The "Chronicle" of Hydatius and the "Consularia Constantinopolitana": Two Contemporary Accounts of the Final Years of the Roman Empire (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The “Chronicle” of Hydatius and the Consularia Constantinopolitana”: Two Contemporary Accounts of the Final Years of the Roman Empire Raymond Van Dam R. W. Burgess. The “Chronicle” of Hydatius and the Consularia Constantinopolitana”: Two Contemporary Accounts of the Final Years of the Roman Empire. Oxford Classical Monographs. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Pp. xiv 1 270. $62.00. Hydatius served as a bishop in northwestern Spain during the middle of the fifth century. As a young boy he had gone on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and he later retained some personal contacts with Gaul and Italy. But during the forty years of his episcopacy his native region of Gallaecia was effectively isolated under the domination of various barbarian groups, including Vandals, Sueves, and Visigoths; he himself was once kidnapped and held in captivity for three months. Hydatius is now best known through his Chronicle, a continuation of Jerome’s Chronicle, itself a translation, expansion, and continuation of Eusebius’ Canons. The textual and paleographical traditions of these chronicles are notoriously difficult, and Hydatius created more problems by introducing so many different ways of indicating chronology. Some modern scholars have tried to save Hydatius from himself; a misguided attempt to restore Hydatius’ original “correct” chronology by numerous textual emendations, for instance, spoiled the edition of Hydatius’ Chronicle by Alain Tranoy, published in 1974 with a French translation in a volume of Sources Chrétiennes. The standard edition has hence remained that published in 1894 by Theodor Mommsen in the second of his indispensable volumes of Chronica Minora. But Zeus too dozed off occasionally: with its confusing presentation, odd corrections, and occasionally inaccurate dating, even the great Mommsen published a problematic edition. On the basis of extensive studies of the manuscripts, epitomes, excerpts, lacunae, interpolations, and orthography and a meticulous examination of the various systems of chronology that Hydatius used to date his annual entries, Richard Burgess has produced a sterling new edition with a facing translation (the first into English). His authoritative edition should now be preferred to all others, not least because his new numbering of Hydatius’ entries differs from Mommsen’s enumeration. Because Hydatius’ Chronicle is “probably the best in his genre in all of Late Antiquity” (10), it is also our most important historical source for late Roman Spain up to 468. Hydatius was able to avoid the tendency of other ancient chroniclers [End Page 379] who sometimes lapsed into mere lists of rulers and events, primarily because he was rather verbose and strongly interested in circumstantial details. His interests focused on the impact of recent invasions, and already in his preface he lamented how the coming of the barbarians had led to the collapse of the Roman frontiers. Subsequent entries became a litany of devastation: “the barbarians who had entered Spain pillaged it with a vicious slaughter.” He also bemoaned the “invasions” of heretics, among them so-called Priscillianists and Manichees. At a council that met in Toledo in 400 several bishops were compelled to recant their support for Priscillian, and during the 440s Hydatius himself participated in the exposure of Manichees at Astorga. In these witch hunts he was again following the lead of Jerome, his historiographical predecessor who had furthermore distinguished himself, in Hydatius’ estimation, for having crushed heretics with “the adamantine hammer of truth.” Hydatius also seems to have duplicated Jerome’s overwrought, apocalyptic reaction to the barbarian invasions of the early fifth century, since he occasionally connected current misfortunes with biblical prophecies about the end of the world. In his copy of Jerome’s translation of Eusebius’s Canons Hydatius even added a marginal note in which he dated the end of the world and Christ’s second coming precisely to 482. This sense of the imminent end of history strongly influenced Hydatius’ historical vision, and we now look forward to the publication by Burgess of the relevant analytical sections of his doctoral dissertation that will elaborate on his brief introductory comments about Hydatius’ interpretive perspectives. Until then, the most accessible synthetic study of Hydatius and his Chronicle remains Steven Muhlberger, The Fifth-Century Chroniclers: Prosper, Hydatius and the Gallic Chronicler of 452 (1990), Chapter 5. Burgess’ volume also includes a...