The Early Byzantine Historians

by Warren Treadgold

The Early Byzantine Historians is the first original study of every significant Byzantine historian from Eusebius of Caesarea (c.255-339) to Theophylact Simocatta (c.585-after 641?). Individually and as a group, these authors had a decisive influence on Byzantine culture and modern perceptions of Byzantine history.

Genres: Nonfiction

448 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2007

About the author

Warren Treadgold (AB Harvard, 1970, PhD Harvard, 1977) has taught ancient and medieval history and literature at UCLA, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Hillsdale College, and Florida International University and is now National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of Byzantine Studies at Saint Louis University.

Reviews

[Anatolikon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a decent general reference on late antique and early Byzantine historians, but not really much more. It's greatest strength is its accessibility and quick-reference value, but as a work of scholarship it tends to fall a little flat. The book starts off with a brief introduction into the Greek models of history-writing and how that was understood throughout the Roman period. Treadgold then turns to the period in question, essentially the eastern half of the Roman Empire from the time of Constantine until just before the Arab conquests in the 630s. Forty different historians receive treatment here across the entire spectrum of history-writing, including both classical and ecclesiastical histories. The breadth is nice, and can provide some very important material that can now be easily referenced on some particularly obscure historians, like Philostorgios or Petros Patrikios. At the same, however, this value as a general reference is the book's greatest weak point. There is very little new or remarkable scholarship here, and since the vast majority of these historians have been translated into accessible English editions, the introductions by their respective editors/translators are almost invariably more useful and complete. Treadgold does cover all that he needs to here by addressing the background of an author, their literary influences and eventual influence (or lack thereof), their political or ecclesiastical leanings, and their work receives brief discussion. However, very little of any of this is new. The vast majority of it is nothing more than the most very basic information that one could glean from the various introductions of the works in translation, or in an even briefer form from the The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. The book promises new scholarship on Prokopios, but I was unable to see anything remarkable. Treadgold does disagree with Kaldellis' thesis in his Procopius of Caesarea: Tyranny, History, and Philosophy at the End of Antiquity that Prokopios was not a "standard" Christian, and while I do too, Treadgold's arguments are not very persuasive. Averil Cameron's discussion in her Procopius and the Sixth Century remains the most convincing argument to date for Prokopios' religious views.

There is no reason that Treadgold could have made this work indispensable to scholars and could have actually included some new content by broadening his horizons a little. The body of late antique Syriac and Armenian literature are only starting to find its way into English translation now, and addressing some of these authors (like Pseudo-Zachariah, or Pseudo-Joshua) would have filled in an important gap in the historiography before J.D. Howard-Johnston's extremely important work on the historians of the seventh century, Witnesses to a World Crisis: Historians and Histories of the Middle East in the Seventh Century begins. There just isn't enough new material here to give this book a particularly good review, and it is hard to recommend it as anything more than a general reference. It is very readable, and its introductory and concluding essays on the historians as a group are useful (if rather basic), but there simply is not a whole of substance to this book. There are simply too many descriptions of where the historians are from and a brief summary of their works, instead of serious analysis.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Back to my roots - a book on Byzantine history, or more exactly Byzantine historians. Treadgold is a respected scholar and has published a number of works. The good news is that he can also write.