Olympiodorus of Thebes and the History of the West (A.D. 407–425)

Abstract

The varied talents of Olympiodorus of Thebes, which made him a significant personality of his own age, deserve also to have made him, more than he seems to have become, a figure of interest to students of his age. By origin and education, he represents the surviving vigour of the late ‘Hellenistic’ culture of the Roman empire; in his political services to the court of Constantinople, he can be recognized as the first of a distinctive profession—of Byzantine diplomats; as a man who travelled to Syene and the distant Blemmyeshe subscribes to a tradition of educated tourism reaching back to Herodotus; while in the inseparable company, which he kept for more than twenty years, of a pet parrot that could ‘dance, sing, call its owner's name, and do many other tricks’, Olympiodorus even cuts, to modern eyes, an eccentrically buccaneering figure. And above all, as a historian he claims a central place in a continuous tradition of Greek writing on Roman affairs—a tradition notoriously lacking in western historiography.