Henning Börm
I hold the Chair of Ancient History at the University of Rostock, Germany.
I studied History and Literary Studies at the University of Kiel, Germany. My 2006 doctoral thesis „Prokop und die Perser“ („Procopius and the Persians“) was published in 2007; it deals with Procopius of Caesarea, the last major ancient historian, and with Roman-Sasanian relations in Late Antiquity. Moreover, I have published a textbook on the final decades of the Western Roman Empire, called "Westrom. Von Honorius bis Justinian" (Stuttgart 2013; 2nd ed. 2018), while my habilitation thesis, that was completed in 2017 and published in 2019, focuses on civil strife ("stasis") in Greek cities during the Hellenistic Era. I have taught Ancient History at universities in Kiel, Münster, Konstanz, Tübingen, Berlin and Innsbruck. From 2020 to 2022 I was professor of Ancient History at Bochum University.
I have edited a volume on „Antimonarchic Discourse in Antiquity“ (Stuttgart 2015) and co-edited „Commutatio et contentio. Studies in the Late Roman, Sasanian, and Early Islamic Near East“ (Düsseldorf 2010, with Josef Wiesehöfer) , „Civil War in Ancient Greece and Rome. Contexts of Disintegration and Reintegration“ (Stuttgart 2016, with Johannes Wienand), „Diwan. Studies in the History and Culture of the Ancient Near East and the Eastern Mediterranean“ (Duisburg 2016, with Andreas Luther), „The Polis in the Hellenistic World“ (Stuttgart 2018, with Nino Luraghi), and „A Culture of Civil War? Bellum civile in Late Republican Rome“ (Stuttgart 2023, with Wolfgang Havener und Ulrich Gotter), while preparing three more edited volumes, one on „Ancient Cultures of Civil War: Polarization, Conflict, and Reconciliation“ (with Carsten Hjort Lange and Johannes Wienand), the other on „A Companion to the Sasanian Empire“ (with Josef Wiesehöfer), the third "Brill's Companion to the Late Roman Emperor" (with Filippo Carlà-Uhink and Christian Rollinger).
Supervisors: Josef Wiesehöfer (Kiel) and Peter Weiß (Kiel)
Address: Lehrstuhl für Alte Geschichte
Heinrich-Schliemann-Institut
Universität Rostock
D-18051 Rostock
Germany
I studied History and Literary Studies at the University of Kiel, Germany. My 2006 doctoral thesis „Prokop und die Perser“ („Procopius and the Persians“) was published in 2007; it deals with Procopius of Caesarea, the last major ancient historian, and with Roman-Sasanian relations in Late Antiquity. Moreover, I have published a textbook on the final decades of the Western Roman Empire, called "Westrom. Von Honorius bis Justinian" (Stuttgart 2013; 2nd ed. 2018), while my habilitation thesis, that was completed in 2017 and published in 2019, focuses on civil strife ("stasis") in Greek cities during the Hellenistic Era. I have taught Ancient History at universities in Kiel, Münster, Konstanz, Tübingen, Berlin and Innsbruck. From 2020 to 2022 I was professor of Ancient History at Bochum University.
I have edited a volume on „Antimonarchic Discourse in Antiquity“ (Stuttgart 2015) and co-edited „Commutatio et contentio. Studies in the Late Roman, Sasanian, and Early Islamic Near East“ (Düsseldorf 2010, with Josef Wiesehöfer) , „Civil War in Ancient Greece and Rome. Contexts of Disintegration and Reintegration“ (Stuttgart 2016, with Johannes Wienand), „Diwan. Studies in the History and Culture of the Ancient Near East and the Eastern Mediterranean“ (Duisburg 2016, with Andreas Luther), „The Polis in the Hellenistic World“ (Stuttgart 2018, with Nino Luraghi), and „A Culture of Civil War? Bellum civile in Late Republican Rome“ (Stuttgart 2023, with Wolfgang Havener und Ulrich Gotter), while preparing three more edited volumes, one on „Ancient Cultures of Civil War: Polarization, Conflict, and Reconciliation“ (with Carsten Hjort Lange and Johannes Wienand), the other on „A Companion to the Sasanian Empire“ (with Josef Wiesehöfer), the third "Brill's Companion to the Late Roman Emperor" (with Filippo Carlà-Uhink and Christian Rollinger).
