Procopius
Monday 23 April, 2018: 4:30 (UK time)
Our first seminar was on the sixth-century historian, Procopius. Our panellists were:
- Ian Colvin (Cambridge & Anglo-Georgian Archaeological Expedition to Nokalakevi)
- Conor Whately (Winnipeg)
- Miranda Williams (Oxford)
Discussion was chaired by Alexander Skinner.
Audience contributions came from Geoffrey Greatrex and Christopher Lillington-Martin.
Averil Cameron offered a very encouraging concluding note to the meeting.
Following the publication of Christopher Lillington-Martin & Elodie Turquois (eds), Procopius of Caesarea: Literary and Historical Interpretations (Routledge, London & New York, 2017) we discussed current research problems in the study of Procopius. Topics included:
- Procopius’ sources and his methods of working with them;
- Procopius’ sincerity and what we can believe, following recent very different approaches to his preface;
- The relevance of his subject matter (should Procopius have focused on other issues that were more representative of his age?) and how useful a source he is;
- The relationship between Procopius’ works;
- His greatness as an historian.