Research

Scythica Vindobonensia

The Scythica Vindobonensia, the new fragments on Gothic incursions into Roman provinces in the Balkans in the middle of the third century AD, are among the most important new additions to the Corpus of texts from classical antiquity. Coming most probably from the Scythica of the third-century historian Dexippus of Athens, the fragments have survived in the Codex Historicus gr. 73 of the Austrian National Library in Vienna as the lower text of four palimpsest folios (192r–195v). For the discovery see Grusková, Untersuchungen, 2010, 51–53, for a preliminary transcription of the text on fols. 192v, 193r, 194rv, and 195rv (that resulted from the research carried out by Jana Grusková and Gunther Martin in 2012-2015 under the project "Important textual witnesses in Vienna Greek palimpsests") see the articles by Martin and Grusková listed below.

For further information see the homepage:https://www.oeaw.ac.at/scythica-vindobonensia/

This project - a cooperation of the ÖAW and the University of Vienna - aims at revealing, editing and examining these new historiographical and historical fragments, thus providing a solid textual basis and a point of reference for a wide range of further studies. The palaeography, codicology and book history of the manuscript are also being analysed. Jana Grusková and Gunther Martin are further deciphering the fragments. The main output of the project will be a monograph that will contain a critical edition, a full commentary on the text, as well as extended studies on particular issues (authorship etc.), and images of the Vienna palimpsest. New spectral imaging and X-ray fluorescence imaging are being used to recover still hidden parts of the erased text. Extended studies on selected historical, prosopographical, epigraphical and geographical aspects have been prepared by Fritz Mitthof.

Based on an international conference "Empire in crisis: Gothic invasions and Roman historiography" was organized as part of the FWF Project P 28112-G25 Scythica Vindobonensia on 3 to 6 May 2017 in Vienna, a volume "Empire in crisis: Gothic invasions and Roman historiography" was published in 2020. It unites a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary contributions on invasions of Goths and other Germanic tribes into the Roman Empire, focusing primarily on the third century CE. The contributions explore the Scythica Vindobonensia alias Dexippus Vindobonensis in their historical and historiographical contexts, from the Roman to the Byzantine Era, and the history of the invasions themselves.

Project team

Cooperation

Publications on the Scythica Vindobonensia

A critical edition (editio princeps) of the Vienna fragments of Dexippus is being prepared by Gunther Martin and Jana Grusková. A preliminary transcription of six pages of the palimpsest has been published by the two editors in the following articles:


Publication on the discovery

Publications on the Scythica Vindobonensia (in chronological order)

Links