Enmann's imperial story

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As Enmannsche Kaisergeschichte (EKG) (sometimes simply called Kaisergeschichte or Kaiserchronik ) is a historical work of late antiquity that has not survived and that has not been passed on or proven indirectly through fragments and testimony . Rather, existence and time of origin (around 337–357) can only be deduced from circumstantial evidence. However, the vast majority of modern research does not deny the existence of the work.

Enmann's findings

The name of the work goes back to Alexander Enmann , who in 1884 published the study A Lost History of the Roman Emperors and the book De viris illustribus urbis Romae . In this, Enmann started from the observation that between the works of the late Roman historians Aurelius Victor and Eutropius and (less pronounced) the Historia Augusta and the Epitome de Caesaribus there is a multitude of linguistic, but above all content-related, similarities; these are also judgments and (sometimes gross) factual errors. For example, Eutropius seemed to be copied by Aurelius Victor, but this could not be possible because Eutropius wrote after Aurelius Victor. On the other hand, Eutropius sometimes offered more information than Victor and did not share Victor's style, vocabulary and views.

Enmann has shown that the bulk of these parallels cannot be explained by coincidences or direct relationships of dependency between the works, but that the reason must lie in a common source that has not been preserved and is nowhere expressly mentioned and about the author of which, therefore, only assumptions are possible. The fact that this work, evidently a biographical story of the emperor, is nowhere explicitly mentioned may be surprising at first glance, but ancient authors rarely gave information about their sources anyway. Since material from the EKG was incorporated into the Historia Augusta , Enmann took an older version of the EKG from the time of Emperor Diocletian and - since the similarities between Aurelius Victor and Eutrop also affect the subsequent period - a more recent version (up to the Battle of Argentoratum 357). He started from the (erroneous) view at the time that part of the Historia Augusta had already been written under Diocletian.

Subsequent research

In 1889 Hermann Dessau published his fundamental study on the Historia Augusta , in which he plausibly demonstrated that this work was probably written by only one author at the end of the 4th century. Enmann's assumption of two processing of the EKG that was far apart was thus superfluous. In general, based on similarities in the Chronicle of Jerome (where the EKG was also used) and Eutropius, it is assumed that the work describes the events from the battle of Actium (31 BC), which led to the victory of Octavian / Augustus in the civil war and thus marked the beginning of the Roman monarchy. The EKG probably extended to 337 (death of Constantine the Great ) or 357 (Battle of Argentoratum, and more recently Burgess in particular) and may have been published in the 50s of the 4th century. Recently, Burgess has also suspected that there were three editorial offices of the EKG: one that extended to 358 and two more that covered the period up to 364 and 378 respectively, which means that the EKG extended further than previously assumed; likewise the EKG was only part of a larger history of Rome from the beginning.

Richard Burgess and other researchers assume that Ammianus Marcellinus and Rufius Festus also used the EKG, or at least that material from it was indirectly accessible to them. Burgess also suspects that the tyranni (usurpers) of the imperial crisis of the 3rd century received special attention. He identified Eusebius of Nantes as the author , but this must remain questionable.

The author of the EKG was very likely not a Christian and obviously came from the west of the empire; Alexander Enmann had already assumed that the author was a Gaul or lived in Gaul due to the context of the content. The work itself was written in Latin and evidently from a senate-friendly perspective, as Enmann emphasized (see also senatorial historiography ). In research it is often assumed that the author of the EKG served the (also lost) emperor biographies of Marius Maximus as an important source. For the time before, the main source was apparently Suetonius .

If one assumes the similarities among the Breviators , then the imperial history seems to have conveyed a relatively large number of details about domestic political processes. However, the EKG is unlikely to have been too comprehensive, as several researchers have emphasized. Otherwise there would also be larger deviations in the representation of the Breviators Aurelius Victor and Eutropius. More recently, Bruno Bleckmann in particular has emphasized the apparently breviary-like character of the work. Although the Breviators may have used other sources as well, the EKG is apparently their main source for the imperial era. It also seems to have been the only (or most popular) Latin historical work that went into more detail on the 3rd century , which is one of the reasons for the extensive use by the authors mentioned above. Bleckmann, on the other hand, believes that other (now lost) Latin historical works were created during the time of the Tetrarchy , on which Aurelius Victor, for example, also relied.

The biographies in the EKG were probably structured according to the following pattern: 1) Name and origin of the emperor, remarks on his early life up to the accession to the throne. 2) Wars waged by the emperor against external and internal enemies. 3) Domestic measures of the emperor. 4) Death of the emperor: circumstances and place, honors, length of reign. Presumably Eutropius orientated himself rather strongly to the contents of the EKG for the imperial period, while Aurelius Victor added his own evaluations.

Some researchers have doubted the existence of the EKG, but were unable to come up with a better explanation for the similarities between the histories of late antiquity. The existence of the ECG is accepted by the vast majority of research today, although numerous questions remain open or controversial.

literature

  • Timothy D. Barnes : The Lost Imperial History and the Latin Historical Tradition. In: Bonner Historia Augusta Colloquium 1968/69 . Bonn 1970, pp. 13-43.
  • Bruno Bleckmann : Thoughts on Enmann's imperial history and the formation of historical traditions in Tetrarchic and Constantinian times . In: Giorgio Bonamente, Klaus Rosen (ed.): Historiae Augustae Colloquium Bonnense. Bari 1997, pp. 11-37.
  • Richard W. Burgess : Principes cum Tyrannis. Two Studies on the Imperial History and its Tradition. In: The Classical Quarterly 43 (1993), pp. 491-500.
  • Richard W. Burgess: On the Date of the Imperial History. In: Classical Philology 90 (1995), pp. 111-128.
  • Richard W. Burgess: A Common Source for Jerome, Eutropius, Festus, Ammianus, and the Epitome de Caesaribus between 358 and 378, along with Further Thoughts on the Date and Nature of the Kaisergeschichte. In: Classical Philology 100 (2005), pp. 166-192.
  • Alexander Enmann: A lost history of the Roman emperors and the book De viris illustribus urbis Romae . In: Philologus Suppl.-Vol. 4, H. 3. Göttingen 1884, pp. 337-501.
  • Peter Lebrecht Schmidt : The so-called Enmannsche Kaisergeschichte (= EKG). 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. 196-198.

