Scythica Vindobonensia

The new historical fragments in the lower layer of the palimpsest folios 192r195v in the Vienna ms. Hist. gr. 73 of the Austrian National Library are undoubtedly among the most important additions to the corpus of texts from classical antiquity of the last decades. The amount of text surpasses that of most papyri and the impact of the fragments on scholarship is dramatic in very diverse ways: one major field concerned is that of philological and literary studies, where the text sheds new light on the use of language, on style and on the practice of historiography, but also on the transmission of classical texts; the find also affects ancient history in many different aspects: from Roman political and military history through Roman, Greek and Gothic prosopography to important issues of Roman administrative history during the crisis of the 3rd cent. AD. The Vienna fragments contain a detailed narrative of invasions of Scythians (an archaizing collective name for Goths and other East Germanic tribes) into the Roman provinces on the Balkan in the middle of the 3rd cent. AD. One of these incursions is that of the Goths under Cniva in 250/251, at the time of the Roman Emperor Decius. Among other unique evidence, a longer passage from an address of Decius to his army has been preserved. Concerning the authorship of the new fragments, the subject matter as well as some details of style and wording point to the 3rd-century Greek historian Dexippus of Athens and his Scythica, a history of the wars of Rome with the Goths, therefore, the fragments have preliminary been given the name Scythica Vindobonensia. The project aims at revealing, editing and analyzing the Scythica Vindobonensia in a thorough and complete way, thus making this new unique evidence part of our literary and historical scholarship and providing a point of reference for a broad range of studies and further work on it. In order to decipher these important historical fragments as completely as possible and to secure the uncertain parts of the text already transcribed, the most advanced methods of digital recovering erased texts will be applied. The main output of the project will be a monograph that will contain a critical edition, a full commentary on the text, as well as extended studies on particular issues; tables with images of the Vienna palimpsest will be incorporated. Moreover, to achieve the best possible dissemination, a forward-looking website Scythica Vindobonensia online with an illustrative presentation of this unique witness will be created. The purpose of the project is to render this new piece of our cultural heritage generally accessible to readers/scholars from all disciplines, as well as to the interested public.

Since the days of emperor Marcus Aurelius the Roman Empire was confronted at the Danube, its Northern frontier, with attacks by strong bands of warriors. North of the river, at the periphery of the Roman world, these groups formed new peoples. 2nd century sources most frequently mention the Marcomanni, Quadi, Buri and Iazyges; in the 3rd century AD new ethnic denominations occur for the first time: the Carpi, Iuthungi, Heruls and Vandals, but foremost the Goths. With the Goths, mentioned for the first time around the middle of the 3rd century, the attacks reached new heights. Led by charismatic leaders such as King Cniva they crossed the lower Danube and advanced pillaging through Moesia and Thrace (modern Bulgaria) to Greece. At the same time the Roman Empire was hit by a devastating pandemic, which ravaged the entire Mediterranean in several waves and resulted in high rates of mortality. The defense of Rome against the Barbarians at the lower Danube between around 250 and 275 AD under emperors such as Philippus Arabs, Decius (who was killed in a battle against the Goths at Abrittus near modern Razgrad) or Gallienus were the subject of the historical work of Dexippus of Athens, a contemporary and well-informed eyewitness. His work, written in Greek, is entitled Scythica, using the name, established since Herodotus, of all the peoples of the far North, i.e. the Scythians. Up to now, we had only few fragments of his work, which stands in the tradition of the second father of historiography, the Athenian Thucydides. These Scythica were preserved in quotations by later authors. Around 15 years ago however the project collaborator Jana Gruskov identified remains of the Scythica in a medieval (Byzantine) codex of the Austrian National Library. The text is hardly legible with the naked eye since the ink was washed off in the Middle Ages so as to give way to a new text (a so-called palimpsest). In an earlier FWF project of the Austrian Academy of Sciences she deciphered, in cooperation with Gunther Martin, 60% of the text and published it in a provisional transcription. The project "Scythica Vindobonensia" aimed at making the hitherto illegible parts of these important knew fragments legible by applying cutting-edge methods of digital recovering erased writings, at further deciphering and editing the text and at giving a linguistic, philological and historical commentary. Important progress and significant discoveries were made. The partial recovery of this masterpiece of ancient historiography is a great success story of modern scholarship and science, as it combines cutting-edge technical and scientific methods with traditional philological and historical approaches. The project has enriched our perception of this dramatic epoch of Roman history through many new facts and insights.