Gnaeus Pompeius Trogus also
anglicized
Anglicisation is the process by which a place or person becomes influenced by English culture or British culture, or a process of cultural and/or linguistic change in which something non-English becomes English. It can also refer to the influen ...
as was a
Gallo-Roman historian from the
Celt
The Celts (, see pronunciation for different usages) or Celtic peoples () are. "CELTS location: Greater Europe time period: Second millennium B.C.E. to present ancestry: Celtic a collection of Indo-European peoples. "The Celts, an ancient ...
ic
Vocontii
The Vocontii (Gaulish: *''Uocontioi''; Greek: Οὐοκόντιοι, Οὐοκοντίων) were a Gallic people dwelling on the western foothills of the Alps during the Iron Age and the Roman period.
The Vocontii settled in the region in the 3 ...
tribe
The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. This definition is contested, in part due to conflic ...
in
Narbonese Gaul
Gallia Narbonensis ( Latin for "Gaul of Narbonne", from its chief settlement) was a Roman province located in what is now Languedoc and Provence, in Southern France. It was also known as Provincia Nostra ("Our Province"), because it wa ...
who lived during the reign of the
emperor
An emperor (from la, imperator, via fro, empereor) is a monarch, and usually the sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife ( empress consort), mother (emp ...
Augustus
Caesar Augustus (born Gaius Octavius; 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), also known as Octavian, was the first Roman emperor; he reigned from 27 BC until his death in AD 14. He is known for being the founder of the Roman Pri ...
. He was nearly contemporary with
Livy.
Life
Pompeius Trogus's grandfather served under
Pompey in his war against
Sertorius
Quintus Sertorius (c. 126 – 73 BC) was a Roman general and statesman who led a large-scale rebellion against the Roman Senate on the Iberian peninsula. He had been a prominent member of the populist faction of Cinna and Marius. During the ...
. Owing to Pompey's influence, he was able to obtain
Roman citizenship and his family adopted their patron's
praenomen and nomen Gnaeus Pompeius. Trogus's father served under
Julius Caesar as his secretary and interpreter. Trogus himself seems to have been a
polymath.
Works
Following
Aristotle and
Theophrastus, Pompeius Trogus wrote books on the
natural history of animals and plants.
His principal work, however, was his 44-volume ''Philippic Histories and the Origin of the Whole World and the Places of the Earth'' (''
Historiae Philippicae et Totius Mundi Origines et Terrae Situs''), now lost, which, according to its surviving epitome, had as its principal theme the
Macedonian Empire
Macedonia (; grc-gre, Μακεδονία), also called Macedon (), was an ancient kingdom on the periphery of Archaic and Classical Greece, and later the dominant state of Hellenistic Greece. The kingdom was founded and initially ruled by ...
founded by but functioned as a general history of all of the parts of the world which fell under the control of
Alexander the Great
Alexander III of Macedon ( grc, Ἀλέξανδρος, Alexandros; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip II to ...
and
his successors, with extensive ethnographical and geographical digressions. Trogus began with
Ninus,
legendary founder of
Nineveh, and ended at about the same point as Livy (AD 9). The development of the East from the
Assyrians to the
Parthians Parthian may be:
Historical
* A demonym "of Parthia", a region of north-eastern of Greater Iran
* Parthian Empire (247 BC – 224 AD)
* Parthian language, a now-extinct Middle Iranian language
* Parthian shot, an archery skill famously employed by ...
is given extensive coverage while early Roman history and the history of the
Iberian peninsula is briefly glossed in the last two books. The ''Philippic Histories'' is indebted to earlier
Greek historians
Hellenic historiography (or Greek historiography) involves efforts made by Greeks to track and record historical events. By the 5th century BC, it became an integral part of ancient Greek literature and held a prestigious place in later Roman histo ...
such as
Theopompus
Theopompus ( grc-gre, Θεόπομπος, ''Theópompos''; c. 380 BCc. 315 BC) was an ancient Greek historian and rhetorician.
