SOURCE: Blockley, R. C. “Olympiodorus of Thebes” and “Olympiodorus, Books of History.” In The Fragmentary Classicing Historians of the Later Roman Empire: Eunapius, Olympiodorus, Priscus and Malchus, pp. 27-47; 107-12. Liverpool: Francis Cairns, 1981.

In the following excerpt, Blockley studies Olympiodorus's Books of History from extant fragments and commentaries, contrasting Olympiodorus's pagan, informal, and analytical history with roughly contemporary works by the late Roman historians Eunapius and Zosimus.

Olympiodorus of Thebes

Olympiodorus was born in Egyptian Thebes, probably during the period 365-380.¹ Little is known about his life, and nothing about his early years. He calls himself a ποιητήs by profession (“Fr. 1”), which is taken to mean that he was one of the numerous itinerant poets whom Egypt produced during this period;² and a Blemmyomachia, parts of which survive on papyrus, has been ascribed to him.³ But it has also been pointed out that at the period ποιητήs could...