page_title: The Vision of Dorotheus
section_title: Authorship
hierarchical_section_title: The Vision of Dorotheus / Authorship
caption_attribution_description: English: Page of the papyrus of the Vision of Dorotheos, a c. 5th-century Greek poem, final three lines. Part of the Bodmer Papyri, specifically the Codex of Visions. Contains the identification of the authorː "τέλος τἦς ὁράσεως // Δωροθέ Κυΐντου ποιητοῠ"
context_page_description: The Vision of Dorotheus or Dorotheos is an autobiographical Homeric Greek poem, composed in 343 lines of dactylic hexameter and attributed to "Dorotheus, son of Quintus the Poet". The poem chronicles a vision, wherein the author is transported to the Kingdom of Heaven and finds himself in its military hierarchy. He is conscripted into and deserts his post, only to receive punishment, be forgiven, and rediscover his Christian faith. The poem, penned sometime in the 4th-century, depicts the Kingdom of Heaven in an Imperial fashion; Christ is enthroned as emperor, surrounded by angels bearing Roman military and official titles, with the military structures of the Kingdom of Heaven modelled on those of Rome.
  The Vision of Dorotheus survives as one of the earliest examples of Christian hexametric poetry.
context_section_description: On the final page of the transcript of the work, after a brief credal affirmation of "Jesus is God" ("ἸΘ", abbreviating "Ἰησοῦς Θεòς"), the author is identified with the postscript: "τέλος τἦς ὁράσεως // Δωροθέου Κυΐντου ποιητοῦ". Kessels & Van Der Horst (1987) translate this as "End of the vision // of Dorotheus, son of Quintus the poet". This name is identified again in the text, in line 300 where he is identified as "Dorotheus, son of Quintus" by those in Christ's court. There is some ambiguity as to these translations, as the original Greek in the postscript does not use a patronymic for Quintus (therefore not disambiguating between "the poet Dorotheus Quintus" and "Dorotheus, son of Quintus the poet"). According to Kessels & Van Der Horst (1987) and James & Lee (2000) the earlier usage of a patronymic in line 300 establishes the latter translation. This has been contested by Livrea (1986) who argues this is only evidence of the copyist's misunderstanding of the patronymic, and further by Agosti & Gonnelli (1995) who claims that, by this period, the patronymic had lost its parental significance.
  Hurst, Reverdin & Rudhardt (1984) have interpreted the text autobiographically, suggesting Dorotheus was a Christian of the 4th-century with imperial connections who, during the Diocletianic Persecution of 303–313, attempted to suppress his own faith for fear of persecution. The vision, then, reminds Dorotheus of his baptism and promise to God, accepting his faith and becoming a Christian confessor. Similarly, through textual interpretation, Bremmer (2002) suggests that Dorotheus had some literary training, evidenced by his quotations of Homer, Hesiod, and Apollonius and use of some obscure Greek words, which are only found elsewhere in Hesychius of Alexandria's lexicon.
  This Dorotheus has been identified, by Hurst, Reverdin & Rudhardt (1984), with two Dorothei mentioned by Eusebius in his Historia Ecclesiastica. Firstly, an Antioch priest of the 290s who had knowledge of Hebrew and Greek with strong connections to the Emperor and his court (Hist. Eccl. VII, 32, 2–4). Secondly,  a Christian Dorotheus, who worked in the royal household and committed suicide after the Diocletianic Persecution (Hist. Eccl. VIII, 1, 4 & 6, 5). There is no concrete evidence to link these two Dorothei together, nor to link these Dorothei to the Dorotheus who is identified as the Vision's author, but it has been considered "a reasonable guess" by Kessels & Van Der Horst (1987), even if it is merely "conjectural".
  In identifying Dorotheus' father, "Quintus", Hurst, Reverdin & Rudhardt (1984), Kessels & Van Der Horst (1987) and James & Lee (2000) have suggested the Greek epic poet Quintus Smyrnaeus. There exists no other recorded poet Quintus during this period, and Quintus' poetry was well known and respected, so Dorotheus would have had motive to identify himself with him. The Homeric hexametric style of Dorotheus is identical to that used by Quintus in his Posthomerica. The dating of Quintus' life, though controversial, traditionally puts him from the mid-3rd to the early-4th-century, which would fit with the dating of the poem to the 4th century. This identification is troubled by the fact that Quintus was a Roman pagan, and that many of the metric mistakes made by Dorotheus are not present in the writings of Quintus. The "solid academic training" and "good Homeric culture" of Quintus, according to Vian (1985), apparently did not pass down to the "superficial" and "shameless" Dorotheus. Agosti & Gonnelli (1995) have gone further, to scrutinize the parallels between the text of the Vision and Quintus' Posthomerica, claiming only two similarities in the texts which they take as evidence against a close relationship between the two authors. This claim has been criticised by James & Lee (2000), asserting that Dorotheus' declaration of poetic inspiration (340-1) bears much resemblance to that of Quintus in Posthomerica 12.308.
  In the Barcelona Papyrus (Also known as the P.Monts.Roca inv. 149), a papyrus codex with texts in Greek and Latin, there are tw
caption: The Vision's postscript, a Greek creed followed by the identification of the author, "Δωροθέου Κυΐντου ποιητοῦ".
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