Bemarchios

Bemarchios ( Greek  Βημάρχιος Bēmárchios ; † around 345) was a late antique rhetor and historian .

The rhetoric Bemarchios, who probably came from Cappadocia , was one of the leading figures on the intellectual scene in Constantinople . He was a rival to the Lebanios , whose assassination he allegedly planned. In 341 he was involved in an argument with him from which he ultimately emerged as a loser. Although Bemarchios himself was a pagan, he supported the policy of Emperor Constantius II , who sometimes cracked down on the adherents of the old faith.

Bemarchios wrote, among other things, a now lost story about Emperor Constantine in ten books and several speeches. Although no writings by Bemarchios have survived, there are reports of a speech given on the occasion of the consecration of the great church in Antioch .

Bemarchios is attested at Libanios and in the Suda .

swell

• The Fragments of the Greek Historians , No. 220

literature

• Paweł Janiszewski: Bemarchios. 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. 74 f.
• Arnold Hugh Martin Jones , John Martindale, John Morris: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire . Vol. 1, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1971, ISBN 0-521-07233-6 , p. 160.

Remarks

1. ↑ Libanios, or. 1.31; 1.39-47; ep. 206.
2. ↑ Suda , keyword Bêmarchios ( Βημάρχιος ), Adler number: beta 259 , Suda-Online .