Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T22:02:12.073Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Codex Nicholsonianus

Review products

OLIVERNICHOLSON (ED.), THE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF LATE ANTIQUITY. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Two vols.: A–I, pp. lxxxiv + 1–800; J–Z, pp. xi + 801–1637. isbn: 9780198662778. £215.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2021

George Woudhuysen
George Woudhuysen*
Affiliation:
University of Nottingham
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Frankness is not a quality one naturally associates with Themistius, that most sinuous of the fourth century's official spokesmen, but the opening of his first speech (‘On the Love of Mankind’) is disarmingly frank. Invited to address Constantius II at Ancyra in the spring of 342, the young orator had an unusually difficult brief: violent riots in Constantinople had recently seen Hermogenes (a senior general) killed by a mob, relations with Constans (emperor in the west) were tense and war with Persia was rumbling away on the eastern frontier. The situation surely called for cliché — the familiar refuge of the panegyrist in a tight spot — but Themistius responded with a rather daring candour. Not for him some faltering introduction of the various themes set out in the rhetorical handbooks. Instead, he opened by offering his listeners an expert's guide to the tropes of conventional panegyric: those familiar descriptions of magnificent armies, glittering imperial adornment and the emperor's physical vigour (Or. 1.2a–b) to which his courtly audience must have been almost numb. With these curtly dismissed as so much hackwork, he delivered a boldly original oration: a philosophical treatment of the emperor's inner virtue. It is quite a performance. One can see why so many and such different emperors found themselves in need of Themistius’ eloquence.

Type
Review Articles
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 111 , November 2021 , pp. 225 - 238
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I would like to thank Justin Stover for discussion on several important points.

