Kultúrne dejiny Supplementum 2017 / Cultural History Supplement 2017
Vyšlo nové číslo časopisu Kutlúrne dejiny / A new issue of magazine Cultural History was published
Štúdie, články / Studies, Articles
KEYWORDS: Roman Republic, Orosius, Historiae Adversus Paganos, leges publicae
ABSTRACT: In his work Historiae Adversus Paganos, the presbyter Orosius, living at the turn of the 4th and 5th centuries AD, wrote the history of mankind from the beginning of the world until 417 AD. At the request of St. Augustine, he had been expected to write his universal history in such a manner as to support the concept of history contained in Augustine‘s work De civitate Dei. This intention greatly influenced the selection of events being described in Orosius‘s History. Despite this specificity, his work is today considered by historians to be a relevant source for the history of the Roman Republic.
While writing his Historiae adversus paganos, Orosius devoted a great deal of attention to the Roman history. He deals with it in the greater part of his book, namely in the fourth to seventh books. The period of the Roman Republic is described in the fourth, fifth, and partly in the sixth book. In the enumeration of wars, adverse signs and many disasters, there are also short references to laws, their approvals or retractions. In my paper I deal with selected passages of Orosius‘s History dealing with Roman laws and compare them with the texts by other authors in whose works attention is paid to the same laws. The main attention is then paid to older ancient authors, such as T. Livius, Eutropius or Florus, where historians believe that their works inspired Orosius while writing his History.
In the late ancient universal history of the presbyter Orosius, one can find passages that, surprisingly, provide many historians with important information enriching our knowledge of the laws of the Roman Republic. While studying the laws of the Roman Republic, most historians or legal historians have omitted this ancient source or they have considered it, due to inaccuracies in dating, names and offices, to be a simplified retelling. In my opinion, a simple rejection of Orosius as a source for the events of the Roman Republic is not a happy choice because, after comparing and correcting the information with some other, more often used sources, for some of the laws of the Roman Republic it can serve as an additional source enriching our knowledge.
In ancient sources, laws are usually mentioned only in short passages, and Orosius is no exception.
In his fourth and fifth books, there are nine short passages giving information on the leges publicae as defined by Jochen Bleicken. One of them is Lex Oppia de mulieribus restricting women’s display of wealth. Orosius mentions it in connection to the time of its retraction. However, he does not give any information on the law that retracted the Lex Oppia (Lex Valeria Fundania de lege Oppia abroganda) so it cannot be claimed that he is another source confirming its existence. However, it follows from the context that he probably knew about the passing of the Lex Valeria Fundania de lege Oppia abroganda.
In the section dedicated to Tiberius Gracchus‘s life, Orosius, in contrast to other bills, describes in detail the efforts of Tiberius to obtain funds from Attalus‘s will for the Roman people. Unlike most of the sources mentioning the event, he writes that the bill was approved and a law was created (Lex Sempronia de pecunia regis Attali). However, most historians believe that Orosius misinterpreted the sources. Therefore, they refuse his interpretation and hold the view that the draft had not been approved before Tiberius’s death. They prefer information in the works by T. Livius or Plutarch.
Similar doubts are connected with the bills and laws of Tiberius’s brother Gaius Sempronius Gracchus. The issue of his bills and laws is still an unresolved topic in the scholarly literature. Unfortunately, even the passages in Orosius’s work do not help resolve this issue, as they do not give a clear answer to the question whether the Iunonia colony was founded based on the approval of the bill submitted by Gaius Rubrius or Gaius Sempronius Gracchus.
Orosius‘s text also casts doubts on the facts about the abolition of Gaius‘s laws. Unlike Plutarch, he states that the principal person who secured the retraction of Gaius‘s laws was the tribune Minucius (his name also appears in Florus and the author of De viris illustribus urbi Romae).
He does not specify whether Gaius‘s laws were retracted after his death by one law or a series of laws.
In Orosius, like in other ancient authors, one can find passages pertaining to the laws declaring war (lex de bello indicendo) or concluding peace (lex de pace facienda). Orosius‘s passages refer to the laws that are described in much greater detail in other ancient sources (in the case of the lex de bello Iugurthae indicendo the only other source is Livius’s perioch) and do not bring new information. Oppositely, they contain less information and some, considered by historians dealing with the laws of the Roman Republic as important, they completely omit. For today‘s historians, it is significant that Orosius wrote his History on the basis of the study of the sources available to him. For the period of the Roman Republic they were, for instance, T. Livius (assumably, he had his works in their entirety), Eutropius or Florus. He is also likely to have been inspired by other either unknown or unpreserved ancient sources, in which he found materials for writing the universal history according to his concept.