Biography
Theopompus was born on the Aegean island of Chios. In early youth, he seems to have spent some time at Athen ...
(whose own ''Philippica'' may have suggested Trogus's title),
Ephorus,
Timaeus Timaeus (or Timaios) is a Greek name. It may refer to:
* ''Timaeus'' (dialogue), a Socratic dialogue by Plato
* Timaeus of Locri, 5th-century BC Pythagorean philosopher, appearing in Plato's dialogue
*Timaeus (historian) (c. 345 BC-c. 250 BC), Gree ...
, and
Polybius. On the grounds that such a work was beyond the ability of a Gallo-Roman, it has generally been assumed that Pompeius Trogus did not gather his material directly from these Greek sources but from an existing compilation or translation by a Greek such as the ''Universal History'' compiled by
Timagenes
Timagenes ( grc, Τιμαγένης) was a Greek writer, historian and teacher of rhetoric. He came from Alexandria, was captured by Romans in 55 BC and taken to Rome, where he was purchased by Faustus Cornelius Sulla, son of Sulla. It is said tha ...
of Alexandria.
Style
Pompeius Trogus's
idea of history was more exacting than that of
Sallust and
Livy, whom he criticized for their habit of putting elaborate speeches into the mouths of the characters of whom they wrote.
On the Jews
Pompeius Trogus discusses the Jews in the context of the history of the
Seleucid Empire. After from
Tacitus, the summary of Pompeius Trogus includes the most extensive description of the Jews in classical
Latin literature.
His main overview of the Jews is divided into 3 parts:
1. The Antiquities of the Jews - includes a combination of 3 different traditions:
Damascus tradition, Biblical tradition and the Egyptian-Greek tradition hostile to the
Exodus
Exodus or the Exodus may refer to:
Religion
* Book of Exodus, second book of the Hebrew Torah and the Christian Bible
* The Exodus, the biblical story of the migration of the ancient Israelites from Egypt into Canaan
Historical events
* E ...
2. A brief geographical description of the
land of Judea.
3. A history of the Jews beginning with the
Persian period
Yehud, also known as Yehud Medinata or Yehud Medinta (), was an administrative province of the Achaemenid Persian Empire in the region of Judea that functioned as a self-governing region under its local Jewish population. The province was a part ...
.
Trogus used Greek sources for his composition. It is possible that the writing of the Jews he used the writings of
Timagenes
Timagenes ( grc, Τιμαγένης) was a Greek writer, historian and teacher of rhetoric. He came from Alexandria, was captured by Romans in 55 BC and taken to Rome, where he was purchased by Faustus Cornelius Sulla, son of Sulla. It is said tha ...
and perhaps also by
Posidonius.
[Menahem Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, Vol. I, XLVII. Pompeius Trogus, pp. 332-333]
Legacy
The original text of the ''Philippic Histories'' has been lost and is preserved only in excerpts by other authors (including
Vopiscus,
Jerome, and
Augustine
Augustine of Hippo ( , ; la, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430), also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Afr ...
) and in a loose
epitome by the later historian
Justin. Justin aimed only to preserve the parts he felt most important or interesting about Pompeius Trogus's work, with the last recorded event being the recovery of Roman standards from the Parthians in 20 BC. In the manuscripts of Justin's works, however, a separate series of summaries (') of the original work have been preserved. Even in their present mutilated state the works are often an important authority for the ancient history of the East.
Pompeius Trogus's works on animals and plants were extensively quoted in the works of
Pliny the Elder.
Notes
References
Citations
Bibliography
*
* .
External links
''Prologi'' of Pompeius Trogus's workat the Tertullian Project
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pompeius Trogus, Gnaeus
Latin historians
Gaulish people
Celts
1st-century BC Gallo-Roman people
People from Gallia Narbonensis
1st-century BC historians
Trogus, Gnaeus