Excerpta et fragmenta

Best known for his longest excerptum about Attila and the Huns, Priscus Panita survives mostly in Excerpta Constantiniana de legationibus. He describes with an impressive amount of details a Byzantine embassy and the secret plot to kill Attila in 448/449 A.D., when Priscus himself was involved in a scary situation. He also investigates Theodosius II's age around other borders, such as Caucasus and Aegypt.After a new collation and full reconsideration of all manuscripts, this critical edition provides a complete demonstration of the stemma codicum and an accurate apparatus, both philological desiderata for long. The text is plain and fluent, a good example of V century A.D. rhetorical prose, with a wide range of loci similes in classic authors and a special skill for variatio. From a historical point of view, some nations from Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa find in Priscus a unique source for their roots.

Pia Carolla, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italien.