Eusebios (historian)

Eusebios was a late antique historian. Nothing is known precisely about his life; but there is much to suggest that he lived at the end of the 3rd century.

After Euagrios Scholastikos, who lived in the 6th century (who apparently relied on Eustathios of Epiphaneia ), Eusebios wrote an imperial story that spanned the period from Augustus to Carus :

"Eusebios, who started out from Octavian, Traian and Marcus, reached the death of Carus."

This Eusebios, who can be clearly distinguished from the church historian Eusebius of Caesarea , probably described the time up to Marcus Aurelius rather cursory; at least this is suggested by the formulation in Euagrios. Two fragments by a historian named Eusebios, dealing with sieges, have been preserved and are mostly attributed to Eusebios mentioned in Euagrios. Accordingly, the work of Eusebios comprised at least nine books, was written in Ionic Greek and was probably based on Herodotus . The first fragment describes the siege of the Greek city of Thessalonica by Goths , which the classical Eusebios called " Scythians ". In the second fragment, the siege of a city (very likely Tours in Gaul) by unnamed Teutons is described, which Eusebios here calls " Celts ". Both sieges took place during the imperial crisis of the 3rd century ; the first in the 50s / 60s, the second probably at the end of the 50s.

Roger Green and Hagith Sivan have tried to equate Eusebius with another historian, Eusebius of Nantes , who lived in the 4th century . But since Eusebius of Nantes probably wrote in Latin, this theory is rather improbable.

Edition with translation

• Bruno Bleckmann , Jonathan Gross: Historians of the Imperial Crisis of the 3rd Century I ( Small and fragmentary historians of late antiquity ). Paderborn 2016, ISBN 978-3-506-78490-2 , pp. 109-141.

literature

• Barry Baldwin: Eusebius and the Siege of Thessalonica. In: Rheinisches Museum für Philologie . Volume 124, 1981, pp. 291-296 ( online ; PDF; 1.2 MB).
• Paul Goukowsky: Un imitateur tardif d'Hérodote: Eusèbe, historien des Césars . In: Claude Brixhe (ed.): La koiné grecque antique. Volume 2. Paris 1996, pp. 171-201.
• Richard Laqueur : Eusebios 30a). In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Supplement V, Stuttgart 1931, Col. 221-223.

Remarks

1. ↑ Euagrios, Church History , 5:24.
2. ↑ See The Fragments of the Greek Historians , No. 101 or Brill's New Jacoby (with English translation and commentary). See also Baldwin, Eusebius on this .
3. ↑ See Richard Laqueur: Eusebios 30a). In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Supplement V, Stuttgart 1931, Col. 222 f.
4. ↑ See Hagith Sivan: The Historian Eusebius (of Nantes) . In: Journal of Hellenic Studies 112 (1992), p. 158ff.
5. ↑ Cf. Udo Hartmann : The history writing . In: Klaus-Peter Johne : The time of the soldier emperors . Vol. 2, Berlin 2008, pp. 893ff., Especially p. 908, note 45.