Therefore, Orosius‘s work should not be neglected in the study of the laws of the Roman Republic, because it can serve as one of additional ancient sources containing small fragments that complete the picture of the history of the Roman Republic.
KEYWORDS: Roman Empire, Late Roman Empire, Christianity, persecution of Christians, historiography, eschatological concepts
ABSTRACT: The present paper seeks to address an interesting fact that we encounter in studying Christian sources about the persecutions of Christians by the Roman Empire. In these sources two methods of calculating a number of persecutions had crystallized. Based on them, there were either ten or seven persecutions. In order to better understand this, it is necessary to have an idea of the early Christian concepts of history and its end. Therefore, our interpretation also contains the Christian eschatological and apocalyptic thought with its concepts of the end of the world. A characteristic feature of these concepts is an idea of the eschaton being preceded by the last great persecution of God’s people. The paper focuses on important Christian historians, such as Eusebius of Caesarea, Lactantius, Jerome, Orosius, but also on nameless Christian chronicles. It tries to explain why they contain these numbers of persecutions.
The paper is devoted to the concepts of Christians of the relationship between the state and the Church before the Constantinian shift that was a significant turn in this relationship. Many Christian authors mainly dealt with the repressive aspects of the Roman Empire in relation to the Christians. This side of the Empire manifested itself in varying degrees of oppression, culminating in a number of persecutions of Christians in which many of them perished.
In his work entitled The Church History, Eusebius of Caesarea arranged the topics from the histories of church communities in chronological order and according to the reigns of individual Roman emperors, creating a good basis for the awareness of the periods of oppression and the times of the peaceful co-existence of the state and Christians. In his work, it was possible to look up and, subsequently, to begin to count the persecutions of Christians that they perceived as the state’s intervention against them. The first to do so was Jerome, the author of the Latin translation of the Bible – Vulgate, in his Chronicle that is a Latin translation and subsequent addition to Eusebius’s chronicle. Later, other Christian historians and chroniclers followed in the footsteps of Jerome.
As a result, two ways of counting of the persecutions of Christians emerged, with ten persecutions according to the first way and seven based on the second one. It is interesting to look at the motives of individual authors who chose one of these numbers of persecutions. Both of these groups could rely on the rich symbolism hidden in these numbers, either traditional ancient or, in particular, biblical. Both numbers are considered to be the numbers of perfection, fulfilment and completeness, so the basic message of both numbers of persecutions is a realization that they are over and the Christians are not going to be persecuted any more, with the only exception being the last persecution at the end of times. Such counting was based on the eschatological and apocalyptic dimension of the Christian historical thought, as history is heading towards its goal which is the second coming of Jesus Christ and the establishment of the Kingdom of God. In describing the end of times, Nero often acted as the last persecutor and announcer of Antichrist who would eventually be defeated by Son of God, Jesus Christ. This was happening because he was also perceived as the first persecutor of the Christian Church.
In the main part of the work, the author analyses the works by individual authors – Eusebius, Lactantius, Jerome, Orosius and chroniclers, and shows how many persecutions they counted or recorded. Interestingly enough, only some of the emperors occur in all the works. There are always Nero, Decius, Valerian and Diocletian. The others are interchangeable. Evidently, the persons of persecutors were not so important, with the exception of those emperors who started the empire-wide persecutions. What is important for these authors are not real persecutions but the symbolism of the number they chose as a number fulfilling God’s plan. Accordingly, they record individual persecutions and persecutors. Much more important was the fulfilment of the chosen number of persecutions, whether ten or seven, which determined the selection of persecutors. Individual authors sought to show God’s plan with the world and the action of God in history by fulfilling the number of persecutions, whether their archetype were to be ten plagues of Egypt or seven seals, seven bugles or seven bowls of anger from John’s Apocalypse.
KEYWORDS: Egyptian literature, Copts, Bible, Cambyses II, Nebuchadnezzar
ABSTRACT: The present paper focuses on classical elements in the Coptic literature by way of example of the so-called Cambyses Romance. It recapitulates some of the conclusions that have been reached so far, and presents its own thesis. It shows that the historical background of the Romance does not have its roots in any of the ancient traditions. Instead, they reveal much about the persistent collective memory of the Egyptians, wherein many reports of Cambyses have been preserved. Under the influence of Old Testament tradition, these Egyptian stories were moulded into the form they took in the Romance. In that way the paper shows that despite the influence of Greek tradition the Coptic literature grew up in the specific Egyptian context.
