Eumenius

Eumenius (* around 264 in Augustodunum , † around 312) was a Gallic rhetorician of late antiquity . Due to a reading error, it was mistakenly associated with the city of Kleve in the 16th century .

Eumenius came from Augustodunum, today's Autun , where he led the Scholae Maenianae from 296 for a considerable salary . His grandfather, who came from Athens , was a well-known rhetorician in Rome and Augustodunum. Eumenius, who was also the private secretary (magister memoriae trecenarius) of Emperor Constantius I in 293 or 298 , later reported in a speech that he probably gave around 297 about his efforts to restore the school. This speech, in which he also praised the four then reigning emperors, has been preserved to this day in the Panegyrici Latini . Eumenius, who had a son, died around 312. It is a matter of dispute whether any more of the anonymous Panegyrici can be assigned to him .

Due to a reading error by the humanist Beatus Rhenanus , who wrote Augustoclivum instead of Augustodunum in his edition of Panegyrici in 1520 , the residents of Kleve (Latinized Augustoclivum) believed that their city had already existed in late antiquity and was the home of Eumenius at that time. When the Kleve humanist Stephanus Winandus Pighius believed he recognized a statue of Eumenius in a sculpture in the knight's hall of Kleve Castle in 1587 , it was placed at the central gate of the city wall, which was believed to be part of the old Roman city of Kleve. Attempts were also made to locate the Roman buildings of the city of Augustodunum and the Scholae Maenianae in Kleve.

Text editions and translations

• Charles EV Nixon, Barbara Saylor Rodgers (Eds.): In Praise of Later Roman Emperors. The Panegyrici Latini. University of California Press, Berkeley et al. 2015, ISBN 978-0-520-28625-2 , pp. 145–177, 554–563 (critical edition after Roger AB Mynors and English translation of the speech Pro instaurandis scholis with introduction and commentary)

literature

• Friedrich Gorissen: Historical topography of the city of Kleve . Boss-Verlag, Kleve 1992, ISBN 3-89413-188-8 , p. 145-150 .
• Arnold Hugh Martin Jones , John Robert Martindale, John Morris : Eumenius. In: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (PLRE). Volume 1, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1971, ISBN 0-521-07233-6 , pp. 294-295.
• Peter Lebrecht Schmidt : Two speeches by Eumenius. 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. 166-168
• Otto Seeck : Eumenius 1 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume VI, 1, Stuttgart 1907, Col. 1105-1114 (outdated).

Web links

• Historical print of the Klever Eumenius statue
• The Klever street names and their history