SAMPLE ESSAY On the following pages appears a sample essay (on a different topic from that of either of the assignments for this unit). It demonstrates one format for the layout of text, notes, and bibliography. You may use this as a guide, in addition to the departmental Style Guide (which appear separately on the Blackboard site for this unit). Remember to double-space throughout, and to number the pages. Note that a Division of Humanities cover sheet should be attached to every item of assessment submitted. The Sample Essay concerns Priscus, an important source for the history of the Roman empire in the mid-fifth century. For another example of a first-year essay, consult the Australian Society for Classical Studies website for the ASCS Australian Essay Prize Competition, and view the prize essays there, at: http://www.ascs.org.au//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=60&Itemid=40 Sample Essay AHIS120 Semester 2, 2010 Essay: length 1,200 Priscus of Panium, History The History of Priscus of Panium was composed in Greek and primarily concerns events in the eastern half of the Roman empire in the fifth century.1 Nonetheless it also provides valuable information about the western half of the empire, and may offer evidence for popular attitudes towards imperial rule at a time when the Roman empire faced competition for loyalty from the empire of Attila and the barbarian settlements in the western provinces. Most of what is known about Priscus comes from references in his own History, although a later Byzantine user mentions that he came from the city of Panium (about one hundred and fifty kilometers west of Constantinople on the Sea of Marmara).2 In the History, Priscus mentions his close relations with two senior officials of the imperial court in Constantinople: ca. 448-452 with Maximinus, a military officer whose exact title is not given; and ca. 456 with Euphemius, the magister officiorum (Master of Offices, the head of the civil service of the eastern half of the empire).3 It has been suggested that Sample Essay 1 I use the translation of R. C. Blockley, in The Fragmentary Classicising Historians of the Later Roman Empire: Eunapius, Olympiodorus, Priscus and Malchus, 2 vols., ARCA vols. 6 and 10 (Liverpool, 1981, 1983), vol. 2, pp. 221-400. There are two systems for numbering the fragments of Priscus; Blockley's is used here. Large parts of Priscus's work are also translated in C. D. Gordon, The Age of Attila: Fifth-Century Byzantium and the Barbarians (New York, 1960); and the account of Priscus's embassy to Attila (frags. 11-14) is translated in J. B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire, vol. 1 (London, 1923), 279-88. 2 For Priscus's career: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, vol. 2, ed. J. Martindale (Cambridge, 1980), `Priscus 1,' 906; Blockley, Classicising Historians, vol. 1, 48; The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (Oxford, 1991), 1721; The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1996), 1248. Panium: Tim Cornell and John Matthews, Atlas of the Roman World (Oxford, 1982), 140. 3 Maximinus: PLRE II, `Maxininus 11,' 743. Euphemius: PLRE II, `Euphemius 1,' 424. On the magister officiorum: A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire, 284-602: A Social, Economic, and Administrative Survey (Oxford, 1964), 103, 368-69, 575-84; Arthur E. R. Boak, `The Master of Offices in the Later Roman and Byzantine Empires,' in Arthur E. R. Boak and James E. Dunlap, Two Studies in Later Roman and Byzantine Administration (London, 1924). Priscus worked for Euphemius as an assessor, that is a legal advisor (senior officials acted as civil or military judges alongside the more specific tasks of their offices).4 It is debated whether Priscus had earlier worked for Maximinus also or was just a personal friend.5 Each reference to the senior officers involves undertaking a diplomatic embassy to a neighbouring power: with Maximinus to Attila, king of the Huns, in central Europe; possibly to the bishop of Rome; and to the Nobadae and Blemmyes, barbarian tribes who were harrassing the Roman provinces of Upper Egypt (Maximinus died during this trip); and with Euphemius to negotiate a settlement between the Roman empire and the neighbouring kingdom of the Lazi, east of the Black Sea.6 Priscus's History therefore was written by an author with close connections to senior military and civilian officials of the eastern empire during the reigns of Theodosius II and Marcian, and personal experience in imperial administration at least in the mid-450s and possibly before. The work contains much first-hand observation, mostly of foreign affairs. His perspective is not the official view of the imperial court, but of an informed public official.7 What survives of the History covers events between about 434 and 471; whether the original work extended before or after those dates is unknown. It has been suggested that Priscus completed the work after 476, on the basis that he speaks disparagingly of a powerful general who fell from power in that year; minor figures such as Priscus presumably did not publically criticise public figures while they 4 Priscus, frag. 33.2 and p. 394, n. 144; PLRE II, 906; Blockley, Classicising Historians, vol. 1, 48. On assessores: Jones, Later Roman Empire 499-501. 