The Coptic story of Cambyses is an important text revealing how the Egyptian multicultural tradition perceived the world. Even though the author, date of origin and historical context of the story are unknown, it provides an important insight into the Egyptian and Jewish history. The present paper focuses on the relationship between the author and the historical background of his/her story. We suggest that the author himself/herself did not fabricate this background and that he/she simply planted his/her own story into a historical context that was well known to him. The paper recapitulates the research that has been done on the subject so far and introduces several new perceptions. It highlights how experts in the field have taken a different approach to the text over the years. While the first works to address the Romance attempted to find the historical sources for the text, the latest studies have concentrated more on the roots of the tradition behind the story. The present paper introduces several new concepts by which we may better understand this tradition. Our focus is not on the Jewish roots of the tradition or on the process by which this tradition had developed, because, considering what is already known in this regard, it would be difficult to add anything of value to the discussion. Instead, we postulate that the tradition surrounding Cambyses in the Romance has its roots in the Egyptian collective memory rather than in ancient literature.
KEYWORDS: Fulgentius, Virgil, Aeneid, allegorization, Late Antiquity
ABSTRACT: The paper deals with an analysis of eight quotations of ancient Greek texts in Fulgentius’s work entitled The Exposition of the Content of Virgil According to Moral Philosophy. Fabius Planciades Fulgentius was the first Christian writer who decided to allegorize Virgil’s Aeneid. In his sense, the book has a universal meaning: it is a representation of the development of human life from birth to manhood. Fulgentius uses Greek quotations from Homer, Euripides, Carneades and the Corpus Hermeticum collection as arguments from authority. In the prologue, Greek quotations have a deeper philosophical meaning and they illustrate a difference between the philosophical principles substance and accident. In other parts of his work he uses quotations for an etymological interpretation of the names of some persons in Aeneid (Aeolus, Achates, Marica, Turnus, Messapus).
It can be said that Greek quotations serve Fulgentius as functional rhetorical means through which he wants to justify and, thanks to ‘referring to authority’ (argumentum ad auctoritate), also support by argument an allegoric interpretation of the text. In the prologue, they have a deeper philosophical meaning as they are to demonstrate a difference between substantial and accidental constituents of reality. In other parts of the text, they are mostly used to justify an etymological interpretation of the names of some of the characters in individual songs of Aeneid.
In spite of the apparent fervour and thought originality, however, Fulgentius‘s way of work already considerably devalues the „learned“ form of allegorization, still typical, for instance, for Macrobius (turn of the 4th and 5th centuries AD). “The more diligently Fulgentius uses Greek vocabulary in his Latin text and the more authorities he refers to, the more it is clear how little he is now familiar with the treasury of ancient knowledge and how much he simply makes up the words and names he uses.” Fulgentius‘s work, on the one hand, marks the end of the late ancient literary tradition and, on the other hand, it also opens the door for the newly emerging medieval reception. Since they were written at the “turn of epochs”, the author’s writings constitute a valuable source for studying the contemporary way of allegorization and work with the Greek literary tradition.
KEYWORDS: Saint Jerome, Christopher Harant of Polžice and Bezdružice, Czech Renaissance travel book
ABSTRACT: The paper focuses on the personality and writings of Saint Jerome as they appear in the travel book by the Czech Renaissance nobleman Christopher Harant of Polžice and Bezdružice (1564–1621). The book was first published in 1608, bearing an elaborate title “The Pilgrimage or Journey from the Kingdom of Bohemia to the City of Venice, from there by Sea to the Holy Land, the Land of Judah and further to Egypt and the Great City of Cairo, then to the Mount Oreb, Sinai and the Mount of Saint Catherine, Virgin, that Lies in the Arabia Deserta etc.” The work quotes a great number of sources ranging from classical antiquity to Harant´s contemporaries, while Harant often amazes readers with his vast knowledge of authorities, quoting not only authors and titles but often also books and chapters. The paper analyses the occurrences of the Latin Church Father Sophronius Eusebius Hieronymus in the travel book, as well as Harant´s perception of him and the ways in which he applied Jerome´s writings.
