SC de Cnaeo Pisone patre (Eck, Caballos & Fernández) (original) (raw)

Abbreviated Histories: The Case of the Epitome de Caesaribus (c. 395)

The dissertation offers a critical analysis of the Epitome de Caesaribus, a fourth-century Latin series on the lives of the emperors from Augustus to Theodosius (c. AD 395), and consists of seven chapters defining the text, the genre, its sources, its religious milieu, and its political and social ideas. The political ideas in the Epitome were deeply marked by the influence of the ascetic ideal honouring moderation in drink, food, sleep, sex, and emotions such as anger. Within the fourth-century Roman Empire, the epitomator offers moderate pagan views which show interest about dreams, asceticism, and the providential nature of the divinity. The dissertation proposes to see the Epitome as a literary artefact which, through comparison with contemporary authors, allows one to extract from a bland text ideas found among fourth-century elites in the emperor Honorius' Italy (395-423).