pagan Historiography in the Second Half of the Third Century and in the Fourth Century AD. Warszawa 2006, p. 336ff. and especially the recital p. 347. Further literature from Udo Hartmann : Die Geschistorschreibung. In: Klaus-Peter Johne : The time of the soldier emperors . Vol. 2, Berlin 2008, pp. 911f., Note 51.

personal data
SURNAME	Onasimos
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Onesimos; Ὀνάσιμος (Greek)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	late antique historian
DATE OF BIRTH	3rd century
DATE OF DEATH	4th century

[1] Suda O 327 .

[2] The Fragments of the Greek Historians , No. 216.

[3] Ronald Syme: Bogus authors . In: Ders .: Historia Augusta Papers . Oxford 1983, pp. 98-108, here p. 102.

[4] See Pawel Janiszewski: The Missing Link. Greek Pagan Historiography in the Second Half of the Third Century and in the Fourth Century AD. Warszawa 2006, p. 336ff. and especially the recital p. 347. Further literature from Udo Hartmann : Die Geschistorschreibung. In: Klaus-Peter Johne : The time of the soldier emperors . Vol. 2, Berlin 2008, pp. 911f., Note 51.