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Around 200AD, Marcus Junianus Justinus produced an abridged or 'epitomized' version of the Philippic Histories of the Augustan historian Pompeius Trogus. In doing so, he omitted all he did not find either intrinsically interesting or of use for historical examples. Over the centuries that followed, the abridgement eclipsed the original work in popularity, to the extent that Trogus' original work vanished and only Justin's version survived. In this investigation of the language of theEpitome, the first in almost a century, J.C. Yardley examines the work to establish how much of the text belongs to Trogus, and how much to Justin. His study compares words and expressions used in theEpitomewith the usage of other Roman authors, and establishes areas where diction is similar to Augustan-era Latin and less in use in Justin's time. Yardley's extensive analysis reveals that there is more of Justin in the work than is often supposed, which may have implications for the historical credibility of the document. Yardley also demonstrates how much Trogus was influenced by his contemporary Livy as well as other Roman authors such as Sallust and Caesar, and how theEpitomereveals the influence of Roman poetry, especially the work of Virgil.

In this article I am making what is, as far as I know, the first systematic analysis of Justin books 7, 8 and 9. The method is that which I employed in analysing the sources of Diodorus 16 in CQ 31 (1937), 79ff. and 32 (1938), 137ff. Previous scholars had looked for similarities between the fragments of ancient historians and details in the text of Diodorus, and they had taken any such similarity as proof of a particular source being followed. They had carried their method to extremes: A. Momigliano, for instance, had concluded that Diodorus changed his source 12 times within 23 chapters, and R. Laqueur 18 times within 4 chapters in book 16. My system was to define separable Groups of narrative on the basis of fullness, accuracy, military and political detail, and attitude to the general theme, and to see how far any one Group could be attributed to an ancient author. I begin, therefore, with separable Groups of narrative.

Kraus reviews Justin Pompeius Trogus: A Study of the Language of Justin's Epitome of Trogus by J. C. Yardley.