Research Catalog

Bouttios and late antique Antioch : reconstructing a lost historian

Title

Bouttios and late antique Antioch : reconstructing a lost historian / Benjamin Garstad.

Author

Garstad, Benjamin

Publication

Washington, DC : Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, [2022]
©2022

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schwarzman Building to submit a request in person.	Text	Use in library	JFE 23-889	Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315

Details

Description

xiii, 436 pages : illustrations (some color), map; 24 cm.

Summary

"This volume collects all that remains of the enigmatic late antique author Bouttios. On the basis of these fragments, Bouttios is identified as a Christian, placed in Antioch, and dated to the later fourth century - quite likely writing during the emperor Julian's stay in Antioch in 362-363. Bouttios's composition, a tendentious and didactic fiction that purported to be history, is further set in the context of fourth-century debates between pagans and Christians over the gods, luck, good government and kingship, and the characters of Constatine and Julian. After outlining the circumstances of Bouttios's life and work, the book then discusses specific topics that appear in the fragments. The account of the gods assigned to Bouttios is shown to be the culmination of both the critique of traditional theology developed within Greco-Roma philosophy and literature and the assault on the pagan pantheon by Christian apologists; virgin sacrifices said to accompany the founding of ancient cities are discussed with regard to the figure of Tyche (the goddess of luck), Christian's fraught relationship with her, and her role in ancient historiography. Finally, Bouttios's treatment of these sacrifices in particular and his work more generally and compared to the form, thought, and intention of modern conspiracy theories - situating his writing in what Richard Hofstadter termed 'the paranoid style'."
Bouttios and Late Antique Antioch undertakes the exciting, if laborious, task of assembling clues and piecing back together a book that had disappeared from our library of Greek and Roman works. But it does not merely add another author to the bibliography of antiquity and place him in fourth-century Antioch. It shows how the gods could be reduced to historical characters, the powerful goddess of luck turned into a pitiful victim of virgin sacrifice, and respected emperors defamed as despots, and, in sum, how the writing of history could be exploited for partisan purposes. We see how people in what we consider the distant past thought about their own history, and how they discussed momentous political and social issues across a seemingly insurmountable divide in a period of existential crisis.

Series Statement

Dumbarton Oaks studies ; XLVIII

Uniform Title

Dumbarton Oaks studies ; 48.

Subject

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 359-400) and indexes.

Contents

Assembling the fragments -- Bouttios's life and work -- Writing history, writing propaganda

Call Number

JFE 23-889

ISBN

9780884024934
0884024938

LCCN

2021951173

OCLC

1295804602

Author

Garstad, Benjamin, author.

Title

Bouttios and late antique Antioch : reconstructing a lost historian / Benjamin Garstad.

Publisher

Washington, DC : Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, [2022]

Copyright Date

Type of Content

text

still image

cartographic image

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Dumbarton Oaks studies ; XLVIII

Dumbarton Oaks studies ; 48.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 359-400) and indexes.

Chronological Term

30-600

Research Call Number

JFE 23-889

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