Amyntianos
Amyntianos ( Greek Αμυντιανός Amyntianós ) was a rhetorician and ancient Greek-speaking historian of the 2nd or 3rd century.
Amyntianos is best known from a note by the Byzantine scholar Photios . Photios reports on a biography of Alexander the Great that Amyntianos wrote and dedicated to the “Roman Emperor Mark”. He characterizes the style of Amyntianos as inconsistent and lacking in inspiration and the entire work as clear but neglecting crucial details. Take today generally believed that he criticized Alexander's biography is the one in the scholia to the Georgica Virgil is mentioned.
In his note, Photios mentions other works by Amyntiano:
- Parallel biographies of Dionysius of Syracuse and Domitian (2 books) as well as of Philip II and Augustus
- a biography of Olympias , mother of Alexander the great. The author of this work is equated by some researchers with the one Amyntianos who, according to the scholias of Pindar, wrote a work about elephants.
While earlier researchers, especially Théodore Reinach , were of the opinion that the "Roman Emperor Markus" of the Photios place should be equated with Caracalla , the more recent research is based on some evidence rather from Marcus Aurelius . Various senators named Amyntianos lived in the reign of Mark Aurel, and the proximity to the time of Plutarch and Domitian, as well as the revival of Alexander's biographical treatment in the wake of Arrian's work and Lucius Verus ' expedition to the Orient , speak for Mark Aurel. However, there are also indications for the older hypothesis: The Historia Augusta and Cassius Dio report on Caracalla's passion for Alexander, who revered the Macedonian as a hero ideal.
The philologist Athanasios Papadopoulos-Kerameus discovered in the library of the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem in 1891 an important fragment of an Alexander biography (about a third of the original text), the so-called Fragmentum Sabbaiticum . In the first French translation of this text, Theodore Reinach identified the Alexander story of the Fragmentum Sabbaiticum with that of Amyntianos with stylistic justification and assigned the writing to the time of Caracallas. Recent research regards this view as ill-founded and speculative.
literature
- Prosopographia Imperii Romani A 574
- Theodore Reinach: Fragment d'une nouvelle histoire d'Alexandre le Grand. In: Revue des Études Grecques 5, 1892, pp. 306–327 ( online )
- Ewen Bowie : Greeks and Their Past in the Second Sophistic. In: Past and Present 46, 1970, pp. 3–41 ( online ; PDF; 205 kB)
- Janick Auberger: Historiens d'Alexandre. Les Belles Lettres, Paris 2001, ISBN 2-251-74200-X .
Remarks
- ^ Photios, Libraries , Codex 131.
- ↑ Bern Scholien zu Virgil, Georgica 2,137.
- ↑ Scholien zu Pindar, Ὀλύµπια 3.52.
- ^ Théodore Reinach: Fragment d'une nouvelle histoire d'Alexandre le Grand. In: Revue des Études Grecques 5, 1892, pp. 306–327 ( online ).
- ↑ Ewen Bowie: Greeks and Their Past in the second Sophistic. In: Past and Present 46, 1970, pp. 3-41.
- ^ The Fragments of the Greek Historians , No. 151.
- ↑ For example Ewen Bowie: Greeks and Their Past in the second Sophistic. In: Past and Present 46, 1970, pp. 3–41 or in Janick Auberger: Historiens d'Alexandre , Paris 2001, who thinks that the author of the Fragmentum Sabbaiticum remains anonymous.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Amyntianos |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Greek historian and rhetorician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 2nd century or 3rd century |
| DATE OF DEATH | 2nd century or 3rd century |