5 Priscus as assessor to both Maximinus and Euphemius: PLRE II, 906; as friend of Maximinus: Blockley, Classicising Historians, vol. 1, 48. Though Priscus's description of how Maximinus sought his company on the journey to Attila suggests a personal appeal (`Maximinus by his pleadings persuaded me to accompany him on this embassy'; Priscus, frag. 11.2); Priscus's repeated membership of diplomatic embassies suggests involvement in an official capacity. 6 Attila: frags. 11-14. Rome: frag. 20.3. Upper Egypt: frags. 26-27.1, 28. Blockley, Classicising Historians, vol. 1, 48. 7 A.D.Lee, Information and Frontiers: Roman Foreign Relations in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 1993), 8. Sample Essay held influence.8 Priscus makes no reference to where he wrote or published his work. After his lifetime, it was available to users in Constantinople and Antioch.9 No full copy of Priscus's History is extant. Instead, there are a large number of `fragments,' sections of the text used by later writers (including the sixth-century Byzantine historian Procopius in his history of Justinian's wars, and Procopius's contemporary Jordanes in his history of the Goths). Some fragments are explicitly labelled as coming from Priscus, while others have been identified by modern scholars on the basis of similarity in topic and style. The most substantial fragments come from two works commissioned by the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII (913-959), which extracted accounts (`Excerpts') of embassies from classical and late antique Greek histories; one volume consisted of Embassies of the Romans, the other of Embassies of the Barbarians.10 Because of this selection, Priscus's work appears to have been primarily a diplomatic history of relations between the eastern Roman empire and neighbouring powers. This may not be an accurate impression, as `domestic' material not relating to diplomacy would not have been of interest to the Byzantine compilers. The longest and most often-cited fragment of Priscus's lost work concerns the embassy to Attila undertaken by Maximinus and Priscus. The vivid details of this first-hand account may well have ensured its preservation by Byzantine editors. Priscus's account provides unique information on the nature of power structures in Attila's kingdom, as the Roman embassy has to treat with several senior leaders of Attila's court before meeting Attila himself. These figures, in attendance at Attila's court, are Sample Essay 8 Blockley, Classicising Historians, vol. 1, 49-50. 9 Blockley, Classicising Historians, vol. 1, 113-18. 10 B. Baldwin, `Priscus of Panium,' Byzantion 50 (1980), 18-61; Blockley, Classicising Historians, vol. 1, 113; Oxford Classical Dictionary 1248. On Constantine VII: Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, vol. 1, 502-02; on the Excerpts: ibid., vol. 2, 767-68. themselves the rulers of smaller tribes. They advise Attilla and are ranked in precedence at the Hunnic king's formal dinner. In contrast, subject rulers of small tribes who are not honoured by Attila are required to pay tribute to the king. Attila's wife, Hereka, is also a figure of authority, though whether she has power in her own right or only through possible influence on Attila is unclear. Priscus mentions, however, that the unnamed widow of Attila's brother and former co-ruler, Bleda, rules a local village. Priscus's account shows Attila's regime as a coalition of a loose network of local powers at the level of individual villages or of small tribes, dominated by the personal authority of Attila, in turn based on the military threat of his forces. His `empire' appears to have no real equivalent to the centralised bureaucracy of the Roman empire.11 One element in particular of Priscus's account of the embassy to Attila has received extensive discussion in modern studies. While awaiting an audience with the king, Priscus meets a Greek trader, dressed as a Hun, who had been captured during a raid on imperial territory, enslaved to a Hunnic lord, and who had subsequently bought his freedom but elected to remain among the Huns. Priscus records a dialogue between himself and this merchant, in which the merchant derides government within the empire, and especially the admininstration of law, as corrupt and oppressive. Priscus defends the fairness of the Roman legal and governmental system.12 The passage has been variously interpreted. A Marxist historian writing shortly after World War Two saw it a faithful record of an actual conversation: the merchant's criticism revealed the real stresses of the oppressive class structure of the late Roman empire, and Priscus's glib response showed his inability to comprehend structural Sample Essay 11 Priscus, frags.