Olympiodorus of Thebes

Who is Olympiodorus of Thebes?

Olympiodorus was an historical writer of classical education, a "poet by profession" as he says of himself, who was born at Thebes in Egypt, and was sent on a mission to the Huns on the Black Sea by Emperor Honorius about 412, and later lived at the court of Theodosius II, to whom his History was dedicated. The record of his diplomatic mission survives in a fragment among the forty-six in the epitome by the patriarch Photius, who considered Olympiodorus a "pagan", doubtless for his classical education:

He was the author of a history in twenty-two books of the Western Empire from 407 to 425, which was used by Zosimus and Sozomen and probably Philostorgius, as J.F. Matthews has demonstrated. The original is lost, but an abstract is given by Photius, who also tells us Olympiodorus referred to himself as poietes, which means 'poet', though in the past this has also been taken as an indication that he may have been an alchemist.

From fragments of his History, it can be inferred that he spent a sojourn in Athens, traveled to the remote parts of Upper Egypt among the barbarian Blemmyes, and that he visited Rome towards the end of his career.