Research Catalog

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

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

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

• Bouttios
• Tyche (Greek deity)
• 30-600
• Church history > Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600
• Christianity and other religions > Greek
• Lost books > Antioch in Pisidia (Extinct city)
• Historiography > History
• Sacrifice of virgins
• Conspiracy theories
• Christianity
• Church history > Primitive and early church
• Greeks > Religion
• Historiography
• Interfaith relations
• Lost books
• Antioch in Pisidia (Extinct city) > Historiography
• Turkey > Antioch in Pisidia (Extinct city)

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

PA3044.H5

ISBN

• 0884024938
• 9780884024934

LCCN

40031429155

OCLC

• on1295804602
• 1295804602
• SCSB-14344071

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries