Breviary from urbe condita

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Breviarium ab urbe condita ( Latin short version [of the history] since the city was founded ) is the title of a historical work by the Roman historian Eutropius . It belongs to a genre of brief historical writings ( breviaria ), which also includes the epitome of Florus , the Historiae abbreviatae of Aurelius Victor and the breviarum of Rufus Festus .

Eutropius' Breviarium ab urbe condita treats Roman history in ten books in chronological order from the foundation of the city ( ab urbe condita , 753 BC) to the death of Emperor Jovian (364 AD). Eutropius wrote the work around 369 on behalf of Emperor Valens (ruled 364–378) in order to give this historical orientation knowledge at hand. Despite numerous chronological and factual inaccuracies and errors, the work was very successful: It was read and quoted by both pagan and Christian authors, translated into Greek at an early stage (around 379 by Paianios , in the early 6th century by the Capitol of Lycia ). Even in the Middle Ages, the breviary ab urbe condita remained in use as a textbook on Roman history and was revised and continued by two authors: in the 8th century by Paulus Diaconus and around 1000 by Landolfus Sagax .

Due to its lack of linguistic demands, the breviary ab urbe condita has been a popular school reading in Latin lessons in modern times , both in Germany (especially in the 18th and early 19th centuries) as well as in Italy, Spain, Russia and in English-speaking countries. As a historical source, it is particularly important for the late antiquity period , where it makes lost sources such as the Enmann Emperor's story tangible and reports the author's own experiences from the Persian War of Emperor Julian .

title

Eutropius gave his historical work the title Breviarium from urbe condita , which has come down to us in the now lost manuscript from Fulda . The author is referring to Titus Livius ' historical work Ab urbe condita , which also extends from the founding of the city to the author's lifetime. In fact, the breviary in the first six books is based on Livy to such an extent that the Byzantine Lexicon Suda referred to it as a proper extract from it.

dedication

In a preface ( praefatio ) Eutropius dedicated the work to the Emperor Valens, whom he addressed with the title Domino Valenti Gothico Maximo Perpetuo Augusto . Since Valens assumed the title Gothicus Maximus after his campaign against the Goths in 367-369 AD, the time when the breviary was written is dated to 369/370 AD.

In the dedication epistle, Eutropius writes that on behalf of the emperor ( ex voluntate mansuetudinis tuae ) he wanted to summarize the events of Roman history ( res Romanas ) from the foundation of the city to his time ( ab urbe condita usque ad nostram memoriam ), in chronological order ( per ordinem temporum ) and in a compact presentation ( brevi narratione ). Eutropius goes on to say that he added remarkable details from the imperial servants ( strictim additis etiam his, quae in principum vita egregia extiterunt ), with the intention of showing the emperor how he had already emulated the models of his predecessors without knowing about it have ( ut tranquillitatis tuae possit mens divina laetari prius se inlustrium virorum facta in administrando imperio secutam, quam cognosceret lectione. ).

Content and structure

The breviary ab urbe condita is divided into ten books. Books 1–6 cover the time of the kings and the republic (753–44 BC), books 7–10 the imperial period . The boundaries of the book apparently correspond to epochs that were considered important by the author.

swell

As the title of the work and a phrase in the introduction suggest, Eutropius in Books 1–6 referred primarily to the historical work of Livy Ab urbe condita , which he did not consult directly, but used in an epitome that was apparently received from us was different. For the imperial period, Eutropius mainly used the Enmann imperial story , which probably ended with the battle of Argentoratum (357 AD). A certain correspondence with the emperor's biographies Sueton arises from the fact that Enmann's imperial history processed them. For the events after AD 357, Eutropius used some of his own experiences.

