Zosimos

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Zosimos ( Greek Ζώσιμος, Latinized Zosimus ) was a Greek historian from late antiquity who wrote a historical work around 500 AD with the title Historia nea ("New History"). It is considered the last ancient work of history by a pagan author.

life and work

Zosimos probably came from the Syrian - Palestinian region and enjoyed a good education. The Patriarch Photios I of Constantinople called him a Comes and former advocatus fisci , so he seems to have pursued a legal career. Probably between 498 and 518 (according to some researchers between 498 and 502) he wrote a New History ( Greek : Ίστορία νέα / Historía néa) of the Roman Empire in six books, which dealt with the history of the Trojan War up to 410, with the early one History is portrayed very tightly. After a very brief outline of the imperial period up to Diocletian (the section on the rule of this emperor is missing today), a more detailed description of the events in the 4th and 5th centuries follows. The description breaks off shortly before the conquest of Rome by the Visigoth king Alaric I in 410. It is assumed, also due to a lack of finishing work, that the work was not completed.

Zosimos used several sources that are now lost. Among other things, he drew on the works of the two non-Christians Eunapios of Sardis and Olympiodoros of Thebes , probably also the Chronicle of Publius Herennius Dexippus for the beginning of his work, and possibly the treatise of Magnus von Karrhai for Julian's Persian campaign . In spite of several chronological and factual errors, the work is valuable for that eventful epoch, since it is the only extant more detailed representation for parts of the late 4th and early 5th centuries; Zosimos also provides some important information for the 3rd century. Zosimos is likely to have mostly stuck to his templates: For example, Stilicho , based on the work of Eunapios, which Zosimos used very intensively according to the statement of Photios, who still had both works, is initially negative, but later (probably due to the reference to the history of Olympiodoros) described positively. The reports available to him have occasionally been intentionally changed and supplemented - how much, however, is controversial in research.

Zosimos was an avowed pagan ("heathen") and a decided enemy of Christianity , which is also noticeable in his work. It is often assumed that the absence of the sections about the Christian persecutor Diocletian and the conquest of Rome (which the non-Christians understood as the revenge of the gods on the Christianized empire) was not a coincidence, but that later Christian copyists found these descriptions in Zosimos offensive and were aware of the corresponding passages not handed down. But this also makes it clear that Zosimos saw the decline of the empire as a punishment for turning away from the old gods: when Constantine the Great did not hold the due secular celebrations in 313 , the empire forfeited divine assistance. Zosimos undoubtedly adopted this position from his sources. But Zosimos also polemicized against the Christian emperors in other places while extensively extolling the last pagan ruler Julian. The historical picture of Zosimos is strongly negative; for him the fall of the Roman Empire is already an inevitable fact, although the Eastern Empire remained in existence for a very long time. In this sense, he wanted to describe the story of this supposed downfall and interpret it from an explicitly pagan perspective, as a parallel to the description of the rise of the empire by Polybius .

The work of Zosimos cannot intellectually rival that of other late antique historians such as Ammianus Marcellinus , Olympiodoros of Thebes (who, as can be seen from fragments of his work, gave more precise information), Priskos or Prokopios of Caesarea , who as contemporaries reported on some of their own experiences and judged much more objectively. In addition, Zosimos made several errors in content (chronological, ethnographic and geographical); for example, he confuses the Danube and Don rivers. Nevertheless, due to the loss of other historical works from late antiquity, it is the main source for the events from 378 (after the end of the Res gestae des Ammianus) to 410.

Nothing is known of Zosimos' further life. The fact that at the beginning of the 6th century it was still possible to publish an openly anti-Christian work, which apparently also found its audience and was disseminated, is an indication that "paganism" was on the decline for a long time, but still always existed and was of some importance. Nevertheless, the non-Christian orientation prevented a more intensive aftermath of Zosimos' "New History".

Editions and translations

Entry in Clavis Historicorum Antiquitatis Posterioris (CHAP) .

  • Zosime. Histoire Nouvelle . Translated and commented by François Paschoud . 3 volumes, Budé, Paris 1971–1989 (with introduction, French translation and extensive commentary).
  • Zosimos. New story . Translated and introduced by Otto Veh , reviewed and explained by Stefan Rebenich (= Library of Greek Literature . Volume 31). Hiersemann, Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-7772-9025-4 (for further references see there).
  • Ronald T. Ridley (Ed.): Zosimus. New History . Canberra 1982 (English translation with commentary).
  • Zosimi comitis et exadvocati fisci Historia nova . Edited by Ludwig Mendelssohn , Olms, Hildesheim et al. 2003 [2. Reprint of the edition Teubner, Leipzig 1887], ISBN 978-3-487-05208-3 .

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Zosimos  - Sources and full texts
personal data
SURNAME Zosimos
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Zosimus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION late antique historian
DATE OF BIRTH 5th century
DATE OF DEATH 6th century