Supervisors: Josef Wiesehöfer (Kiel) and Peter Weiß (Kiel)
Address: Lehrstuhl für Alte Geschichte
Heinrich-Schliemann-Institut
Universität Rostock
D-18051 Rostock
Germany
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Monographs by Henning Börm
This study focuses, besides Procopius’ report of political and cultural contacts and military conflicts between the two great powers of Late Antiquity, mainly on his descriptions of Persia and the Persians: What was known in the Later Roman Empire about these Eastern neighbors, and which factors influenced Procopius’ descriptions?
Papers by Henning Börm
peace of the empire. This paper focuses on two cases in which men violently seized
power during civil wars, examining which strategies were used to justify the breach of peace. The first case comes from 293 CE, when the Sasanian prince Narseh rebelled against his great-nephew Bahrām III; after his victory, he erected a monument in Pāikūlī with an inscription in which he presented himself as a champion of the aristocracy who had led the resistance against an unlawful king. Only after the defeat of his opponents did Narseh raise his own claim to the throne. The second example analyzed is the case of Bahrām Čōbīn, who did not belong to the royal family
and rebelled in 589 CE against King Hormizd IV. Roman historians, such as Theophylact Simocatta, and later Perso-Arabian authors show that Bahrām initially tried to avoid the impression of being a usurper. Only after his temporary victory and the flight of Hormizd‘s son Chusro II to the Roman Empire did Bahrām venture to be crowned king himself. Unlike Narseh, however, he ultimately failed, as Chusro was able to defeat his enemies in another civil war with the support of the Roman emperor
Maurice. Both Narseh and Bahrām Čōbīn did not proclaim themselves king until it appeared that they had defeated their rival; presenting oneself as a candidate of the entire nobility, and not just as a candidate of a party, seems to have been an important factor for gaining legitimacy and facilitating the reintegration of the ruling elite.
This study focuses, besides Procopius’ report of political and cultural contacts and military conflicts between the two great powers of Late Antiquity, mainly on his descriptions of Persia and the Persians: What was known in the Later Roman Empire about these Eastern neighbors, and which factors influenced Procopius’ descriptions?
peace of the empire. This paper focuses on two cases in which men violently seized
power during civil wars, examining which strategies were used to justify the breach of peace. The first case comes from 293 CE, when the Sasanian prince Narseh rebelled against his great-nephew Bahrām III; after his victory, he erected a monument in Pāikūlī with an inscription in which he presented himself as a champion of the aristocracy who had led the resistance against an unlawful king. Only after the defeat of his opponents did Narseh raise his own claim to the throne. The second example analyzed is the case of Bahrām Čōbīn, who did not belong to the royal family
and rebelled in 589 CE against King Hormizd IV. Roman historians, such as Theophylact Simocatta, and later Perso-Arabian authors show that Bahrām initially tried to avoid the impression of being a usurper. Only after his temporary victory and the flight of Hormizd‘s son Chusro II to the Roman Empire did Bahrām venture to be crowned king himself. Unlike Narseh, however, he ultimately failed, as Chusro was able to defeat his enemies in another civil war with the support of the Roman emperor
Maurice. Both Narseh and Bahrām Čōbīn did not proclaim themselves king until it appeared that they had defeated their rival; presenting oneself as a candidate of the entire nobility, and not just as a candidate of a party, seems to have been an important factor for gaining legitimacy and facilitating the reintegration of the ruling elite.
Book proposals can be sent either to the series editors Henning Börm (henning.boerm@uni-rostock.de), Carsten Hjort Lange (lange@dps.aau.dk), and Johannes Wienand, editor-in-chief (j.wienand@tu-braunschweig.de) or directly to De Gruyter (mirko.vonderstein@degruyter.com).
Historical writing about Rome in both Latin and Greek forms an integrated topic. There are two strands in ancient writing about the Romans and their empire: (a) the Romans’ own tradition of histories of the deeds of the Roman people at home and at war, and (b) Greek historical responses, some developing their own models (Polybius, Josephus) and the others building on what both the Roman historians and earlier Greeks had written (Dionysius, Appian, Cassius Dio). Whereas older scholarship tended to privilege a small group of ‘great historians’ (the likes of Sallust, Livy, Tacitus), recent work has rightly brought out the diversity of the traditions and recognized that even ‘minor’ writers are worth exploring not just as sources, but for their own concerns and reinterpretation of their material (such as The Fragments of the Roman Historians (2013), and the collected volumes on Velleius Paterculus (Cowan 2011) and Appian (Welch 2015)). The study of these historiographical traditions is essential as a counterbalance to the traditional use of ancient authors as a handy resource, with scholars looking at isolated sections of their structure. This fragmentary use of the ancient evidence makes us forget to reflect on their work in its textual and contextual entirety.