Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 4 (1897).djvu/548

 524 APPENDIX coronatiou of Justin II. In connexion with thia Emperor's accession he wrote his 7/1 knidein JuHini Atu/usti Titinoris. hoping that the sovereign wonhl hel|) him in liis need. For he seems to have lost liis property in the troubles which broke out in Africa a few years before (sec below, j). 544). Compare, I'raefatio, 43, nudatus ijropriis. This j)oem consists of a preface, a short panegyric on Anastasius the quaestor (who probably undertook to introduce Corippus to the Emperor) and four Books. It has been repeatedh- edited, and has been well elucidated b}- Fogginius (1777). For its contents see Gibbon, c. xlv. The critical edition of Joseph Partsch (in the Mon. Germ. Hist.), 1879, has superseded all previous works. Corippus, it may be observed, though a poor poet compared with Claudian, is far more satisfactory to the historian. He has no scruples about introducing barbarous names into his verse, and is consequently less allusive. His account of the IMoorish nations is of g:-eat importance for the geography of North Africa. We meet such names as Silcadenit, Naffur, Silvaizan ; such a line as, Astuces, Anacutasur, Celianus, Imaclas. Count Marcellinus was of Illyrian birth and Latin was his native tongue. He was cancellarma of .Justinian, before Justinian ascended the throne and probabh- when he held the post of vmgister eqiiitvmct pcditinn in 2>raesenti. Some years later, before the death of Justin, he wrote and edited a chronicle, beginning with the accession of Theodosius I., where Jerome stojtped, and coming down to the death of Anastasius ; afterwards he continued it to a.d. 534. (Another contemporar- but anonymous author subsequently brought it down to A.D. 548.) The sources of Marcellinus were Orosius, the Consularia of Constanti- nople (see above, vol. ii.. Appendix 1), the Consularia Italica, Gennadius' con- tinuation of Jerome's dc Viris illustrih^is, and one or two ecclesiastical works (for instance a life of Chrysostom, similar to that of Palladius). See preface to Mommsen's edition in Chron. Min., vol. ii., p. 30 sqq. Marcellinus contains some important notices of events in lUyricum ; and for Anastasius, Justin and Justinian, his statements— always provokingly brief— have a very high value. Victor Tonxekxexsis,-" an African bishop, wrote under .Justinian and Justin II. a chronicle from the Creation to the year a.d. 5(i6. We possess the most important part of it from a.d. 444 forward. For Victor's life we have some notices in his own chronicle and a notice in Isidore's De viris illustribus, c. 49, 50. He took part vith the western churchmen against .Justinian in the Three Chajjter Controversy, and was banished, first to the Balearic islands 'a certain emendation of Jtommsen in Victor, suh ann. a.d. .5,55), and after other changes of exile, to Egypt ; finally in a.d. 564-5 he was removed to Constantinople. He ■vrote his work during his exile. Mommsen has shown that he made use of Western Consularia from a.d. 444 to 457 ; of Eastern Consularia from a.d. 458 to .500 (except for a.d. 460, 464, 465) ; but of Western again from a.d. 501-563. In a.d. 563 he suddenly and unaccountably ceases to date bj' consulships, and begins to date by the years of Justinian's reign. It is to be observed that in marking the jears after Basils consulate a.d. 540 he departs from the usual practice ; he calls a.d. 541 not the iirst but the second year post consulatimi Basilii. It is very curious that he makes a mistake about the year of Justinian's death, which he places in Ind. 15 and the fortieth year of his reign, though it reallj' took place in Ind. 14, ann. regn. 39. [Edition : Mommsen, Chron. Min., 2, p. 178 sqq.] The chronicle of Victor was continued by a Visigoth, John or Biclabum. He too, like Victor, suffered persecution for his religious opinions. He had gone to Constantinople in his childhood, learned Latin and Greek, and had been brought up in the Catholic faith. At the age of seventeen he returned to Spain, 33 He was bishop of the ecclesia Tonnennensis (or Tonnonnensis, or Tunnuneiisis) in the prov. Carthaginiensis. I follow the spelling adopted by Mommsen, which depends on a very probable coniectural restoration in an inscription (C.I.L., 8, suppl. 12,552). The ter- mination of the local name from which the adjective is formed stems to be unknown.