SAMPLE ESSAY
On the following pages appears a sample essay (on a different topic from that of either of the
assignments for this unit). It demonstrates one format for the layout of text, notes, and bibliography.
You may use this as a guide, in addition to the departmental Style Guide (which appear separately on
the Blackboard site for this unit).
Remember to double-space throughout, and to number the pages. Note that a Division of
Humanities cover sheet should be attached to every item of assessment submitted.
The Sample Essay concerns Priscus, an important source for the history of the Roman empire in the
mid-fifth century.
For another example of a first-year essay, consult the Australian Society for Classical Studies
website for the ASCS Australian Essay Prize Competition, and view the prize essays there, at:
http://www.ascs.org.au//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=60&Itemid=40
Sample Essay
AHIS120 Semester 2, 2010
Essay: length 1,200
Priscus of Panium, History
The History of Priscus of Panium was composed in Greek and primarily concerns events in the
eastern half of the Roman empire in the fifth century.1 Nonetheless it also provides valuable
information about the western half of the empire, and may offer evidence for popular attitudes towards
imperial rule at a time when the Roman empire faced competition for loyalty from the empire of Attila
and the barbarian settlements in the western provinces.
Most of what is known about Priscus comes from references in his own History, although a later
Byzantine user mentions that he came from the city of Panium (about one hundred and fifty kilometers
west of Constantinople on the Sea of Marmara).2 In the History, Priscus mentions his close relations
with two senior officials of the imperial court in Constantinople: ca. 448-452 with Maximinus, a military
officer whose exact title is not given; and ca. 456 with Euphemius, the magister officiorum (Master of
Offices, the head of the civil service of the eastern half of the empire).3 It has been suggested that
Sample Essay
I use the translation of R. C. Blockley, in The Fragmentary Classicising Historians of the Later Roman Empire:
Eunapius, Olympiodorus, Priscus and Malchus, 2 vols., ARCA vols. 6 and 10 (Liverpool, 1981, 1983), vol. 2, pp.
221-400. There are two systems for numbering the fragments of Priscus; Blockley's is used here. Large parts of
Priscus's work are also translated in C. D. Gordon, The Age of Attila: Fifth-Century Byzantium and the
Barbarians (New York, 1960); and the account of Priscus's embassy to Attila (frags. 11-14) is translated in J. B.
Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire, vol. 1 (London, 1923), 279-88.
1
For Priscus's career: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, vol. 2, ed. J. Martindale (Cambridge,
1980), `Priscus 1,' 906; Blockley, Classicising Historians, vol. 1, 48; The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (Oxford,
1991), 1721; The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1996), 1248. Panium: Tim Cornell and John
Matthews, Atlas of the Roman World (Oxford, 1982), 140.
2
Maximinus: PLRE II, `Maxininus 11,' 743. Euphemius: PLRE II, `Euphemius 1,' 424. On the magister
officiorum: A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire, 284-602: A Social, Economic, and Administrative Survey
(Oxford, 1964), 103, 368-69, 575-84; Arthur E. R. Boak, `The Master of Offices in the Later Roman and
Byzantine Empires,' in Arthur E. R. Boak and James E. Dunlap, Two Studies in Later Roman and Byzantine
Administration (London, 1924).
3
Priscus worked for Euphemius as an assessor, that is a legal advisor (senior officials acted as civil or
military judges alongside the more specific tasks of their offices).4 It is debated whether Priscus had
earlier worked for Maximinus also or was just a personal friend.5 Each reference to the senior officers
involves undertaking a diplomatic embassy to a neighbouring power: with Maximinus to Attila, king of
the Huns, in central Europe; possibly to the bishop of Rome; and to the Nobadae and Blemmyes,
barbarian tribes who were harrassing the Roman provinces of Upper Egypt (Maximinus died during this
trip); and with Euphemius to negotiate a settlement between the Roman empire and the neighbouring
kingdom of the Lazi, east of the Black Sea.6
Priscus's History therefore was written by an author with close connections to senior military and
civilian officials of the eastern empire during the reigns of Theodosius II and Marcian, and personal
experience in imperial administration at least in the mid-450s and possibly before. The work contains
much first-hand observation, mostly of foreign affairs. His perspective is not the official view of the
imperial court, but of an informed public official.7
What survives of the History covers events between about 434 and 471; whether the original work
extended before or after those dates is unknown. It has been suggested that Priscus completed the
work after 476, on the basis that he speaks disparagingly of a powerful general who fell from power in
that year; minor figures such as Priscus presumably did not publically criticise public figures while they
Priscus, frag. 33.2 and p. 394, n. 144; PLRE II, 906; Blockley, Classicising Historians, vol. 1, 48. On
assessores: Jones, Later Roman Empire 499-501.
