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ZOSIMUS —Historian

ZOSIMUS— Historian

H. B. p. 27). The middle of the century mayperhaps be accepted as a probable date. Fabri-cius says that he wrote after a.D. 425. Thismuch at least is certain, that he lived in thedecline of the empire, and that it was the melan-choly spectacle of its decay and ruin which ledhim to make the effort to discover the causes,and to commemorate the particulars, of so greata fall. The place of his birth is unknown, buthe had fixed his residence at Constantinople,where he would seem to have held the positionof a Comes and Exadvocatus Fisci. The officeappears to have been connected either with thegovernment of the city, or the administration ofthe royal revenues. In his work, De Aed. iii. 1,he tells us himself that the ruler of a provincewas called a Comes. Although a heathen,Zosimus was not a polytheist, for in one passageat least of his history, when referring to anoracle which had predicted the greatness of OldByzantium, he speaks of the Deity in highlyworthy terms. “Let no one think,” he says,“ that because a long period passed before theprediction was fulfilled it must refer to some-thing else, for all time is short to the DivineBeing who always is and shall be ” (ii. 37). Hepaid honour, however, to the heathen religiousrites, honouring them as rites which had comedown from former generations (v. 23), complain-ing of the attempts of various emperors toextinguish them (ii. 29, iv. 59), lamenting thefact that the oracles of the gods were no longerlistened to (i. 57), and finding in the abandon-ment of the old religion one main cause of thedecline of the empire (iv. 59). At the sametime he ridicules Christianity as an unreasonableconglomerate, &\oyos crvyKaTadeons (iv. 59),sneers at Christian soldiers as only able to pray(iii. 2, iv. 23), and welcomes any opportunity ofgiving the most false representations of theChristian faith (ii. 29, iv. 59). A historian ofsuch a spirit can hardly be relied on for anaccount of the events of a time when the oldsuperstitions which he venerated were compelledto yield to the advancing power of a religionwhich he abhorred; and even his admirers areconstrained to admit, that he is not to be trustedwhere his prejudices on religious matters comeinto play. Reitemeier, who defends him on thewhole, allows that he was too partial to theheathen, too unjust to Christians (Disquis. p.26); and Gibbon speaks of his “ passion andprejudice,” of his “ ignorant and malicioussuggestions,” and of the “malcontent insinua-tions of the heathen Zosimus ” (chaps, xvii. xx.).His accounts of the conversion of Constantine,and of the character of Theodosius (ii. 29, iv.26-33), are in this respect oarticularly worthyof notice. To the former, as well as to manyother of his most scandalous charges againstthat emperor, Evagrius replied in the fiercestlanguage, addressing him as a “wicked spiritand fiend of hell” (iii. 41); and for the latterhe has been condemned by Gibbon in milder buthardly less emphatic language (chap, xxvii.).De Broglie refers, for a full refutation of thestory regarding the conversion of Constantine,to the Mem. de VAcad. des Inscrip. 49, p. 470,etc.

From all that has been said, the inferencemust not be hastily drawn that Zosimus is, as ahistorian, unworthy of our regard. On the

contrary he may be justly described as one ofthe best historians of these early centuries.Even his views on church matters are highlyinteresting, as showing us the light in whichthey were regarded by the more intelligent ofthe heathen ; nor are they always wanting intruth and forcibleness of statement. His de-scription of the monks, for example, who so oftentroubled both the empire and the church, is animportant counterpoise to the exaggerated esti-mate always formed of them by the professedecclesiastical historians of the age. “ Theyforswear lawful marriages, and fill their institu-tions both in cities and villages with unmarriedmen who are of no service either for war or forany work useful to the state, except that,making progress from their beginning to thepresent day, they have taken possession of agreat part of the land, and that, on pretence ofsharing everything with the poor, they reduce, soto speak, all to poverty ” (v. 23). At the sametime the exposure that he makes of the tyrannyand crimes of several of the first Christianemperors cannot be set aside as inconsistent withthe probabilities of the case. In any descrip-tions given by him of such things he has saidnothing even approaching in severity the accountsthat have come down to us from other sources,while we cannot forget that other historians, towhom we owe our knowledge of the persons ofwhom he speaks,— Socrates, Sozomen, Theo-doret, Philostorgius, and Evagrius—were na-turally predisposed to conceal the vices, and toexaggerate the virtues of those who, in theirpublic capacity, were defenders of the faith. Inestimating, too, the value of Zosimus as a his-torian, it must be borne in mind that he treatsmore largely of civil affairs than these othershad done, and that we owe to him many factsconnected with the condition of the military,their degeneracy, exactions, and dissoluteness,which they passed over in silence, but whichother historians have acknowledged to havecontributed in no slight degree to the fall of theempire.

There seems indeed no sufficient ground toascribe intentional bad faith to the history be-fore us. That the writer was mistaken in manyof his conclusions, and especially in those relat-ing to the influence of Christianity, is unques-tionable. That he occasionally gave too easycredence to unfounded statements is not less so ;but it has never been proved that he wilfullyperverted facts for the sake of establishing anytheory that he held.

Zosimus is not to be considered in all respect*as an original historian. It is probable that hewould have exhibited more originality had he,according to his intention, been able to bring hishistory down to his own time. It closes, how-ever, with the year a.d. 410. Either he hadbeen hindered by death from prosecuting itfurther, or some portions of it have been lost.He is thus occupied throughout it all withevents previous to his own day, and in relatingthese he seems rather to epitomize works of pre-decessors in the same field than to write originalnarrative. Reitemeier finds that in the firstpart of his history he followed the Synopsis ofDenippus, in the middle and larger part theChronicon of Eunapius, and in the last part theSilva of Olympiodorus (Disquis. p. 35). Photius