Zosimus, after recording the foundation and immense growth of Constantinople, introduces a digression directed towards his purpose of justifying paganism against Christianity. ‘It has often indeed occurred to me to wonder how, when the city of the Byzantines has grown, so that no other can compare with it for prosperity and size, there was no prophecy delivered from the gods of our predecessors about its development to a better fortune. With this thought in mind I have turned over many volumes of histories and collections of oracles, and with difficulty I happened upon one oracle said to be of the Sibyl of Erythrae or of Phaennis of Epirus. (For she is said to have produced oracles when in a state of possession.) Nicomedes, the son of Prusias, put his confidence in this oracle, and interpreting it in an advantageous sense he took up war against his father, Prusias, at the persuasion of Attalus.’ Zosimus proceeds to quote twenty-one lines of hexameter verse, which have come down in a rather corrupt state, but of which the general sense is reasonably clear. They consist mainly of an obvious post eventum forecast of the Gallic invasion of Asia Minor in the third century B.C.

Zosimus is speaking in this passage of the activities of Alaric in Aemilia as he tried to win Italian support for his puppet emperor, Priscus Attalus. ‘The other cities he won over with no trouble; but Bologna he besieged, and when it held out for many days and he was unable to take it, he went to the Ligurians, forcing them, too, to accept Attalus as emperor.

C.Q. n.s. 31 (1981), 468 line 12 should read ‘the surviving portion covering his own lifetime, in the lost books he was subject to’; line 16 should have ‘Confidence’.