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2018, Le monde de Procope / The World of Procopius
2021 •
2003 •
Like most ancient authors, Procopius is mainly known to us through his own texts. 2 Somewhat paradoxically, this may be the reason why Procopian scholarship rarely heeds the advice of literary theory that text and author are two related but distinct entities. Indeed, in our perception, Procopius does not seem to have a life outside of his texts that could be contrasted with these very texts. We therefore try to infer his opinions from the Wars, Anecdota and Buildings, so as to construct a historical person Procopius behind the author Procopius. The approach is not without its difficulties: as the recent review article by Geoffrey Greatrex illustrates, we rarely succeed in agreeing on the views of Procopius.3 We try nevertheless, because Procopius is our main source for events of the first decades of the reign of Justinian: his words project worlds, worlds that we then need to construct our own 'age of Justinian'.4 A sound idea of his opinions and passions may help us, so we hope, to filter out facts from the narrative. Not only is scholarship faced with the problematic transition from Procopius' words to Justinian's world, but Procopius had to meet a similar challenge: how to turn Justinian's world into words, or, in more general terms: how to represent reality in a historiographical narrative. His choice to write in a classicising style and to imitate episodes from classical authors has often been considered to impinge upon the representational value of his narrative, either in a negative way by introducing mere tales into what should be a narrative of facts,5 or in a positive way by having historiography convey an esoteric message of deeper and dangerous truths that cannot be stated directly.6 In either case, classicism does not seem to be an apt choice to represent reality truthfully. Such judgements are based on a modern, positivist and empiricist, presupposition according to which the function of the language of a scientific text is to represent the world by simply stating 'what is the case'. Literary features are deemed to distract from that aim. As a consequence, the narrative of Procopius is devaluated, either because it is reduced to mere tales that owe allegiance to literature and not to reality, or because it is a sign referring to other texts, where the real message resides. So far, Procopius has been the object of these debates. This chapter proposes, by contrast, that the problematic transition from world to word is an explicit theme of his narrative. Limiting myself to the Wars, I shall argue that this work reflects upon its own use of language and what it means to represent a shifting world with words that are themselves subject to change. This reflection is entangled in an even more fundamental discussion about language as man's medium to connect with reality and to exercise control over it, whilst man is, at the same time, essentially unable to fully grasp reality. Indeed, the Wars constantly highlight man's inability to really grasp what has happened and to foresee what will happen. We shall see that Procopius does not passively conform to classicism simply because it is the cultural habitus of his class and his genre, but that his text shows awareness of the tensions its espousal generates. I shall conclude by suggesting that, by engaging in such a reflection, Procopius bears witness to a general cultural dynamic driven by the Christianisation of his world during Late Antiquity.
Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon
Procopius of Caesarea: Life, Works, Critical Editions, Translations and Bibliography, in Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (2021).2021 •
Entry on Procopius of Caesarea (in English) in the Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, with a comprehensive bibliography on the critical editions, translations and secondary literature.
2020 •
evue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire / Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis, 96, 969-993
Procopius and the past in sixth-century Constantinople2018 •
This paper will focus on Procopius of Caesarea and his approach to the recent and distant past. As will emerge, a distinction can be observed between his choice to focus on recent events and that of most of his contemporaries to concentrate rather on earlier history. A good example of such a tendency would be John Lydus, whose works are replete with learned allusions to earlier Roman history; consequently he is generally characterised as an antiquarian, although the term itself is problematic. (1) Procopius, on the other hand, as we shall see, like the Emperor Justinian was, at least some of the time, keen to stress how much had been accomplished in recent times, for instance in the realm of military technology. (2) The distinction between the two groups is at any rate clear: some writers chose to concentrate on the distant past, others on more recent history. A considerable number covered both in a chronicle
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2013 •
2022 •
Bollettino di Studi Latini
Cronache del convegno "Narrating Early Cultural History in the Ancient Literary World" (LMU Munich, 9-10 September 2021)2022 •
2022 •
Prosopography Approaches and Applications. A Handbook (Prosopographia et Genealogica, Band 13), hrsg. von K. Keats-Rohan, University of Oxford Linacre College Unit for Prosopographical Research, Oxford 2007.
The 'Prosopographia Imperii Romani' and New trends and Projects in Roman ProsopographySTUDIA ANTIQUA ET ARCHAEOLOGICA XVII
Studia Antiqua et Archaeologica XVII, 2011Mediaevalia Americana - Revista de la Red Latinoamericana de Filosofía Medieval, Argentina
De historiae institutione Isidori Hispalensis (pp. 147-152) (ISSN 2422-6599)2020 •
Paradeisos. Horti. Los jardines de la Antigüedad
Vegetació i Jardins a les Ciutats Romanes. El Cas de Bàrcino2020 •
Revue Belge de Philologie et d'Histoire
Mapping Antiquarianism in Late AntiquityG. Greatex (Ed.), Work on Procopius outside the English-speaking World: A Survey (p. 7.1–10). Histos Supplement 9.
Procopius in Hungarian2019 •