A Lost Classic: The Reception of Prokopios’ History of the Wars in Byzantium
A Lost Classic: The Reception of Prokopios’ History of the Wars in Byzantium

Summary/Abstract: Recent years have witnessed a profusion of scholarship on Prokopios and his History of the Wars, as he has gradually been recognized as one of the greatest historians of all antiquity and scholars have begun to debate what makes him great. This piece explores the reception of Prokopios in Byzantium, demonstrating the vitality of the text among Byzantine readers, without whom there might be no Prokopios to debate. Through an examination of scholia, allusions, retellings, and imitations of Prokopios, it shows how Byzantine readers appreciated Prokopios as a rhetorical text, a model for plague and reconquest, and a memorial of the past glories of Justinian. It also argues that Byzantine readers of Prokopios were often astute and their readings of Prokopios offer interesting observations on hotly debated questions among modern scholars such as Prokopios’ subversiveness and his Orthodoxy. Through a better understanding of Byzantine Prokopios, modern scholars can better understand Prokopios today.

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