Pompey Trogus

This article deals with the Roman historian; for the insect genus of the same name, see Trogus (genus) .

Gnaeus Pompeius Trogus was a Roman historian of the Augustan period from the area of ​​the Vocontier in the province of Gallia Narbonensis . He lived in the second half of the 1st century BC. BC to the first century AD. He was thus a contemporary of the historian Titus Livius .

Epitome historiarum Trogi Pompeii

His grandfather served under Pompey in the war against Sertorius and received Roman citizenship through his influence - hence the assumed part of the name Pompey . His paternal uncle served under Pompey as horseman in the war against Mithridates . His father served as secretary and translator under Caesar .

Trogus himself seems to have been a man of encyclopedic knowledge. He wrote books on the natural history of plants and animals based on Aristotle and Theophrastus von Eresos and was often quoted by Pliny the Elder . His main work, however, were the Historiae Philippicae ( Philippine history ) in 44 books.

It is a story of the regions that were under the rule of Alexander the Great and his successors. Why Trogus called the work of all things Philippine History has not been satisfactorily clarified to this day, since, contrary to what the title suggests, the Macedonian king and father of Alexander Philip II was not the focus of the plot. The central theme, however, is the rise of Macedonia, the establishment of the Alexander empire, its decline and the subsequent rise of Rome, which, however, is treated more marginally. Ultimately, it is an ancient world history with special attention to the Hellenistic East. The succession of empires played an important role.

Ethnographic and geographical excursions are one of the peculiarities of the work that begins with Ninos , the legendary founder of Nineveh and ends almost at the same point as Livy, in the year 9. The last event from which Marcus Iunianus Iustinus , who is an excerpt of the Werks made (although it is controversial to what extent he incorporated his own representations), reports the recovery of the Roman standards in the year 20 BC. BC, which the Parthians had conquered in the Battle of Carrhae . The guide for the representation is the sequence of the various great empires.

Roman history up to the time the Greeks and the East came into contact with Rome was neglected, perhaps because Livy had already adequately covered this area. Material from the writings of numerous Greek historians flowed into the work, including Herodotus , Ktesias of Knidos , Theopompos of Chios , Ephoros of Kyme , Timaeus of Tauromenion , Kleitarchos , Hieronymos of Kardia and Polybios .

Mainly for the reason that such a collection of information material was probably beyond the possibilities of a Roman, as well as for content considerations, Alfred von Gutschmid already suspected that Trogus did not collect the information of the leading Greek historians himself. Rather, they were already brought together in another book written in Greek. Trogus then used this as a template. Von Gutschmid took the universal history of Timagenes of Alexandria as the source , whose work thematically resembles the Philippian history of Trogus. This theory has often been tried to refute in recent research, but (in a modified form, according to which Timagenes may not have been the only, but an important source), John Yardley and Waldemar Heckel have advocated it again recently.

Trogus's stylistic approach was less rhetorical than that of Sallust and Livius, whom he reprimanded for putting elaborate speeches in the mouths of the people he wrote about.

From his work only excerpts from the above-mentioned Justinus have survived, the prologi or summaries of the 44 books, and fragments in Hieronymus , Augustinus , in the Historia Augusta and other writers. But even in this mangled state, he is often an important authority on the history of the East.

literature

Overview display

• Michael von Albrecht : History of Roman literature from Andronicus to Boethius and its continued effect . Volume 1. 3rd, improved and expanded edition. De Gruyter, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-11-026525-5 , pp. 731-734

Investigations

• Otto Seel: Pompeius Trogus and the problem of universal history . In: Rise and Fall of the Roman World . Vol. II 30.2. Berlin-New York 1982, pp. 1363-1423.
• Ralf Urban: "Historiae Philippicae" in Pompeius Trogus: attempt at an interpretation . In: Historia 31, 1982, pp. 82-96.
• John C. Yardley, Waldemar Heckel : Justin: Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus. Vol. I, Books 11-12: Alexander the Great . Oxford 1997 (especially the introduction).
• John C. Yardley: What is Justin doing with Trogus? In: Marietta Horster , Christiane Reitz (Eds.): Condensing Texts - Condensed Texts . Stuttgart 2010, pp. 469-490.

Web links

• Literature by and about Pompeius Trogus in the catalog of the German National Library