Procopius

Monday 23 April, 2018: 4:30 (UK time)

Our first seminar was on the sixth-century historian, Procopius. Our panellists were:

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.