Sextus Aurelius Victor

About a year ago Stover and (copypaste) Woudhuysen put out The Lost History of Sextus Aurelius Victor. What I didn't know is that as ebook it is free-o'-charge; also on academia.edu. I owe this to its recent Bryn Mawr review, in Italian.

I tend to agree with the review that most of their work looks legit.

We learn Victor was the historian of late Latin letters. He focused on the administration, presenting a Fürstenspiegel for the post-principes. He cast a somewhat dim view on "the Spartans", as Moldbug would have it. Latin was still the language of administration.

Latin was also the language of the army. Ammianus Marcellinus - the authors argue - was a reaction from the military faction; although more a Greek himself, he aimed his own history at Latin-speakers. Ammianus must exonerate the soldiers at Adrianople. Although even Ammianus had to admit that Victor was serious.

Less serious is that Malalas-like "Historia Augusta", which also used Victor. The authors explain this as a fraud by a nonhistorian, perpetrated upon a history-buying public. Sadly it mostly worked.

None of these histories survive in full. Ammianus is missing... a lot; later readers were interested in its later sections, discarding the rest. The "Historia Augusta" is missing Philip the Arab. Victor meanwhile survives - the authors say - in two parallel abridgements: the one drops sections of prose, leaving a mess that must be reconstructed from elsewhere; the other - they say, from one Paul, Deacon in eighth-century Italy - an opinioniated summary, to supplement where (especially) Paul was using Victor in other work.

The authors contend against that common statement, the more trustworthy sources on which the author of the HA could rely had halted somewhere in the course of the narration about Elagabalus’ reign. Nah. HA had Victor and Victor was fine; also HA should have known, say, Dexippus.

Victor and Ammianus agreed against Christianity, although at least Victor was willing to pull from Lactantius, much as Lactantius was an idiot. From our Catholic side, Jerome, much as he was a grouch, had to admit of Victor's excellence as an historian.

Victor has suffered in posterity on account of the former abridgement, making him look like the peddler of nonsense (which nonsense the authors, frustrated comedians, send up) rather than his abridger taking that blame. On the other hand, Victor held an inferiority complex as wide as the northern African coast in which he grew up. He was constantly alluding to Tacitus and Sallust; we might call him a pioneer of the jeweled-style. Ammianus also presented his history as the next chapters of Tacitus but he doesn't abuse the Latin language as much.

Victor shares with Cassius Dio, that the Severans were a reflection of the Julio-Claudians, and a poor one. Not for Victor the Historia Augusta's laud for Severus Alexander.

For all our authors approve Victor (and Cassius Dio), they cast shade on Herodian. Dissin' Herodian is quite the team sport in academe. Was Herodian that bad?