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The Church Fathers · c. 628–638
The Histories
Theophylact Simocatta
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What it is
The reign of Maurice and the Balkan and Persian wars, written in prose so mannered that later Byzantines used it as a style exercise. It opens with a dialogue in which Philosophy introduces History, and contains the earliest Western notice of the Turks and of China.
Why it lasted
The last history in the classical tradition. Nothing comparable was written in Greek for two hundred years afterwards, which makes the gap after it as informative as the book.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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