4
5 Priscus as assessor to both Maximinus and Euphemius: PLRE II, 906; as friend of Maximinus: Blockley,
Classicising Historians, vol. 1, 48. Though Priscus's description of how Maximinus sought his company on the
journey to Attila suggests a personal appeal (`Maximinus by his pleadings persuaded me to accompany him on
this embassy'; Priscus, frag. 11.2); Priscus's repeated membership of diplomatic embassies suggests
involvement in an official capacity.
Attila: frags. 11-14. Rome: frag. 20.3. Upper Egypt: frags. 26-27.1, 28. Blockley, Classicising Historians, vol.
1, 48.
6
7
A.D.Lee, Information and Frontiers: Roman Foreign Relations in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 1993), 8.
Sample Essay
held influence.8 Priscus makes no reference to where he wrote or published his work. After his
lifetime, it was available to users in Constantinople and Antioch.9
No full copy of Priscus's History is extant. Instead, there are a large number of `fragments,' sections
of the text used by later writers (including the sixth-century Byzantine historian Procopius in his history
of Justinian's wars, and Procopius's contemporary Jordanes in his history of the Goths). Some
fragments are explicitly labelled as coming from Priscus, while others have been identified by modern
scholars on the basis of similarity in topic and style. The most substantial fragments come from two
works commissioned by the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII (913-959), which extracted accounts
(`Excerpts') of embassies from classical and late antique Greek histories; one volume consisted of
Embassies of the Romans, the other of Embassies of the Barbarians.10
Because of this selection, Priscus's work appears to have been primarily a diplomatic history of
relations between the eastern Roman empire and neighbouring powers. This may not be an accurate
impression, as `domestic' material not relating to diplomacy would not have been of interest to the
Byzantine compilers.
The longest and most often-cited fragment of Priscus's lost work concerns the embassy to Attila
undertaken by Maximinus and Priscus. The vivid details of this first-hand account may well have
ensured its preservation by Byzantine editors. Priscus's account provides unique information on the
nature of power structures in Attila's kingdom, as the Roman embassy has to treat with several senior
leaders of Attila's court before meeting Attila himself. These figures, in attendance at Attila's court, are
Sample Essay
8
Blockley, Classicising Historians, vol. 1, 49-50.
9
Blockley, Classicising Historians, vol. 1, 113-18.
B. Baldwin, `Priscus of Panium,' Byzantion 50 (1980), 18-61; Blockley, Classicising Historians, vol. 1, 113;
Oxford Classical Dictionary 1248. On Constantine VII: Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, vol. 1, 502-02; on the
Excerpts: ibid., vol. 2, 767-68.
10
themselves the rulers of smaller tribes. They advise Attilla and are ranked in precedence at the Hunnic
king's formal dinner. In contrast, subject rulers of small tribes who are not honoured by Attila are
required to pay tribute to the king. Attila's wife, Hereka, is also a figure of authority, though whether she
has power in her own right or only through possible influence on Attila is unclear. Priscus mentions,
however, that the unnamed widow of Attila's brother and former co-ruler, Bleda, rules a local village.
