Glossary of Ancient Sources

Ambrose

see Biographical Glossary

Ammianus Marcellinus

from a well-connected family in Syria, perhaps Antioch, he joined the elite military corps of protectores as a young man, but retired after the death of the emperor Julian, going on to write a history of Rome which he completed around the year 390. This Res Gestae, which ran from A.D. 96 to 378 and is extant from 353, is our single most important source for fourth-century history and our most detailed treatment of the Adrianople campaign.

Arrian

c. 86–160, governor of Cappadocia under Hadrian, author of a famous history of Alexander the Great, and also the Order of Battle against the Alans (c. 135).

Aurelius Victor

governor of Pannonia Ⅱ (361) and prefect of Rome (389), author of a short epitome of Roman imperial history, the Caesars, running from Augustus to Constantius Ⅱ and completed in about 360, which is particularly important for the history of the later third and parts of the fourth century.

Basil of Caesarea

c. 330–379, bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia and the most important Greek theologian of the later fourth century. His letters provide important information about the Gothic martyr Saba, as well as general statements about the conditions in Thrace in the chaotic years that preceded Adrianople.

Cassiodorus

c. 490–c. 585, official at the court of several Ostrogothic kings of Italy, most importantly Theodoric, before abandoning the Gothic cause around 537 and retiring to Constantinople. Author of many surviving works, but also of a now lost Gothic history in twelve books which Jordanes used, though to what extent is controversial.

Claudian

born Claudius Claudianus in Alexandria in Egypt, Claudian made his career as a poet in the Latin West; his earliest poems date from the early 390s and after mid-395 he was the chief spokesman for Stilicho. His poems provide much of our information on Alaric and court politics from 395 to 404.

Dexippus

third-century Athenian historian who wrote a universal history in twelve books and an account of the third-century Gothic invasions from 238 to c. 275 called the Scythica. Though both survive only in fragments, they were used by Zosimus in his New History.

Epitome de Caesaribus

a later fourth-century account of Roman history which preserves some fragments of information not in Aurelius Victor or Eutropius.

Eunapius of Sardis

author of a classicizing history of his own times written in the aftermath of Adrianople which survives only in fragments but which formed a major source for Zosimus’ New History. Eunapius also wrote a volume of Lives of the Sophists, some of which sheds light on Alaric’s invasion of Greece.

Eutropius

imperial administrator and author of a Breviary or abridgement of Roman history from its beginnings until the death of Jovian, which he dedicated to Valens and which preserves some otherwise unknown information on the third and fourth centuries.

Gregory Thaumaturgus

c. 213–c. 270, bishop of Neocaesarea in Pontus, his canonical letter is the most vivid and important testimony to the effects of Gothic raids in Asia Minor during the 250s.

Gregory of Nyssa

c. 330–395, bishop of Nyssa, younger brother of Basil of Caesarea, and like him an important theologian. Two of his sermons record the depredations of Goths in Asia Minor in the aftermath of the battle of Adrianople.

Herodotus

fifth century B.C., author of a large history, completed before 425 B.C., and centred on the wars between Greece and Persia. This work provided a model for much later Greek history and invented the stereotype of the Scythian that was so prevalent in third- and fourth-century accounts of the Goths.

Historia Augusta

late fourth-century collection of imperial biographies from Hadrian to Carus and Carinus, based on generally good sources for the second century, but descending into almost total fiction by the end of the third. Nonetheless, the Historia Augusta preserves a few details of Gothic history derived from better sources like Dexippus and otherwise lost.

Jerome

Christian priest and polemicist, c. 345–420, author of many works, including a Chronicle that translated into Latin and continued the chronicle of Eusebius of Caesarea; Jerome’s Chronicle provides some information about Gothic history not known – or at least not dated – in other sources.

Jordanes

sixth-century historian from Constantinople who wrote both a Roman and a Gothic history (the Romana and the Getica), the latter at some point after 550. Jordanes made some use of Cassiodorus’ Gothic history – how much is controversial – but he added a great deal to it and thoroughly endorsed the destruction of the Gothic kingdom of the Ostrogoths by Justinian.

Julian

see Biographical Glossary

Lactantius

c. 240–c. 320, a Latin rhetorician at Nicomedia, among whose many works is a polemic On the Deaths of the Persecutors which provides accurate details of imperial history in the third and fourth centuries, including the death of Decius in a Gothic war.

Olympiodorus of Thebes

Greek historian, before 380–after 425. Wrote a detailed history of the years 407 to 425 which, though now preserved only in fragments, was a major source for Sozomen, Philostorgius and Zosimus, and thereby central to our understanding of Alaric’s actions in Italy just before the sack of Rome.

Orosius

Christian priest from Spain who wrote a polemical History against the Pagans in seven books which continued down to 417 and argued, against pagans who saw Adrianople and the sack of Rome as divine anger for the imperial conversion to Christianity, that Rome had been much worse before the conversion.

Panegyrici Latini

collection of speeches in honour of emperors compiled in late fourth-century Gaul and including eleven panegyrics from the late third to the fourth century, many of which attest otherwise unknown imperial campaigns against barbarians beyond the frontiers.

Paulinus

deacon of the church of Milan and author in c. 422 of the Life of Bishop Ambrose of Milan, which helps establishes the sequence of events in 397.

Philostorgius

c. 368–c. 440, author of a now fragmentary Greek church history written from a homoean point of view, drawing on the (also now fragmentary) history of Olympiodorus and preserving otherwise unknown information on Ulfila.

Socrates

fifth-century lawyer and author of the earliest of several Greek church histories extant from the fifth century, continuing the ecclesiastical history of Eusebius. Socrates provides a great deal of unique information on the fourth and earlier fifth century, particularly on the eastern provinces.

Sozomen

fifth-century lawyer and church historian whose church history offers a parallel, and rather different, perspective to that of Socrates, with considerably greater interest in secular history, and much more evidence for western affairs, most of it drawn from the now fragmentary history of Olympiodorus.

Synesius

philosopher, and later bishop of Ptolemais, resident in Constantinople in the later 390s, where he wrote two treatises, De regno and De providentia, which are key to understanding the political manoeuvres at the eastern court surrounding the revolts of Alaric, Tribigild and Gainas.

Tacitus

senator and historian, c. 56–c. 118, author of histories of the early Roman empire and of the Germania, an ethnographic account of Germany and its gentes which provided early modern humanists with their most important material for inventing a Germanic, non-Roman history.

Themistius

c. 317–c. 388, Greek philosopher, rhetorician and spokesman for Constantius Ⅱ, Valens and Theodosius Ⅰ. The author of numerous works, several of his 34 surviving speeches are the best available evidence for imperial attitudes and policy towards the Goths.

Theoderet of Cyrrhus

c. 393–466, monk and bishop of Cyrrhus in Syria, his church history drew on that of Socrates and preserves much information otherwise unknown.

Theodosian Code

compilation of imperial constitutions from 312–438, put together at the behest of Theodosius Ⅱ (r. 408–450), beginning in 429. It is our major source for the legislation of the later Roman empire and preserves a vast amount of historical detail on imperial administration and political history.

Zosimus

imperial bureaucrat in the later fifth or the early sixth century, author of a New History in six books, running from Augustus to 410, but concentrated on the later fourth century, and probably unfinished. The history drew heavily on Dexippus, Eunapius and Olympiodorus, and is our fullest evidence for their contents and for the history they recounted.