Reception in historiography

The breviary ab urbe condita was very successful as a handy and low-requirement history presentation. It was used by other authors shortly after its publication, for example by Hieronymus in his Chronicle, by Augustine in his De civitate dei , by Rufus Festus (probably), by Cassiodor and Jordanes , by the church historian Orosius and possibly also by the Historia Augusta . As a handy historical work with a broad time horizon, Eutropius' breviary was widely read even in the Middle Ages . In the late 8th century the Lombard prince educator Paulus Diaconus , who worked in Montecassino , revised the work and continued it in six more books until 553, the time of Justinian's reign . Paul's additions mainly concern events in church history. This version of the Breviarium , called Historia Romana , was even more popular than the original: more than 160 manuscripts have survived from the 9th to 15th centuries, some of which name Eutropius rather than Paul. Regardless of this, the breviary ab urbe condita has also been passed on in its original form. Another adaptation was written by a certain Landolfus Sagax around the year 1000 , who continued the history work in eight additional books up to the year 806 (also with the title Historia Romana ; the first editor Pierre Pithou called the work Historia Miscella ).

Eutropius' work was also widely received in the Greek-speaking east of the empire, as it was available in various translations. During Eutropius' lifetime, around 379 AD, the translation of Paianios was created , which has survived almost completely (only the end with the reign of the emperors Julian and Jovian is missing). Another translation was written by the historian Kapiton of Lycia , who worked under the emperors Anastasios I (ruled 491-518) and Maurikios (ruled 518-527) based on the testimony of the Suda . It has not been passed down directly, but is mostly associated with the fragments of an Eutropius translation that differed from Paianio's in numerous Suda articles and the Constantinian collections of excerpts. A third translation, which is not identical to the two mentioned, seems to have used Theophanes Confessor in his description of Emperor Diocletian in the 9th century . Later users of the Greek translation of Paianios are Maximos Planudes (13th / 14th century) and Nikephoros Gregoras (14th century), who used the text as a supplement to Cassius Dio and his epitomist Xiphilinos .

From the 16th to the 18th centuries the breviary ab urbe condita was available in numerous printed editions. It was used just in the 18th and 19th centuries in German, English and Italian schools as a beginner's reading in Latin lessons and as a source for history lessons . Due to its numerous chronological and factual inaccuracies and errors, the reputation of the breviary declined noticeably. However , it is still valued as a contemporary representation of late antiquity (especially the 4th century) and as a source for lost historical works (especially for Enmann's imperial history ).

Handwritten tradition and edition history

Eutropius' breviary ab urbe condita is preserved in 20 manuscripts from the 9th to 15th centuries, which are assigned to at least three different lines of tradition. There are also around 160 manuscripts from the Historia Romana by Paulus Diaconus, some of which are of importance for the production of the original text.

The first printed edition appeared on May 20, 1471 in Rome, in the workshop of the printer Georg Lauer; however, its edition still contained the additions of Paulus Deaconus. Successive discoveries of the surviving manuscripts led to the restoration of the original text of the Breviarium ab urbe condita : Anton van Schoonhoven started with his edition, completed in 1545 and published in Basel in 1552, by using a manuscript from Ghent (today in the Leiden University Library , Bibliotheca Publica Latina 141) removed most of the Pauline additions. On this path, Élie Vinet (Elias Vinetus) progressed , who in addition to Schoonhoven's edition used a (later lost) manuscript from Bordeaux . The edition by Friedrich Sylburg (Frankfurt am Main 1590) was of particular importance as it not only gave the readings of the (later also lost) manuscript from Fulda , but also contained the Greek translation of Paianios (never before printed). The editions of the 17th and 18th centuries mainly contributed to the criticism and exegesis of the text without using new handwritten material.

