Petros Patrikios

Emperor Justinian with his most important officials, possibly including Petros

Petros Patrikios (Latin Petrus Patricius ; † around 565) was a high-ranking Eastern Roman diplomat of late antiquity .

Flavius ​​Petrus was born in Thessaloniki around 500 . He was a Christian, studied Roman law and entered civil service. He held the important office of magister officiorum from 539 until the death of his patron Justinian in 565 - an unusually long time. His numerous tasks included in particular the organization of the Eastern Roman court ceremony , which was considerably expanded and complicated under Justinian.

Above all, however, Petros fulfilled the functions of an imperial "foreign minister" before 539 and went on several difficult diplomatic missions for Justinian and Theodora , for example to the Ostrogoths : in 534 he reached Ravenna to negotiate the status of Sicily ; but while he was still at the Gothic court, the war between the East and the Goths began , so that Petros was imprisoned for a while. Apparently he was involved in the murder of the Gothic queen Amalasuntha a little later . He was only released in 539 - and in the same year he was appointed magister officiorum and patricius (a very high honorary title) by the emperor . Because of this honor he went down in history as "Petrus Patricius". In 550 he undertook a foreign mission to the powerful Sassanid king Chosrau I. Petros also played an important role in the difficult negotiations with the Sassanids 561/62, which took place at Dara and in 562 led to the conclusion of a 50-year peace - which only lasted a few years . Despite his undeniable merits and skills, Petros is portrayed rather negatively in the work of the historian Prokopios of Caesarea , and Menander Protektor criticizes his enormous vanity. According to Menander, Petros died soon after the negotiations with the Persians ended, but he was still alive in 565. Since it is no longer occupied at the time of Justinian's successor Justin II (565 to 578), he will probably have died around this time.

Petros was also active in literature. Only fragments of his works have survived, some of which, however, offer valuable information, as Petros also included older documents; so the text of the peace treaty between Romans and Persians from 298 (299?) has only survived thanks to Petros. Parts of his book on the imperial protocol were included in the work De cerimoniis of Emperor Constantine VII in the 10th century and have been preserved. Furthermore, Petros wrote a report on his diplomatic mission 561/62, which was also used by Menander Protektor.

Like many high-ranking Eastern Roman dignitaries of his time, Petros was also active as a historian and wrote a Roman history . This, however, unusually did not deal with the recent past, but probably extended from the time of the second triumvirate (43 BC) to Constantius II (337 to 361 AD); the last surviving fragment reports events in the year 358. The histories of Petros were probably not divided into books, but rather organized according to the governments of the emperors. Petros apparently relied in large parts on Cassius Dio , with whom he partly corresponds literally, and also probably consulted Herodian , Dexippus and Eunapios of Sardis . Bruno Bleckmann suspects that Petros also made use of the lost annals of Virius Nicomachus Flavianus (see Leo source ).

It is likely that the so-called Anonymous post Dionem is identical to Petros, although Warren Treadgold suggested Helikonios of Byzantium as the author (albeit not very convincingly) .

Translations

• Thomas M. Banchich: The Lost History of Peter the Patrician. Routledge, Abingdon / New York 2015 (English translation of the testimonies and fragments of his historical work; specialist discussion )

literature

Overview representations

• Herbert Hunger : The high-level profane literature of the Byzantines . Volume 1. CH Beck, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-406-01427-5 , pp. 300-303
• John Robert Martindale: Petrus 6. In: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (PLRE). Volume 3B, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1992, ISBN 0-521-20160-8 , pp. 994-998.
• Maria Assunta Nagl : Petros 6 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume XIX, 2, Stuttgart 1938, Sp. 1296-1304.
• Elżbieta Szabat: Petros Patrikios. 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. 285 f.

Investigations

• Panagiotis T. Antonopoulos: Petrus Patricius. Some Aspects of his Life and Career . In: Vladimír Vavřínek (Ed.): From Late Antiquity to Early Byzantium. Proceedings of the Byzantinological Symposium in the 16th International Eirene Conference . Academia, Prague 1985, p. 49-53 .

Remarks

1. ↑ The fact that he came from Thessaloniki emerges from a statement by Prokopios of Caesarea ( Histories 5.3).
2. ↑ See e.g. Cassiodorus , Variae 10.19.
3. ↑ On the history of Petros and the related source question see also the various remarks by Bruno Bleckmann: Die Reichskrise des III. Century in late antique and Byzantine historiography. Investigations on the post-Dionic sources of the Chronicle of Johannes Zonaras . Munich 1992.
4. ↑ See Thomas M. Banchich: The Lost History of Peter the Patrician. New York 2015, p. 9.
5. ↑ See Hunger, Literatur , Vol. 1, p. 301.
6. ^ Thomas M. Banchich: The Lost History of Peter the Patrician. New York 2015, p. 3ff.
7. ^ Warren Treadgold: The Early Byzantine Historians . Basingstoke 2007, p. 48f.