Herodian

• 1. Introduction

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  Herodian, writing in Greek sometime around the 3rd century, set himself a task that no other historian of his era attempted in quite the same way. He would document, from personal experience, the full sweep of imperial Rome across a period of roughly seventy years, covering the reigns of several emperors from Marcus Aurelius to the rise of Gordian III. He was not a senator, not a general, not a famous scholar. He was, by most scholarly estimates, a minor civil servant. Yet his eight-book History of the Empire from Marcus Onwards stands as one of the few surviving eyewitness accounts of one of Rome's most turbulent political eras. Who was this man? Where did he come from? How reliable is what he wrote? And why have scholars spent centuries arguing about all three questions?

• 2. A Life in Shadow

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  Herodian never tells us his birthday, and no inscription has ever confirmed where he was born. Everything known about his life comes from remarks scattered through his own history, a fact that makes every conclusion provisional. He wrote that the events he described occurred during his lifetime, and from his attentive detail about events of 180 AD, scholars infer he had reached at least the age of ten by that year. The Secular Games of Septimius Severus in 204, and the games of Commodus in 192, both appear in his first and third books. If he attended the games of Commodus personally, he was at least 14 at the time, placing his birth no later than 178. A note in his second book states his aim was to write a systematic account of the events within a period of seventy years, covering reigns he experienced personally, which suggests he composed at least part of his history around the age of 70. However, his descriptions of Gordian III are notably unflattering, and it strains credibility that he would have published such a portrait while that emperor was still alive. Gordian III died in 244, which places the likely completion of the history no earlier than that year.

• 3. The Question of Origins

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  Three main hypotheses compete for Herodian's birthplace, and scholars have debated them since the mid-20th century. The first is Alexandria in Egypt. Herodian devotes considerable attention to Caracalla's massacre of the city and its people, and some have argued he may have been an eyewitness. He even calls Alexandria the second city of the empire. The problem is that he applies the same honorific to Antioch and to Carthage, which weakens the claim, and there are factual errors in his account that sit uneasily with someone who knew the city intimately. The second hypothesis is Syria, specifically Antioch. Herodian describes the character of the Syrians as quick-witted and mentions them on two further occasions. But his chronology and geography of the Parthian campaign of 197-198 are deeply flawed, and his confusion of two Parthian kings is hard to explain if he grew up in the region. The third hypothesis, that he came from Asia Minor, has become the most widely accepted since it was first proposed in the mid-20th century. The argument rests on the frequency with which cities of Asia Minor appear in his work and, crucially, the absence of the factual errors that mark his passages on other regions. Short of an archaeological inscription, the question cannot be settled.

• 4. Rank and Access

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  Herodian wrote that he had a personal share in some of the events he described during his imperial and public service, but he gives no title and no rank. One suggestion is that he was a senator, resting on his knowledge of the senatus consultum tacitum, the secret declaration by which the senate chose Pupienus and Balbinus as co-emperors. That knowledge, however, was eventually leaked by senators themselves, so it need not imply Herodian sat in that body. A competing view holds that he may have been a freedman, which would explain his relative indifference to the larger mechanics of politics and his sustained focus on individual personalities and court intrigue. A third possibility is that he served as an apparitor, either a scribe or an attendant in imperial administration. This role would have given him access to senatorial documents, required him to travel widely, and brought him into contact with the fiscal affairs he returned to repeatedly throughout his history. He appears to have spent a long period in Rome, though possibly without any formal public office there.

• 5. Eight Books, Sixty Years

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  The first book of Herodian's history takes on the reign of Commodus, which ran from 180 to 192. The second covers the chaotic Year of the Five Emperors in 193, and the third tracks Septimius Severus through to 211. Book Four carries the story through Caracalla's reign to 217, while Book Five examines Elagabalus from 218 to 222. Book Six covers Severus Alexander from 222 to 235, the seventh recounts Maximinus Thrax through to 238, and the eighth and final book addresses the Year of the Six Emperors in that same year. Herodian almost certainly wrote for an eastern audience. He repeatedly pauses to explain Roman customs and beliefs that would have seemed unfamiliar to readers in the eastern provinces. His stated method was to narrate only the most important and conclusive actions, separately and in chronological order. This compression sometimes runs extreme: all of Caracalla's northern campaign from 213 to 214 is condensed into two brief references, and a single mention of a winter in Sirmium stands in for Maximinus' entire sequence of battles on the Rhine and Danube across 236 to 238.

• 6. Praise, Criticism, and Rivals

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  Photius, the ninth-century patriarch of Constantinople, is the first person on record to formally assess Herodian's work, and he was generous. Writing in his Codex 99, Photius described Herodian's prose as clear, vigorous, and agreeable, praising it for avoiding both the extreme of stylistic negligence and the overwrought artifices of Atticism, the Greek literary fashion that mimicked classical Athenian prose. He added that Herodian neither exaggerated with hyperbole nor omitted anything essential, and declared that in all the virtues of historiography there were few men his superior. An English translator writing in 1705 described his prose as preserving a majesty suitable to the greatness of his subject. The scholar Altheim praised Herodian's broad perspective on the period, while F.A. Wolf commended his freedom from bias and superstition. Wolf also charged him with a deficiency in critical faculty. The author of the Historia Augusta drew on Herodian while simultaneously faulting him for bias. Zosimus used him as a source but did not prefer him, and Joannes Zonaras turned to Herodian only where Cassius Dio's history ran out. Herodian himself pushed back against Dio directly, disputing his account of how the people received the proclamation of Septimius Severus as emperor, a passage that illustrates the ongoing scholarly debate over which account deserves more trust.

• 7. Accuracy and Reputation

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  Herodian has attracted sustained criticism for historical inaccuracy, yet recent scholarship has tended to rehabilitate his factual record. Some errors are specific and hard to dismiss: he confuses Arabia Scenite with Arabia Felix, and he misidentifies Issus as the location of the final battle and capture of Darius III, which took place elsewhere. His chronology of the Parthian campaign of 197-198 is acknowledged to be flawed. His use of imaginary speeches, a technique drawn in part from Thucydides, whom he appears to have taken as a model, adds another layer of difficulty for historians seeking a straight record of events. His account of Elagabalus has been judged less biased than that of Cassius Dio, which is why scholars sometimes find him more useful for that reign specifically. John of Antioch used him as a source for his World Chronicle, and Zosimus, despite his preference for other writers, incorporated Herodian's material where it served. The ongoing scholarly interest in his work rests partly on the scarcity of alternatives: for the sixty years he covers, from the death of Marcus Aurelius to the accession of Gordian III in 238, Herodian remains one of the very few writers who claims to have witnessed the events firsthand.