References

PIR2 = Prosopographia imperii Romani saec. I. II. III (editio altera). PLRE I = Jones, A. H. M., Martindale, J. R. and Morris, J. (eds), The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, vol. I: A.D. 260–395, Cambridge, 1971.Google Scholar
Alföldi, A. 1935: ‘Insignien und Tracht der römischen Kaiser’, Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archaeologischen Insituts, Römische Abteilung, 50, 1–171.Google Scholar
Barnes, T. D. 1978: The Sources of the Historia Augusta, Brussels.Google Scholar
Barnes, T. D. 1982: The New Empire of Diocletian and Constantine, Cambridge, MA.10.4159/harvard.9780674280670CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barnes, T. D. 1987: ‘Himerius and the fourth century’, Classical Philology 82.3, 206–25.10.1086/367048CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barnes, T. D. 1992: ‘Praetorian Prefects, 337–361’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 94, 249–60.Google Scholar
Barnes, T. D. 1993: Athanasius and Constantius: Theology and Politics in the Constantinian Empire, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Barnes, T. D. 2011: Constantine: Dynasty, Religion and Power in the Later Roman Empire, Chichester.Google Scholar
Barrett, G. and Woudhuysen, G. 2016: ‘Assembling the Austrasian Letters at Trier and Lorsch’, Early Medieval Europe 24.1, 3–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowersock, G. W., Brown, P. R. L. and Grabar, O. 1999: Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Brendel, R. 2019: [Review of O. Nicholson (ed.) The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity], H-Soz-Kult 15.04.2019. https://www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/reb-27975Google Scholar
Brown, P. R. L. 1971: The World of Late Antiquity: From Marcus Aurelius to Muhammad, London.Google Scholar
Burgess, R. W. 2008: ‘The summer of blood: the “great massacre” of 337 and the promotion of the sons of Constantine’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 62, 5–51.Google Scholar
Cameron, A. D. E. 1985: ‘The date and owners of the Esquiline Treasure’, American Journal of Archaeology 89.1, 135–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cameron, A. D. E. 1995: ‘Avienus or Avienius?’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 108, 252–62.Google Scholar
Cameron, A. D. E. 1998: ‘Basilius, Mavortius, Asterius’, in Ševčenko, I. and Hutter, I. (eds), ΑΕΤΟΣ. Studies in Honour of Cyril Mango Presented to him April 14, 1998, Stuttgart/Leipzig, 28–39.Google Scholar
Cameron, A. D. E 1999: ‘The antiquity of the Symmachi’, Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 48.4, 477–505.Google Scholar
Dorfbauer, L. J. 2013: ‘Der Evangelienkommentar des Bischofs Fortunatian von Aquileia (Mitte 4. Jh.). Ein Neufund auf dem Gebiet der patristischen Literatur’, Wiener Studien 126, 177–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodyear, F. R. D. 1983: [Review of Glare, P. G. W. (ed.), The Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford, 1968–1982)], Proceedings of the African Classical Association 17, 124–36, reprinted in K. M. Coleman, J. Diggle, J. B. Hall, and H. D. Jocelyn (eds) 1992: F. R. D. Goodyear. Papers on Latin Literature, London, 281–7.Google Scholar
Goulet, R. 2014: Eunape de Sardes. Vie de philosophes et de sophistes, 2 vols., Paris.Google Scholar
Hendy, M. F. 1985: Studies in the Byzantine Monetary Economy c. 300–1450, Cambridge.10.1017/CBO9780511896750CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones Hall, L. 2012: ‘Clyde Pharr, the women of Vanderbilt, and the Wyoming judge: The story behind the translation of the Theodosian Code in mid-century America’, Roman Legal Tradition 9, 1–42.Google Scholar
Kelly, G. 2010: ‘The Roman world of Festus’ Breviarium’, in Kelly, C., Flower, R. and Williams, M. S. (eds), Unclassical Traditions. Volume I: Alternatives to the Classical Past in Late Antiquity, Cambridge, 72–91.Google Scholar
Kelly, G. 2013: ‘The political crisis of AD 375/376’, Chiron: Mitteilungen der Kommission für Alte Geschichte und Epigraphik des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 43, 357–409.Google Scholar
Lane Fox, R. J. 1997: ‘The itinerary of Alexander: Constantius to Julian’, Classical Quarterly 47.1, 239–52.Google Scholar
Last, H. 1949: [Review of M. Cary, J. D. Denniston, J. Wight Duff, A. D. Nock, W. D. Ross, H. H. Scullard, H. J. Rose, H. P. Harvey and A. Souter, The Oxford Classical Dictionary, Oxford], Journal of Roman Studies 39, 193–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lenski, N. 2016: Constantine and the Cities: Imperial Authority and Civic Politics, Berkeley, CA.10.9783/9780812292237CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McEvoy, M. 2016: ‘Constantia: The last Constantinian’, Antichthon 50, 154–79.10.1017/ann.2016.10CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Millar, F. 1964: A Study of Cassius Dio, Oxford.Google Scholar
Mommsen, T. and Meyer, P.M. 1905: Theodosiani libri XVI cum constitutionibus Sirmondianis et leges novella ad Theodosianum pertinentes, 2 vols. in 3, Berlin.Google Scholar
Moser, M. 2018: Emperor and Senators in the Reign of Constantius II. Maintaining Imperial Rule Between Rome and Constantinople in the Fourth Century AD, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paschoud, F. 2006: Eunape, Olympiodore, Zosime: Scripta minora, Bari.Google Scholar
Pearce, S. 2008: ‘The Hinton St Mary mosaic pavement: Christ or Emperor?’, Britannia 29, 193–218.10.3815/006811308785917060CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Penella, R. J. 2007: Man and the Word: The Orations of Himerius, Berkley, CA.Google Scholar
Pharr, C. 1952: The Theodosian Code and Novels and the Sirmondian Constitutions. A Translation with Commentary, Glossary, and Bibliography, New York, NY.Google Scholar
Portmann, W. 1989: ‘Die 59. Rede des Libanios und das Datum der Schlacht von Singara’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 82, 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reeve, M. D. 1997: [Review of M.-P. Arnaud-Lindet, Festus, Abrégé des haut faits du peuple romain (Paris, 1994)], Gnomon 69.6, 508–13.Google Scholar
Salway, B. 2013: ‘The publication and application of the Theodosian Code. NTh 1, the Gesta Senatus, and the constitutionarii’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome, Antiquité 125.2, 327–54.Google Scholar
Skinner, A. 2015: ‘Violence at Constantinople in A.D. 341–2 and Themistius, Oration I’, Journal of Roman Studies 105, 234–49.10.1017/S0075435815000969CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Still, M. C. W. 1993: ‘Opening up imperial lead sealings’, Journal of Roman Archaeology 6, 403–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stover, J. A. and Woudhuysen, G. 2021: ‘Jordanes and the date of the Epitome de Caesaribus’, Histos 15, 150–88.Google Scholar
Weiss, P. 2003: ‘The vision of Constantine’ [trans. A.R. Birley], Journal of Roman Archaeology 16, 237–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winterbottom, M. 1993: ‘Roger Aubrey Baskerville Mynors’, Proceedings of the British Academy 80, 1991 Lectures and Memoirs, 371–401.Google Scholar
Woudhuysen, G. 2018: ‘Uncovering Constans’ Image’, in Burgersdijk, D. W. P. and Ross, A. J. (eds), Imagining Emperors in the Later Roman Empire, Cultural Interactions in the Mediterranean 1, Leiden, 158–82.Google Scholar
Woudhuysen, G. 2019: ‘Myrmeicus or Myrmecius?’, Mnemosyne 72.5, 840–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar