Paeanius
In the letters of Libanius, a prominent orator and teacher of rhetoric in the 4th century, Paeanius is mentioned several times (in the Attic form Paionios, Ancient Greek: Παιώνιος).
Otto Seeck, a historian specialising in late antiquity and an expert on Libanius's letters, has suggested that Eutropius may himself have asked Paeanius to translate the Breviarium into Greek.
[11] Additionally, the historian Joseph Geiger has linked both Eutropius and Paeanius with the Greco-Latin community of Caesarea Maritima and suggested a common origin for both.
The last extant piece of biographical information is the year when he wrote his translation of Eutropius's Breviarium, which can be inferred from the work itself: In book 9, chapter 24, where Eutropius mentions the Persian king Narseh, Paeanius adds an explanatory note: πάππος δὲ ἦν οὗτος Σάπωρί τε καὶ Ὁρμίσδῃ τοῖς εἰς τὴν ἡμετέραν ἡλικίαν ἀφικομένοις.
Paeanius retained Eutropius's partition of the work into ten small "books",[15] with the first six narrating events from the Roman Republic and the last four covering the Principate and Dominate periods.
Paeanius produced a generally faithful translation, turning Eutropius's succinct Roman prose into elegant, graceful Atticising style.
However, he occasionally made mistakes due to misunderstanding the Latin, not being aware of the historical background or misreading number signs or proper names.
He also famously added explanations for various Roman terms (such as senator, dictatura, legion, miliarium, imperator) or locations (the Alps, Aquileia) in order to make the work more accessible to a Greek-speaking audience.
[18] Sozomen in his Ecclesiastical history (written around the same time and considered to be largely dependent on Socrates) in two places adds information originating from Eutropius whom he must have used in Paeanius's translation.
As the numerous Eutropian passages in John of Antioch's Chronological history (written in the 6th or 7th century) bear no resemblance with Paeanius, they are generally assumed to stem from Capito.
[22] During the Renaissance of the 15th century, when Western Europe rediscovered Greek learning, Paeanius's translation was brought to Italy by two eminent scholars.
A notable example is Johann Friedrich Salomon Kaltwasser's 1780 edition of Paeanius which features an elaborate introduction, explanatory notes and a copious index of Greek words and their Latin equivalents.
In a groundbreaking 1870 essay, Ernst Schulze suggested identifying Paeanius with the individual known from Libanius's letters, characterised his translation and reported on two manuscripts that had a text superior to that of Sylburg.
[13] This incited Mommsen to inquire about the manuscripts and direct his pupil Hans Droysen to publish Paeanius as part of his editio maior of Eutropius for the Monumenta Germaniae Historica which appeared in 1879.
[iii] Later editors followed suit, a good example being Hans Droysen's judgement in the preface to his 1879 edition: Paeanii versionis ab homine Graeco neque linguae Latinae admodum perito factae in usum Graecorum haec est indoles, ut Eutropii textum in universum non ad verbum vertat sed in brevius contrahat.Paeanius's translation (which was made for the Greeks' use by a Greek with a questionable command of Latin) is devised in such a way that he for the most part does not translate Eutropius's text word-by-word but rather contracts it into a shorter version.
