Vindonius Anatolius

Vindonius Anatolius Berytius[a] (Greek: Ανατόλιος ό Βηρύτιος), also known as Anatolius of Berytus,[1] was a Phoenician[2] author of the 4th century in Lebanon. He may be identical with the praetorian prefect of Illyricum mentioned by Ammianus Marcellinus.

He was the author of a "collection of agricultural practices" based on numerous earlier authors including Julius Africanus, pseudo-Democritus, pseudo-Apuleius, the Quinctilii, Florentinus and Tarentinus. Except for a few fragments, the work of Vindonius is lost. Evidence of its contents includes:

  • It was the major source of the 6th-century work of Cassianus Bassus' Eclogae de re rustica, which is also lost but was excerpted in the Geoponica, a surviving 10th-century text.
  • Photius included a notice of Vindonius's work in his Bibliotheca (codex 163).
  • A Syriac translation was made in the 6th or 7th century, and Arabic and Armenian translations were made from this in the 9th and 10th centuries.
  • One page of the original work survives in Bibliothèque Nationale MS B.N.Gr. 2313 f. 49v.


Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).

  1. ^ Bradbury, Scott (April 2000). "A Sophistic Prefect: Anatolius of Berytus in the Letters of Libanius". Classical Philology. 95 (2): 172–186. doi:10.1086/449484. JSTOR 270456.
  2. ^ Filipczak, Paweł (2020). "Roman governors of Syria in Late Antiquity. Problems and perspectives of prosopographic research". Hawliyāt: A Journal of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences University of Balamand (19): 17–32. Libanius wrote that Anatolius, a native of Phoenicia, also had spent some time "among us", i.e. in Antioch.