After learning about the 6th century orator, Procopius of Gaza, in my last post, I wanted to know a bit more about him. Unfortunately the details of his life are known to us only from his letters, and from the oration delivered at his funeral by his pupil and successor as head of the school of Gaza, Choricius.
I thought that it might be interesting to read that oration, but I couldn’t find a translation. Today I learned that apparently the orations of Choricius do exist in English, but only in an unpublished dissertation, Fotios K. Litsas, Choricius of Gaza: an Approach to his work, Diss. University of Chicago (1980). Unfortunately this does not seem to be online, although no doubt it is in the ProQuest commercial database.
So I did what any of us might do, and grabbed the Italian translation by A. Corcella1 and ran it through automated tools and cleaned it up a bit. Since I did so, I thought that I would share the results.
- Choricius-oration-7-epitaph-for_procopius-of-gaza-2025-v0.1 (PDF)
- Choricius-oration-7-epitaph-for_procopius-of-gaza-2025-v0.1 (.docx)
I make no claim of copyright on this, of course.
Sadly the oration is not all that interesting. It was written perhaps around 536. But laced as it is with references to classical literature and anecdotes from it, it could be about anybody. There are a few snippets on the man himself, but you get no picture of him beyond commonplaces. The most interesting part of the funeral oration is at the end where, remarkably, Choricius turns it into a panegryic to the bishop of Gaza who is present!
The other element of interest is the utter lack of reference to the collapsed western part of the empire, now completely gone for some fifty years. But it leaves no trace in the east.
- A. Corcella, in: E. Amato, Rose di Gaza: Gli scritti retorico-sofistici e le Epistole di Procopio di Gaza, (2010) pp.507-527.[↩]
Ive been considering translating one of his commentaries (catenae), perhaps Genesis, after I finish Oecumenius’ commentaries.
Nice idea! See how you feel.
Hi Roger,
In 2009 Cambridge University Press released a collection of the Declamations of Choricius translated into English. They are your typical rhetorical exercises from the Second Sophistic. Most are imaginary speeches in the persona of mythological or ancient characters. Very little has any reference to Christianity. But remember, Choricius was a Rhetor not a preacher.
https://www.cambridge.org/in/universitypress/subjects/classical-studies/classical-literature/rhetorical-exercises-late-antiquity-translation-choricius-gazas-ipreliminary-talksi-and-ideclamationsi
Thank you for this. I have access to it, but it does not seem to include the funerary oration. But very useful to have!
No, the collection does not include the funeral oration for Procopius or the encomia for bishop Marcian.
Here is a list of the translations
https://pinakes.irht.cnrs.fr/notices/bibliographie/U77PINJN/
My favourite is Declamation 4, where Choricius imagines what speech Miltiades would have given to the Athenian troops right before the battle of Marathon.
Ah thank you, that’s a great list! I’d not seen it. Yes the funerary oration is oration 7, F.-R. VIII.