After Theodor Mommsen had recognized the importance of the oldest manuscript ( Gotha Research Library , Ms. Memb. I, from the 9th century) in 1866 , Wilhelm Hartel delivered a monograph together with his Eutropius edition in 1872, in which he discussed the circumstances of him examined known manuscripts and separated the Eutropius manuscripts from the Pauline ones. The edition in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH), which was organized by Theodor Mommsen and carried out by his student Hans Droysen , rested on a broader basis . It contained not only the Latin text of the breviary (based on seven manuscripts), but also the Greek translations of Paianios and Kapiton as well as the continuations by Paulus Deaconus and Landolfus Sagax. A few years later, Carl Wagener and Franz Rühl published their own editions based on years of preparatory work (1884 and 1887, respectively), which went beyond Droysen, especially with regard to the constitution of the text. Rühl's edition, published by Teubner-Verlag , was widely distributed and was reprinted until the 1970s. Their text often differs from that of the earlier editions because Rühl tended to smooth out the problematic transmission of the manuscripts by using conjectures or different readings of individual manuscripts.

On the foundation laid by Hartel, Mommsen and Droysen, Nino Scivoletto built his studies on the tradition of the breviary in the 1960s . Not only on the basis of binding and separating errors, but also with paleographic arguments, he developed a stemma that is based on two lines of transmission that arose in the early Middle Ages, a Gallic and an Italian tradition. In his opinion, the Historia Romana of Paulus Diaconus goes back to the latter , and to the former three other manuscript groups, some of which show signs of contamination. Scivoletto's findings were incorporated into the Eutropius edition of his pupil Carlo Santini , who in turn classified another group of manuscripts in the stemma. Santini's 1979 edition in the Bibliotheca Teubneriana gave the readings of 20 manuscripts, including six Paul’s manuscripts, and assigned them to four lines of tradition, which he (following Scivoletto) marked with Greek minuscules :

  • The first class ( φ ) consists of Sylburg's lost Fulda manuscript and the Gotha Codex ( Gotha Research Library , Ms. Memb. I, from the 9th century).
  • The second class ( κ / λ / μ ) contains four manuscripts from the 11th and 12th centuries, some of which are incomplete.
  • The third grade ( χ / ψ ) consists of four manuscripts from the 10th to the 13th century.
  • The fourth class ( π ) corresponds to the Historia Romana of Paulus Diaconus.

In addition, there are individual manuscripts that are either contaminated or lost and therefore cannot be safely classified in the stemma, including the lost Codex Burdigalensis by Vinetus, the excerpts from a Petersburg manuscript discovered by Rühl (9th century, Class. Lat.Qv9 = Dubrowski 327) and an excerpt in the Bamberg University Library (10th century, Class. 31 = E.III.22), which is the only Eutropius' title of magister memoriae that has survived.

Since its publication, Santini's edition has formed the basis for research into Eutropius. The (annotated) translations and bilingual editions that appeared from the 1990s and were primarily intended as study editions corresponded to a renewed interest in historiography in late antiquity: Harold W. Bird published an English translation with commentary ( Translated Texts for Historians ) in 1993 , Friedhelm L. Müller 1995 a Latin-German edition with commentary and Stéphane Ratti an annotated French translation of books 7–9 (1997). In 1999, Joseph Hellegouarc'h, who had been studying Eutropius since the 1970s, presented his Latin-French edition, based on the autopsy of several manuscripts, which, however, did not differ from the manuscript groups established by Scivoletto and Santini. Fabrizio Bordone (with Italian translation, commentary and an introduction by Fabio Gasti, 2014) and Bruno Bleckmann and Jonathan Groß (with German translation and commentary, 2018) published further study editions .