Remarks

  1. ↑ See for example Richard W. Burgess: Principes cum Tyrannis. Two Studies on the Imperial History and its Tradition. In: The Classical Quarterly 43 (1993), here p. 491, with further literature, ibid., Note 1.
  2. ↑ Alexander Enmann: A lost history of the Roman emperors and the book De viris illustribus urbis Romae. Göttingen 1884, p. 436ff.
  3. ↑ On the time and personality of the Scriptores Historiae Augustae . In: Hermes 24 (1889), pp. 337-392; here online . Dessau's approach was long and controversial, but is now widely accepted.
  4. ↑ Brief overview in Richard W. Burgess: On the Date of the Kaisergeschichte. In: Classical Philology 90 (1995), here pp. 112-114 and p. 127.
  5. ↑ Cf. Bruno Bleckmann: Reflections on Enmann's imperial history and on the formation of historical traditions in the tetrarchic and Constantinian times. In: Giorgio Bonamente, Klaus Rosen (ed.): Historiae Augustae Colloquium Bonnense. Bari 1997, here p. 36. The EKG was certainly published before 360/61 because Aurelius Victor completed his work in 361, in which the EKG was used.
  6. ^ Richard W. Burgess: A Common Source for Jerome, Eutropius, Festus, Ammianus, and the Epitome de Caesaribus between 358 and 378, along with Further Thoughts on the Date and Nature of the Kaisergeschichte. In: Classical Philology 100 (2005), especially pp. 188ff.
  7. ^ Richard W. Burgess: On the Date of the Imperial History. In: Classical Philology 90 (1995), here p. 112.
  8. ^ Richard W. Burgess: Principes cum Tyrannis. Two Studies on the Imperial History and its Tradition. In: The Classical Quarterly 43 (1993), here pp. 497-499.
  9. ↑ Alexander Enmann: A lost history of the Roman emperors and the book De viris illustribus urbis Romae. Göttingen 1884, p. 435.
  10. ↑ Alexander Enmann: A lost history of the Roman emperors and the book De viris illustribus urbis Romae. Göttingen 1884, p. 433ff.
  11. ↑ See for example Jörg A. Schlumberger : Die Epitome de Caesaribus. Investigations on pagan historiography of the 4th century AD. CH Beck, Munich 1974, p. 129 and passim; Richard W. Burgess: On the Date of the Imperial History. In: Classical Philology 90 (1995), here p. 113, note 13.
  12. ↑ Peter Lebrecht Schmidt: The so-called Enmannsche Kaisergeschichte (= EKG). In: Reinhart Herzog (ed.): Restoration and renewal. The Latin literature from 284 to 374 AD Munich 1989, here p. 197. Cf. also Alexander Enmann: A lost history of the Roman emperors and the book De viris illustribus urbis Romae. Göttingen 1884, p. 407ff.
  13. ↑ See also the introduction in Harold W. Bird: Liber de Caesaribus of Sextus Aurelius Victor . Liverpool 1994, p. Xiiff. On the basis of a comparison of the various Breviators, Bird came to the conclusion that the EKG did not count more than 35 to 40 Teubner pages (according to the Teubner publishing house, which published numerous editions of ancient texts), i.e. somewhat more extensive than the imperial era Depiction of Eutropius, but more concise than Aurelius Victors De Caesaribus .
  14. ↑ Bruno Bleckmann: Thoughts on Enmann's imperial history and the formation of historical traditions in Tetrarchic and Constantinian times. In: Giorgio Bonamente, Klaus Rosen (ed.): Historiae Augustae Colloquium Bonnense. Bari 1997, here p. 14ff.
  15. ↑ See Richard W. Burgess: Principes cum Tyrannis. Two Studies on the Imperial History and its Tradition. In: The Classical Quarterly 43 (1993), here p. 493.
  16. ↑ Bruno Bleckmann: Thoughts on Enmann's imperial history and the formation of historical traditions in Tetrarchic and Constantinian times. In: Giorgio Bonamente, Klaus Rosen (ed.): Historiae Augustae Colloquium Bonnense. Bari 1997, p. 21ff.
  17. ↑ See in summary Harold W. Bird: Liber de Caesaribus of Sextus Aurelius Victor . Liverpool 1994, p. Xiiif. Bleckmann, among others, also assumes that Eutropius was oriented more closely to the EKG: Bruno Bleckmann: Reflections on Enmann's imperial history and the formation of historical traditions in Tetrarchic and Constantinian times. In: Giorgio Bonamente, Klaus Rosen (ed.): Historiae Augustae Colloquium Bonnense. Bari 1997, here p. 14ff.
  18. ↑ See the critical remarks by Willem den Boer : Some Minor Roman Historians. Leiden 1972, p. 21ff.