mountainman

The following assessment was made in 1912.

From the Translator's Preface:

Is anyone aware of more recent commentary
on the dating of WHEN this work was written
by Eusebius?


Best wishes,



Pete Brown

PhilosopherJay

Hi Pete,

T.D. Barnes placed it before 303 in an article he wrote in 1976
Sossianus Hierocles and the Antecedents of the "Great Persecution"
T. D. Barnes, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 80. (1976), pp. 239-252.

He later decided that the work was not by Eusebius of Caesarea after all.
In 2001, in a review of another's writer's work on Eusebius, he wrote:

Tomas Hagg has argued (and in my opinion proved) that the author of Against Hierocles was not Eusebius of Caesarea, but another Eusebius, probably a sophist writing in Pontus (Hagg 1992; cf. Barnes 1994b: 60, n. 35).1° Anyone who still believes that Against Hierocles was written by Eusebius of Caesarea has an obligation to explain why Hagg is wrong and to account for the great dissimilarities between Eusebius' genuine writings and the Against Hierocles, which (1) lacks the chapter-titles that Eusebius normally employed (Barnes 1976b: 418-420), (2) does not use quotations in Eusebius' habitual fashion, (3) appears to be of a different intellectual calibre from Eusebius' other works-although opinions differ over whether the work shows that Eusebius was "occasionally . . . able to do better than he normally did (Perrone 1996: 520-521) or that he "had not yet developed adequate skills in grappling with philosophical and theological issues" (Kofsky 2000: 70, n. 170), and (4), alone of the many and varied works attributed to Eusebius, obeys some of the stylistic dictates of the so-called Second Sophistic movement (Forrat in des Places and Forrat 1986: 78-79; Perrone 1996: 521; cf. Kertsch 1980).

from Review: Monotheists All? Reviewed Work(s):
Apologetics in the Roman Empire: Pagans, Jews, and Christians (or via: amazon.co.uk) by M. Edwards; M. Goodman; S. Price; C. Rowland
Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity (or via: amazon.co.uk) by P. Athanassiadi; M. Frede
T. D. Barnes
Phoenix, Vol. 55, No. 1/2. (Spring - Summer, 2001), pp. 142-162.

I hope this is helpful.

Sincerely

Jay Raskin

mountainman

Hi Jay,

Thanks for this update - it is certainly helpful.

T.D.Barnes is an interesting author. He argues for the
severe enforcement of the prohibition of non-
christian sacrifice in the empire -- with effect
from Constantine's military supremacy c.324 CE.

I have not heard of this theory before about yet
another Eusebius as athe author to this work.

We know there were a few Eusebius' about in late
antiquity, but how many called themselves the son
of Pamphilus?

Do you hapen to know if either author makes an
explanation of this implied coincidence this 2nd
Eusebius - also a son of Pamphilus?

Thanks and best wishes,


Pete Brown