CHAPTER SIX

PAGAN HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE

Wolf Liebeschuetz

Eunapius and his Writings

Eunapius1 was about twenty years—one generation—younger than Ammianus Marcellinus. Like Ammianus he was from the Greek- speaking part of the Empire, having been born at Sardis in 347, or more probably in 348,2 to a leading family of the city. But unlike Ammianus he never as far as we know held imperial office either civil or military. So he lacked the connections with court and army which a career in the imperial service might have gained for him. He was a civic notable pure and simple. Judging by what remains of his writings, he was not particularly interested in either administration or warfare, those two staples of classical historiography. He was how- ever highly educated in Greek rhetoric and philosophy and had a strong interest in medicine. His cousin Melite was married to the Neo-Platonist philosopher Chrysanthius, whom Eunapius revered as a teacher, and almost as a father. Chrysanthius was one in the suc- cession of Neo-Platonist philosophers commemorated by Eunapius in his Lives of the Philosophers and Sophists. Eunapius therefore had close personal links with that rather exclusive group of pagan intellectuals.3 Like them, Eunapius devoted his life to the preservation of the Hellenic tradition. In this respect one might compare him with Libanius, about whom we know so much more. It follows that Eunapius’ two works—the History as well as the Lives of the Philosophers and Sophists—were written from a strongly pagan point of view. As a committed pagan Eunapius is much more one-sided and polemical

1 Eunapius and Olympiodorus are quoted from the edition of Blockley (FCH ). 2 R.J. Penella, Greek Philosophers and Sophists in the Fourth Century, Liverpool 1990, 2–3. 3 G. Fowden, “Pagan holy man in Late Antique society”, JHS 102 (1982), 33–59. 178 wolf liebeschuetz than Ammianus. It is all the more noteworthy that Eunapius had studied rhetoric at Athens with the famous Christian sophist Pro- haeresius,4 and that he continued to love and admire his teacher in spite of the latter’s religion, which caused him to be excluded from teaching while Julian the Apostate was emperor. The anti-Christian rhetoric of Eunapius, like the anti-pagan and anti-sectarian rhetoric of Christian writers, should not blind us to the existence of great deal of tolerance and common ground in every-day life. Of his two works the Lives have come down to us intact. The History has sur- vived only in fragments, and also in abbreviated form in the Historia Novella of Zosimus. But we have enough of it to be able to assess its general character. Eunapius’ History was composed in fourteen books. The long period from 270 to 355, the year Julian was raised to the rank of Caesar, was covered in a single book, essentially an introduction.5 Eunapius’ history has survived only in disconnected, and often brief fragments, the most important in the collection of excerpts of Constantine Porphyrogennitos, the great majority in the Excerpta de Sententiis,6 a few others in Excerpta de Legationibus. The modern collections of frag- ments of Eunapius also include numerous brief quotations from the Suda, only some of which name Eunapius as their source. Paschoud has estimated the surviving fragments as perhaps 7% of the original text.7 Luckily we can supplement the fragments with the New History of Zosimus. Photius who had read both Zosimus and Eunapius tells us that Zosimus largely copied Eunapius. Resemblances between frag- ments and Zosimus show that Photius’ observation must be generally speaking correct. Zosimos has certainly greatly shortened the text of Eunapius. He reduced the original of Eunapius from fourteen books to five, that is by something like two thirds, but certainly not all parts by the same amount. So the account of Julian’s Persian cam- paign was evidently shortened considerably less. Zosimus’ selection

4 But see R. Goulet, “Prohaeresius le païen et quelques remarques sur la chronolo- gie d’Eunape de Sardes”, Antiquité Tardive 8 (2000), 209–22, which gives a plausi- ble argument that Prohaeresius was only thought to be a Christian because of his uncooperative attitude to Julian. 5 According to a note in the margin of the ms. of Exc. de Sent. 5 = Fr. 15. To judge by the 91 chapters used by Zosimus to cover this period, Eunapius’ first book was exceptionally long. 6 This reflects the moralizing—in a wide sense—and sententious character of Eunapius’ history. 7 F. Paschoud, Cinq études sur Zosime (Paris, 1975), 211.