Our Project

Very little historical writing in Latin survives from the period between Tacitus and Suetonius in c. 120 and the history of Aurelius Victor in 360, and it appears that little was ever written. Our knowledge of Roman imperial history of the second, third, and fourth centuries of our era - the period after the first twelve Caesars - therefore derives disproportionately from a group of Latin secular historians writing in the second half of the fourth century. The Last Historians of Rome fundamentally reassesses these writers in textual, literary, and historical terms, investigates their manuscripts, and traces their reception since Antiquity.

We are focusing on two long works, the Res Gestae of Ammianus Marcellinus and the pseudonymous Historia Augusta, and four shorter texts: the Historia Abbreviata and Libellus breviatus attributed to Aurelius Victor, and the breviaries of Eutropius and Festus. The project aims to transform the understanding of these historians, both individually and as a coherent group, and to massively improve their accessibility to scholars, students, and the wider public.

There is much to be done. These works are not normally associated with each other: Ammianus' coverage of the years 96-353 is lost and so he is seen as an outstanding contemporary historian of the years 353-378. The shorter works are commonly dismissed as trivial and erratic bluffer's guides to Roman history, covering massive periods superficially. The Historia Augusta's imperial biographies, which cover the period from Hadrian to the accession of Diocletian, have gained notoriety as an unreliable imposture verging on fiction. Moreover, the standard editions are either inadequate, or a century old; the manuscript transmissions have been misunderstood and under-investigated. Festus and the Libellus breviatus attributed to Victor still have no conventionally published modern English translation. And there is no really high-quality, complete, and accessible translation of any of the texts.

Recent scholarship, including by the Project Leads, has shown why a fresh presentation of these historians through reedited texts and translations is even more urgent. For Ammianus, Gavin Kelly (Edinburgh) has published widely on the need for further conjectural emendation, has brought new insights on prose-rhythm's role in editing, and has reassessed the relationships of the Renaissance manuscripts and, with his Edinburgh colleague and Co-Lead Justin Stover, the Carolingian ones. Stover and George Woudhuysen (Co-Lead, Nottingham) have demonstrated that the two Victorine works are actually summaries abbreviated from Victor's lost original. For the Historia Augusta, Stover has identified multiple sources for a neglected second branch of the manuscript tradition including passages that have been omitted from editions for centuries.

The central goal of this project is to provide new critical editions of these historians for the Oxford Classical Texts, along with accessible translations, supporting studies, and manuscript catalogues.