The Breviarium ab Urbe Condita

"The Breviarium ab Urbe Condita" of Eutropius, the Right Honourable Secretary of State for General Petitions. Dedicated to Lord Valens, Gothicus Maximus & Perpetual Emperor. Translated with an introduction and commentary by H. W. Bird. The first full-scale translation and commentary on Eutropius, whose "Breviarium" ("Abbreviated History of Rome") was a major vehicle for transmitting knowledge of Roman history to people of the Middle Ages and beyond. "This book is primarily intended for students of the late empire who have little Latin and less Greek and no reading knowledge of German or Italian. Accordingly I have elected to use the Loeb editions of Livy and Dio and restrict the secondary material in general to books and articles in English. Nevertheless, in order to accommodate scholars and simultaneously to introduce students to the whole panorama of Roman history, as Eutropius intended, I have added reasonably detailed notes to the introduction and a fairly comprehensive commentary to the translation. Eutropius' "Breviarium" was used for fifteen hundred years as a basic survey of over eleven centuries of Roman history. In spite of its omissions and errors it served its purpose well. I have attempted to fill in the omissions and correct the errors as much as possible, and to give an impression of the author and the times in which he wrote. It will quickly become apparent to readers that Eutropius did no research but rather followed two or three circumscribed sources, the main ones being an Epitome of Livy and a lost series of imperial biographies nowadays called Enmann's "Kaisergeschichte". Most but not all of Eutropius' omissions and errors are attributable to them. Those which I have committed are my own. ("Preface").