New evidence for the dating of Palladas and Eutolmius Scholasticus Illustris

Abstract

Kevin Wilkinson has identified clues in the text of epigrams by Palladas which in his view enable us to date this poet to the age of Constantine, earlier than had previously been assumed. He seeks to prove this new chronology with the help of a papyrus (P. Ct. YBR inv. 4000) which he attributes to Palladas. Scholars however have challenged the attribution of the papyrus and refuted Wilkinson’s new chronology for Palladas. More recently, Wilkinson tried to defend his hypothesis with the help of an epigram by Palladas (AP 6.85), which supposedly mentions a Roman military-administrative title (-πριλάριος) that was abolished at the start of the fourth century CE. The present article will propose a new interpretation for AP 6.85: departing from Wilkinson’s arguments about -πριλάριος, it will be demonstrated that Gordioprilarios is in fact the early fourth century military saint Gordius, mentioned for the first time in a homily (nr. 18) of 370-378 CE by St Basil, and that the Timothy of the epigram is the Alexandrian patriarch of ca. 381-385 CE. It may thus be inferred that Palladas was still alive after 370 CE. The article will also demonstrate that the AP-poet Eutolmius Scholasticus Illustris is in fact Flavius Eutolmius Tatianus.