Priscus's account shows Attila's regime as a coalition of a loose network of local powers at the level of
individual villages or of small tribes, dominated by the personal authority of Attila, in turn based on the
military threat of his forces. His `empire' appears to have no real equivalent to the centralised
bureaucracy of the Roman empire.11
One element in particular of Priscus's account of the embassy to Attila has received extensive
discussion in modern studies. While awaiting an audience with the king, Priscus meets a Greek trader,
dressed as a Hun, who had been captured during a raid on imperial territory, enslaved to a Hunnic lord,
and who had subsequently bought his freedom but elected to remain among the Huns. Priscus records
a dialogue between himself and this merchant, in which the merchant derides government within the
empire, and especially the admininstration of law, as corrupt and oppressive. Priscus defends the
fairness of the Roman legal and governmental system.12 The passage has been variously interpreted.
A Marxist historian writing shortly after World War Two saw it a faithful record of an actual conversation:
the merchant's criticism revealed the real stresses of the oppressive class structure of the late Roman
empire, and Priscus's glib response showed his inability to comprehend structural
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Priscus, frags. 11.1-14; discussed by E. A. Thompson, A History of Attila and the Huns (Oxford, 1948), 16183; Otto Maenchen-Helfen, The World of the Huns: Studies in Their History and Culture (Berkeley, 1973), 190200.
11
12
Priscus, frag. 11.2.
social forces.13 Later critics have pointed out that the discussion is set out formally in the style of a
philosophical discussion reminiscent of Plato's dialogues, and that Platonic ideas shape the content of
Priscus's reply, which fails to reply to most of the merchant's specific criticisms. It has been suggested
that Priscus was putting into the mouth of the former merchant (whether or not he had actually met
such a figure) his personal criticims of current government, and that traces of similar criticisms can be
detected in other parts of Priscus's narrative.14
The fragmentary preservation of Priscus's work precludes assessment of his overall aims.
Nevertheless, the History preserves valuable details of eastern events and descriptions of imperial
diplomacy, and may offer a critique of imperial government and politics made by an author with
extensive experience in public life.
13
Thompson, Attila, 184-87.
Blockley, Classicising Historians, vol. 1, 55-59; Walter Goffart, `Zosimus, The First Historian of Rome's Fall,'
in his Rome's Fall and After (London, 1989), 105-06.
14
Sample Essay
Bibliography
Sources
The Fragmentary Classicising Historians of the Later Roman Empire: Eunapius, Olympiodorus, Priscus
and Malchus, ed. and tr. R. C. Blockley, 2 vols., ARCA vols. 6 and 10 (Liverpool, 1981, 1983)
Gordon, C. D., The Age of Attila: Fifth-Century Byzantium and the Barbarians (New York, 1960)
Modern Studies
Baldwin, B., `Priscus of Panium,' Byzantion 50 (1980), 18-61
Boak, Arthur E. R. and James E. Dunlap, Two Studies in Later Roman and Byzantine Administration
(London, 1924)
Braund, David, `Priscus on the Suani,' Phoenix 46 (1992), 62-65
Bury, J. B., History of the Later Roman Empire, 2 vols. (London, 1923)
Byzantine Diplomacy, ed. J. Shepard and S. Franklin (Aldershot, 1992)
Goffart, Walter, `Zosimus, The First Historian of Rome's Fall,' in his Rome's Fall and After (London,
1989), 81-110
Jones, A. H. M., The Later Roman Empire, 284-602: A Social, Economic, and Administrative Survey, 3
vols. (Oxford, 1964)
Lee, A. D. Information and Frontiers: Roman Foreign Relations in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 1993)
Maenchen-Helfen, Otto, The World of the Huns: Studies in Their History and Culture (Berkeley, 1973)
The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, vol. 2, ed. J. Martindale (Cambridge, 1980)
Thompson, E. A., A History of Attila and the Huns (Oxford, 1948)
-----, Romans and Barbarians: The Decline of the Western Empire (Madison, 1982)
Reference
The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, 3 vols., ed. A. Kazhdan et al.(Oxford, 1991)
The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed., ed. S Hornblower and A. Spawforth (Oxford, 1996)
Cornell, Tim and John Matthews, Atlas of the Roman World (Oxford, 1982)