The Appearance of the Term “Bagauda”: New Considerations on the Hypothesis for Inclusion in Kaisergeschichte and in the Eusebius of Caesarea’s Χρονικοὶ Κανόνες

Abstract

There is a historiographical consensus when we attribute without questioning the first record of the term “bagauda” to Aurelius Victor. By 358-360, the Afro-Roman author used in De Caesaribus the indigenous name that was received by the troop led by Aelianus and Amandus in 285. However, the most recent Quellenforschung tends to consider that an earlier record could have been written in the unconserved KG. We know that Saint Jerome translated, reworked and published the preceding chronicle of Eusebius of Caesarea in the last decades of the fourth century, where the same word also appears. If Jerome did not copy Eusebius' chronological tables without additions, we should consider both his own inclusion based on other sources and the possible insertion of the concept that concerns us already in the work of the Bishop of Caesarea. Thus, the present paper is constituted with the objective of refuting this last hypothesis.