Xenophon’s Hellenica in Procopius’ Wars: Pharnabazus and Belisarius


THIS INVESTIGATION is an attempt to substantiate a flash of recognition between a passage in Xenophon’s Hellenica and a corresponding passage in Procopius of Caesarea’s Wars—a place where one ought not to expect it. Although Procopius has long been acknowledged to have been a reader and imitator of Thucydides and Herodotus, among other canonical authors, so far as the works of Xenophon are concerned he has been believed until recently to have used only the Cyropaedia.It comes as a bolt from the blue, therefore, to be reading the Hellenica and to be reminded of the Wars. Yet recovery of the intertextual dimension of Procopius’ work in this instance is vital because it enables that historian to speak, in a work intended for public consumption at a time when the principals were still alive and therefore in a manner that is necessarily oblique, to the allegiances and motivations of a prominent person at a moment of high political intrigue.Read the rest here.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thousands of free images of Byzantine art from the Met Museum

Image
From NY Times: All images of public-domain artworks in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection — about 375,000 — are now free for anyone to use however they may please.The museum announced on Tuesday that it had changed its open access policy to allow free, unrestricted use of any images of artworks in the public domain, using the license designation Creative Commons Zero, known as CC0. Click here to access the collection
Read more

The Harbour of Theodosius

Image
The Harbour of Eleutherios (Greek: λιμήν Ἐλευθερίου), later known as the Harbour of Theodosius (Greek: λιμήν Θεοδοσίου, Latin: Portus Theodosiacus) was one of the ports of ancient Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, located beneath the modern Yenikapi neighbourhood of Istanbul, Turkey. The harbour was located on the south side of the peninsula where the city is built, facing towards the Sea of Marmara. The other harbours of the city were the Harbour of Julian and the small harbour of the Boukoleon Palace, likewise on the southern shore, and the harbours of Neorion and Prosphorion on the northern side. The harbour was built in the late 4th century during the reign of Theodosius I, and was the city's major point of trade in Late Antiquity. The area was later transformed for agricultural use due to the effects of erosion and silting. In Ottoman times, the area was built over. Here is a video about the harbour:
Read more