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Concept
Olympiodorus of Thebes
Summary
Olympiodorus of Thebes (Ὀλυμπιόδωρος ὁ Θηβαῖος; born c. 380, fl. c. 412–425 AD) was a Roman historian, poet, philosopher and diplomat of the early fifth century. He produced a History in twenty-two volumes, written in Greek, dedicated to the Emperor Theodosius II, detailing events in the Western Roman Empire between 407 and 425.
His friends included philosophers, provincial governors and rhetoricians. He made several journeys in an official capacity, accompanied for twenty years by a parrot. He was a "convinced but discreet" pagan,
who flourished in a Christian court, and whose work influenced several subsequent historians, including writers of ecclesiastical history.
Olympiodorus was born between 365 and 380 in Thebes (modern Luxor, Egypt), in the Roman province of Thebaïd, into a curial family. Thebes at that point was a flourishing centre of literary learning, and a cradle of politicians and public figures. He received a classical education, learning Greek and Latin, as well as the vernacular Coptic. This education provided access to a career in public life.
He went to study philosophy at Athens around 385-90, at about fifteen, and would have stayed there for four years. It was probably at Athens that he made friends with the sophist Leontius and the grammarian Philtatius, whose knowledge of the amount of glue to use in book-binding caused a statue of him to be erected at Athens. Another friend, Valerius, was governor of Thrace in 421, and may have been the son of Leontius and brother of the future Augusta Eudocia
After his studies, he seems to have returned to Thebes, where there was a thriving community of poets writing in Greek, and embarked on the poetry that came to define him. At this time, according to Treadgold, he may have married and adopted a son, possibly an orphaned relative. Around 399/400 he acquired a pet parrot, his faithful companion for the next twenty years, which spoke beautiful Greek and could “dance, sing, call its owner’s name, and do many other tricks” .
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