knowledge of affairs since 407; his observations on the coastline of Italy; the citing of facts and statistics that would have been available in the city archives at Rome; and his amazement at the actual grandeur of Rome and the wealth of its aristocracy. One hexameter, presumably his own, appears in the description of the residences of the wealthy on his visit to Rome, which contained hippodromes, fountains, shrines, and many of the other attributes of a town: “One house is a town; a city has ten thousand towns” (Εΐς δόμος ά συ πέλει πόλις ά οτεα μυρία κεύθει) Writing The history itself is now lost, but many of its structures and features can be established from the works of other writers. Its twenty-two books were organised into two decads. The first started with an account of Stilicho’s career from 395, with the history proper beginning in 407, and ended (in Book X) with the voyage to the Huns in 412. The second decad began with events in Gaul that can be dated to the same year (412), and ended with the expedition to Rome for Valentinian's installation in 425. The history dealt almost exclusively with the Western Empire, and provides much of what we know of its affairs in the early fifth century (particularly around 410 when Rome fell to the Visigoths. Events in the east are only introduced when they impacted on affairs in the West, or were relevant to Olympiodorus himself. He describes eastern affairs in western terms: Theodosius II is the "nephew of Honorius and Placidia" (the western Emperor and his sister), as well as the son of Arcadius (the eastern Emperor). He provides detailed chronologies, using consular dating: the usurpation of Constantine III, in 406, is given as “before the seventh consulship of Honorius and the second of Theodosius”, and the whole history covers the period from the seventh consulship of Honorius to the accession of Valentinian III. We are told that the marriage of Placidia and the Goth Ataulf occurred in the month of January, and her marriage to Constantius III was in the eleventh consulship of Honorius and the second of Constantius. Though written in Greek, the work included many Latinisms, including inscriptions and acclamations in the Roman alphabet: eg. the response to Stilicho’s request to the Senate for the money to pay off Alaric I: ("This is not a peace, but a