Editions and translations

Translations and bilingual editions

  • Harold W. Bird: The Breviarum Ab Urbe Condita of Eutropius . Translated Texts for Historians . Liverpool 1993 (English translation with extensive introduction and commentary).
  • Bruno Bleckmann , Jonathan Groß: Eutropius, Breviarium ab urbe condita. Small and fragmentary historians of late antiquity B 3. Paderborn 2018, ISBN 978-3-506-78916-7 (German translation with philological and historical commentary, the latter only for books 9-10).
  • Fabrizio Bordone: Eutropio: Storia di Roma. Grandi classici greci latini . Santarcangelo di Romagna 2014, ISBN 978-88-18-03023-5 (Italian translation with commentary).
  • Friedhelm L. Müller : Eutropii breviarium ab urbe condita - Eutropius, Brief history of Rome since its founding (753 BC – 364 AD). Introduction, text and translation, notes, index nominum a) geographicorum b) historicorum . Stuttgart 1995.
  • Stéphane Ratti: Les empereurs romains d'Auguste à Dioclétien dans le Bréviaire d'Eutrope. Les livres 7 à 9 du Bréviaire d'Eutrope: introduction, traduction et commentaire . Paris 1996 (French translation of books 7 to 9 with commentary).

Critical Editions

  • Carlo Santini : Eutropii Breviarium ab urbe condita . Leipzig 1979 ( Bibliotheca Teubneriana ): Relevant edition based on the most important manuscripts
  • Hans Droysen (Ed.): Auctores antiquissimi 2: Eutropi Breviarium ab urbe condita cum versionibus Graecis et Pauli Landolfique additamentis. Berlin 1879 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized version): Extensive edition with text-critical apparatus, sources and testimony apparatus as well as the Greek translations and the continuations of Paulus Diaconus and Landolfus Sagax

literature

Individual evidence

  1. Suda, article "Kapiton" (κ 342): ἔγραψε μετάφρασιν τῆς ἐπιτομῆς Εὐτροπίου Ῥωμαϊστὶ ἐπιτεμόντος Λίβιον τὸν Ῥωμαῖον. "He wrote a translation of the short version of Eutropius, who summarized the Roman Livy in Roman."
  2. Giorgio Bonamente, La dedica del "Breviarium" e la carriera di Eutropio . In: Giornale Italiano di Filologia . Vol. 29 (1977), pp. 274-297. - Harold W. Bird: Eutropius and Festus: Some Reflections on the Empire and Imperial Policy in AD 369/370 . In: Florilegium . Volume 8 (1986), pp. 11-22, here 16.
  3. ^ Harold W. Bird: Structure and Themes in Eutropius' Breviarium . In: The Classical Bulletin . Vol. 66, pp. 87-92 (1990).
  4. Vladimir Pirogov: De Eutropii breviarii from uc indole ac fontibus. Berlin 1873, pp. 39-86; Gustav Reinhold: The historical work of Livy as a source of later historians. Berlin 1898.
  5. For a summary of the probable sources of Eutrop, see Bruno Bleckmann, Jonathan Groß: Eutropius, Breviarium ab urbe condita. Small and fragmentary historians of late antiquity B 3. Paderborn 2018, pp. 19–23.
  6. ^ Peter Lebrecht Schmidt : Eutropius. In: Reinhart Herzog (ed.): Restoration and renewal. The Latin literature from 284 to 374 AD (= Handbook of the Latin Literature of Antiquity , Volume 5). CH Beck, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-406-31863-0 , pp. 201-207
  7. Suda, article “Kapiton” (κ 342): “Kapiton: Lykier, Historiker. He wrote ... a translation of the Breviary of Eutropius, who had stripped out the Roman Livy in Latin “( Καπίτων · Λύκιοςντντοντορικός .
  8. Jump up ↑ Lars Boje Mortensen, The Diffusion on Roman Histories in the Middle Ages: A List of Orosius, Eutropius, Paulus Diaconus and Landolfus Sagax Manuscripts . In: Filologica Mediolatina . Vol. 6-7 (1999-2000), pp. 101-200, here p. 115.
  9. Hans Droysen: The Eutropausgaben of Schoonhoven and E. Vinetus . In: Hermes . Volume 12 (1877), pp. 385-386.
  10. ^ Wilhelm Hartel: Eutropius and Paulus Diaconus . In: Session reports of the philosophical-historical class of the Imperial Academy of Sciences . Volume 71 (1872), pp. 227-310.