The Jerome of the travel book of Christopher Harant is a learned man, an authority worth quoting, as well as a representative of ascetic life. Even though his work is not quoted as often and in such a detail as e. g. those of Flavius Iosephus or Pliny the Elder, he occupies an honourable position in the area of biblical topography comparable to that of the Bible and Iosephus. Harant gives much importance to his eyewitness testimony; Jerome visited Holy places and was living, writing, and translating in Palestine for a long time. Furthermore, Harant stresses Jerome´s eremitic experience and depicts him as an ideal of a strict Christian life for his devoted readers. In addition, Jerome functions as a role model to Harant himself during his travels through the Holy Land. He regards Jerome´s notes on holy places worth quoting, as he obviously lived at a time closer to biblical era and was a contemporary or almost a contemporary of some of the saint men and women in the Eastern deserts. Considering the form and quality of quotations, we can assume with a high degree of certainty that Harant really worked with Jerome´s writings he refers to. Jerome as a source and as a historical figure mostly appears in the first part of the travel book dedicated to the journey to the Holy Land; however, in the second part, which describes the journey to Egypt and Sinai, he occurs less frequently. Harant used various works of Jerome (letters, especially No. 108 to Eustochium, biblical commentaries, De viris illustribus, polemics) or works falsely ascribed to Jerome (biblical commentaries, Vitae Patrum) from which, though they do not primarily deal with topography, Harant did not hesitate to quote even slight topographical remarks like, for example, the name of the place. As Jerome was one of Harant’s main authorities for biblical topography, he most frequently cites Jerome´s revised translation of Eusebius´s topographical lexicon De situ et nominibus locorum Hebraicorum (sometimes along with or mismatched with the pseudo-Jerome´s Liber nominum locorum ex Actis apostolorum).
Jerome as a source and a historical figure meets both requirements that Harant imposed on his travel account: he can convey both scientific and moral instruction to the readers.
KEYWORDS: late antiquity, translations, antique historiography, classical philology, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic
ABSTRACT: The paper presents a commented register of the translations of late antiquity sources into Slovak and Czech, giving an idea of the translation production of late antiquity texts in former Czechoslovakia. Although this dramatic historical period of the Roman Empire had produced two types of sources (Christian and pagan), the author decided to exclude the Christian literature and to focus on the works by (pagan) late antiquity authors. Furthermore, the register contains only complete translations of particular writings into Slovak and Czech, leaving out their fragments, extracts and verses. In addition to basic information (name of translator, place and year of publication) and the context of their production, the comments on particular translations also bring an evaluation of their significance and quality by scholars. Having pointed out the current state of the translations of late antiquity (pagan) literature into Slovak and Czech, the author defined basic tendencies in this field. He also outlined the possibilities and perspectives of future development, considering the former state of classical philology. To make the comment clearer, the author divided the text into two parts. While in the first part he dealt with Slovak translations, in the second part he paid attention to the works by Czech classical philologists.
Making accessible the literary and spiritual legacy of Greek and Roman antiquity to Slovak and Czech readers via the quality translations should be not only a natural part of the current classical philology but, we dare to claim, its essence. This is the only way how to contribute to the growth of the cultural level of our peoples and to approximate the level of our European neighbours, whose education is based on Greek-Roman foundations. Naturally, this idea is not new. In the territory of former Czechoslovakia, certain forms of translations of selected passages (less entire works) began to appear as early as in the period of humanism. Translations from classical languages into our national languages became more intensive in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In Slovakia it was a little bit later – in the mid20th century.
In the paper, we focused on the list of the translations of late antiquity (so-called pagan) works into Slovak and Czech. Inter alia, we paid attention to the quality and significance of particular translations. The present commented record shows that the production of this kind of translations has a good base both in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The most important source of this period, Ammianus Marcellinus, as well as important legal sources (Institutiones, Digesta), were translated into the both languages. Some other works of the so-called pagan literature were also translated into Slovak or Czech. It must be admitted, however, that the Czechs have achieved much greater success in this respect (especially the translation of the Panegyrics, Scriptores historiae Augustae, Zosimus, Procopius and Jordan). To a large extent, these were new translations of the works that had not been translated into Czech or Slovak before. To a lesser extent, there were also updates of older translations (e.g. Ammianus Marcellinus).
As far as the quality of individual translations is concerned, this was to be evaluated by expert reviews. However, this type of reviews was missing and only a few were written. The absence of the expert reviews of the translations of late antiquity works is quite surprising, especially with regard to the „productive“ 1970s and 1980s, when quite a big number of translations were published and the translation community of classical philologists was much more numerous than today. On the other hand, if professional reviews of particular translations appeared, they were in most cases positive.
The current state in this field in Slovakia and the Czech Republic shows that the following development should, basically, go in two main directions. First, the translation of works not yet translated (Epitome de Caesaribus, Lucius Ampelius, Codex Theodosianus, Procopius – Secret History) or not translated into the particular national language (Slovak – Zosimos, Scriptores historiae Augustae, Eutropius, etc.; Czech – Itinerarium Alexandri) should be continued. And since many older translations from the last century are no longer available and their language is somewhat obsolete, new translations of already translated works should also be done. This perspective is, however, determined by the shortage of human and material resources, which causes only a very slow lowering of the debt that we still have towards ancient civilizations.