Sylabus
We concentrate on some of the more abstract traits of the Later Roman Empire as depicted
1) by Priscus of Panium, a diplomat and civil servant, in connection with his visit to the court of Attila where he had had a good opportunity to ponder over the Roman state as a whole;
2) by Eunapius, a pagan historian, who gives a unique, but rather biased account of a Germanic strife over their approach to Romans, which is representative of the time of Germanic invasions into the Empire;
3) by Olympiodorus of Thebes, a diplomat, poet and writer, who seems to praise Roman aristocratic intermarriage with Germanic nobility;
4) by Plotinus the philosopher, who coined a specific type of metaphysical thinking typical of late Antiquity in his seminal works.
Anotace
A selection of Greek texts, representative of conceptual characteristics of the age, will introduce the final phase of the world of Antiquity. Each of the four sections of guided reading of Greek texts will be ushered by an exposition.