Podcast episode

July 24, 2024

Episode 190: Edward Watts on the Age of Justinian and the Closing of the Athenian Academy

[Corrigendum: We refer to Damascius’ commentary on Epictetus’ work on Stoic ethics, the so-called Handbook or Encheiridion; the work was of course by Damascius’ colleague Simplicius. Perfect, error-free presentation of a vast amount of late-antique history, literature, and thought is like the Stoic sage: vanishingly rare.]

We are delighted to speak with Edward Watts, a wide-ranging historical mind with a specialism in the society and educational institutions of late antiquity. We start with the basic life and times of Justinian (r. 527-565 CE), and his revolutionary project of radically remaking the Roman polity at every level. The ‘re-founding’ of Rome that Julian attempted? Well, Justinian really did it, though the results may not please listeners like a successful Julianic re-founding would have done. We discuss Justinian’s totalising legal reform, his massive military campaigns (which successfully retook parts of the western empire with more or less lasting results), his unprecedented building-programmes, his religious policies, and more.

We then turn to the Christological controversies of the sixth century, giving a basic rundown of the Council of Chalcedon and the ensuing politico-religious mess known by the general name of the ‘monophysite controversy’; this provides essential background to important esoteric currents soon to be discussed in the podcast, including the Pseudo-Dionysius and the Book of the Holy Hierotheos.

We then turn to the closing of the Athenian academy, last bastion of militantly-polytheist Platonism, and the Sassanian denouement of that episode.

Interview Bio:

Edward Watts is Professor of History at UC San Diego. He has published widely on politics, religion, and higher education in late antiquity and beyond.

Works Cited in this Episode:

Primary:

Agathias: Justinian’s laws make it impossible for the philosophers to live in the Roman empire: Histories II.30.3-4 Frendo: ‘Not long before Damascius of Syria, Simplicius of Cilicia, Eulamius of Phrygia, Priscian of Lydia, Hermes and Diogenes of Phoenicia and Isidore of Gaza, all of them, to use a poetic turn of phrase, the quintessential flower of the philosophers of our age, had come to the conclusion, since the official religion of the Roman empire was nor to their liking, that the Persian state was much superior. So they gave a ready hearing to the stories in general circulation according to which Persia was the land of “Plato’s philosopher king” in which justice reigned supreme …. 4 Elated therefore by these reports which they accepted as true, and also because they were forbidden by law to take part in public life with impunity owing to the tact that they did not conform to the established religion, they left immediately and set off for a strange land whose ways were completely foreign to their own, determined to make their homes there.’ On Justinian’s laws as relevant to the closure of the Athenian school, see Edward Watts. Justinian, Malalas, and the End of Athenian Philosophical Teaching in A.D. 529. The Journal of Roman Studies, 94:168–82, 2004.

Malalas’ Chronographia on the closing of the Athenian school: 18.47. See Hans Thurn, editor. Ioannis Malalæ chronographia. Number 35 in Corpus Fontium Historiæ Byzantinæ. De Gruyter, Berlin/New York, NY, 2000.

Proclus fund-raising: Marinus VP 16.

On the Kom al-Dikka complex, a good primer is Tomasz Derda, Tomasz Markiewicz, and Ewa Wipszycka, editors. Alexandria: Auditoria of Kom el-Dikka and Late Antique Education. Warsaw, 2007.

Secondary:

W. H. C. Frend. The Rise of the Monophysite Movement. The University Press, Cambridge, 1972.

Recommended Reading:

SHWEP Episode 190 Recommended Reading

A chart of the Athenian and Alexandrian schools in late antiquity.

Themes

Christianity, Damascius, Divination, East Rome, Interview, Justinian, Late Platonism, Monophysitism, Orthodoxy, Proclus, Rome, Simplicius, Theurgy