The earliest of the summary histories belongs to the reign of Tiberius. In the space of two books Velleius Paterculus, a soldier and senator, treats the history of Rome from the mythological period to 29 ce. The scale of discussion expands as he gets closer to his own time; the chapters relevant to our period are 2.59-131. The work is dedicated to one of the consuls of 30, a family connection, and is highly flattering to the emperor Tiberius, under whom Velleius served on numerous campaigns. Its contemporary and pro-Tiberius point of view makes a sharp and useful contrast with the darker colors of the Tiberian books of Tacitus, Dio, and Suetonius (Smith, this volume).
Not until the fourth century is there an extant successor to Velleius for the imperial period, but here we find four. The first (by ending point) is Sextus Aurelius Victor’s Book on the Emperors, which runs from Augustus through Constantius II (361, with a small gap in the text around 270 (from the end of Claudius II through Quintillus to the beginning of Aurelian). Victor was a member of the imperial bureaucracy and served as governor of a Pannonian province (360s) and as urban prefect in Rome (388/9). The starting point for his work is ‘‘the end of Livy’’ (preface; actually, 31 bce), but its scope is much reduced: each emperor gets about a paragraph (long or short). Eutropius’ Abbreviated History of Rome is about half the length of Victor’s book for the imperial period, but begins with the foundation of the city and carries the narrative up to (but not into) the reign of Valens (364-78), by whom it was commissioned (preface), covering in all 1118 years (10.18). He describes his work as a chronological arrangement of ‘‘the outstanding achievements of the Romans, in war and peace... and the distinctive elements in the lives of the emperors’’ (preface). Valens also commissioned the third work, the even shorter Abbreviated History of Festus, which has the same termini as Eutropius’ work and was completed in 369/70. Festus promises a text so brief that Valens will be able to ‘‘count the years and events of Roman history’’ without having the trouble of reading much about them (ch. 1). Besides being brief, Festus’ work is uneven in its coverage, allotting more space to the provinces and conflicts with Parthia/Persia than to Rome and Italy. Hence it is (relatively) abundant on Augustus and Trajan (see below), but omits the long reign of Antoninus Pius (138-61) altogether. From the very end of the fourth century comes the Epitome on the Emperors, a work similar in scope to Victor’s by a now unknown author. Beginning with the reign of Augustus, it continues into that of Theodosius, ending in 395. A later work in this category is the early sixth-century New History of Zosimus, written after the dissolution of the Western Empire by a pagan author to chronicle, in a mirror-image of Polybius on Rome’s growth, Rome’s decline. From Augustus through the Severan dynasty its coverage is very brief indeed; thereafter it is increasingly (but irregularly) detailed, and has lost its section on Diocletian. The work ends, unfinished, at 410 ce.
Just how abbreviated these summary histories are can be seen from the number of words they devote to the reigns of a sampling of emperors:
Trajan (98-117): Victor 312, Eutropius 405, Festus 86, Epitome 298, Zosimus 1 Pius (138-61): Victor 92, Eutropius 137, Festus 0, Epitome 222, Zosimus 4 Philip the Arab (244-9): Victor 222, Eutropius 50, Festus 9, Epitome 72, Zosimus
477 Diocletian (284-305): Victor 1058, Eutropius 775, Festus 126, Epitome 176,
Zosimus 0 (lost)
Some patterns emerge (e. g. Festus is always briefer than Eutropius, Zosimus’ detail increases as time goes on; his narrative on Diocletian is a particularly unfortunate loss), but variation is also evident, as in Victor’s surprisingly voluminous (relatively speaking) narrative on Philip the Arab and the Epitome''s surprisingly brief section on Diocletian. All of these accounts are interrelated by derivation from common sources, but each contributes unique information - sometimes erroneous or fictitious, but more often useful - to our understanding of the imperial period.
Even briefer than the summary history is the ‘‘chronicle’’ genre, the most influential representative of which for our period is Jerome’s Latin translation of (and supplement to) Eusebius’ (lost) Greek Chronological Canons with an Epitome of Universal History, both Greek and Barbarian. For a period running from the birth of Abraham (2016 bce) to 378 ce Jerome gives synchronized timelines (e. g., for the imperial period, Olympiads, an emperor’s regnal year, years from the birth of Abraham) accompanied by brief notes on political and cultural history. His criteria for selection are somewhat broader than those of the summary historians - the emperors yield a little historiographical territory here - but his reports are generally very brief. Under Tiberius’ reign, for example, consecutive entries include: a fire in the Theater of Pompey at Rome, the political advancement of Tiberius’ son Drusus, Drusus’ death by poison, the death of a noted orator at the age of 90, the suicide of someone on trial, city foundations by a client king in the Near East, and the appointment of Pontius Pilate as governor of Judaea. Jerome's report is complete in 57 words, exactly as many as I have used here. Eusebius’ chronicle ended at 326; in about 380 Jerome supplemented the historical portion of the work and added the years 327-78.
Somewhat different in nature from both summary history and chronicle is the epitome, an abbreviated version of (generally) a single source. An early example is the book-by-book epitome of Livy known as the Periochae (Summaries). Livy’s books on the triumviral and early Augustan periods are lost, but the Periochae give us a glimpse of them - only the merest glimpse, however, since a whole book of Livy is sometimes summarized in as little as a sentence or two. From book 138, for instance, all that remains is ‘‘The Raeti were defeated by Tiberius Nero and Drusus, Augustus’ stepsons. Agrippa, Augustus’ son-in-law, died. A census was conducted by Drusus.’’ Another epitome source for the triumviral period is Florus' Epitome ofSeven Hundred Years’ Worth of Wars, which begins with Romulus and ends in the reign of Augustus (2.13-34 is the portion relevant to this book). Florus, who wrote in the second century, focuses on Rome's wars and applauds their renewal under Trajan after a too-long period of peace (pr. 8). Where possible he arranges his material by the theater of war: under Augustus, for example, he has separate sections on wars in Noricum,
Illyricum, Pannonia, Dalmatia, Dacia, Sarmatia, Germany, Spain (two sections), and Armenia. On the Alpine campaign mentioned in the epitome of Livy 138 he reports, ‘‘Augustus pacified all the peoples in that part of the world - the Breuni, Ucenni, and Vindelici - through the wars of his stepson Claudius Drusus,’’ and adds a brief anecdote about the ferocity of Alpine women. Dates are few. Much more useful than either of the above is the Epitome of the Histories from the Creation to 1118 by John Zonaras. Writing in twelfth-century Byzantium, Zonaras draws on several texts, including Dio for long stretches, and abbreviates less severely. Where Zonaras’ text has gaps our knowledge of Dio becomes vanishingly small (e. g. the reign of Pius), but his is one of the longest reports on the reign of Diocletian (12.31-2).
World History
