![]() ![]() This conflict, I argue, is at the heart of Socrates’ and Sozomen’s changes to the original report on the revolt of Mavia. In this paper, I aim to show that these deviations do in fact matter because they hint at a hitherto unnoticed conflict over primacy between the ideals of dogmatic purity and public safety. Deviations in their respective narratives have therefore never been ascribed any greater significance. The use of Rufinus as a common source has led to the assumption that Socrates and Sozomen represent a monolithic picture of the events surrounding Mavia. ![]() Building on the account of their predecessor, the fourth-century historian Rufinus, Socrates and Sozomen offer the only extant narrative sources for the relationship between Rome and its tribal neighbours on its Eastern border. This has also been the case with their accounts of the Saracen warrior-queen Mavia who laid waste to the Roman Near East in the late 370s. Considering both church historians to be nothing more than naive compilers of sources, scholarship has long refused to accept Socrates or Sozomen as authors in their own right. ![]() Penning their Ecclesiastical Histories in the mid-fifth century A.D., the church historians Socrates of Constantinople and Sozomen of Gaza are ‘gatekeepers’ to our understanding of the religious conflicts dominating the period between the first Christian emperor Constantine and Theodosius II. ![]()
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