Olympiodorus of Thebes (; born c. 380, fl. c. 412–425 AD) was a Roman historian, poet, philosopher and diplomat of the early fifth century. He produced a History in twenty-two volumes, written in Greek, dedicated to the Emperor Theodosius II, detailing events in the Western Roman Empire between 407 and 425.
who flourished in a Christian court, and whose work influenced several subsequent historians, including writers of ecclesiastical history.
Life
Olympiodorus was born between 365 and 380 in Thebes (modern Luxor, Egypt), in the Roman province of Thebaïd, into a curial family. This was perhaps to settle a dispute between rival candidates, ensuring the choice of the Emperor. Or to support an official programme of copying classical texts following Visigothic invasions. there are several compelling reasons to think he did: his detailed knowledge of affairs since 407; his observations on the coastline of Italy; the citing of facts and statistics that would have been available in the city archives at Rome; and his amazement at the actual grandeur of Rome and the wealth of its aristocracy. One hexameter, presumably his own, appears in the description of the residences of the wealthy on his visit to Rome, which contained hippodromes, fountains, shrines, and many of the other attributes of a town:
: "One house is a town; a city has ten thousand towns", and the whole history covers the period from the seventh consulship of Honorius to the accession of Valentinian III. We are told that the marriage of Placidia and the Goth Ataulf occurred in the month of January, and her marriage to Constantius III was in the eleventh consulship of Honorius and the second of Constantius. Olympiodorus transliterated every Roman title into Greek, an unusual practice: Greek historians avoided transliteration, often by leaving out the officials' titles altogether. Thompson points out that Olympiodorus's idiosyncrasies of style: the Latinisms, slang (vernacular Greek), He mentions the poet Peisander, whom he credits with providing the connection between the Argonauts and the founding of Emona. There are linguistic similarities between the work of Philosturgius and the relevant passages of Zosimus that suggest Olympiodorus as a common source. The Baldwins offer a list of details suggesting a connection between the respective fragments of the two authors, He blamed Honorius for failing to win over Alaric, either by acceding to what he considered his "reasonable demands",