Ausonius

A review of Callu's Symmachus

2011-09-14T08:32:00.005Z

From Classical Review 61, 634

Callu, J.-P. (ed., trans.) Symmaque, Tome V. Discours--Rapports. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2009.

With the publication of this fifth volume of his Budé edition, nearly 40 years after the first, Callu has achieved the first complete translation of Symmachus in any modern language. This is a very welcome milestone. It is also only the second critical edition, after Otto Seeck’s brilliant contribution to Monumenta Germaniae Historica in 1883, of Symmachus’ complete surviving work (ten books of letters, the Relationes, and the Orationes). To edit Symmachus requires not only philological skills but also intimate knowledge of fourth-century administrative history and prosopography. Callu, who has published widely on both philological and historical aspects of his author, certainly has these qualifications.

This volume contains the speeches (parts of three imperial panegyrics and five speeches given in the senate, which were uncovered in a fragmentary palimpsest by Angelo Mai in 1815) and the Relationes (letters written to the emperors as prefect of Rome in 384-5, mostly to Valentinian II in Milan, but some to Theodosius and Arcadius in Constantinople). His text does not diverge hugely from Seeck’s, but he avoids the obelus and prints sometimes quite bold conjectures: his own conjectures are all worthy of consideration, and some are extremely shrewd. Such parts of the translation as I have read are accurate and, as far as I could judge, stylish (but at Or. 4.10 impotentiam refers to Maximinus’ abuse of power not Gratian’s lack of it). His introductions to the two separate parts of the work display his erudition and convey all the relevant information, though they are some way from tractable; the arbitrary mixture of footnotes and endnotes is an unhelpful feature of the Budé series, but the content here is helpful and detailed. If Callu has the habit of occasionally treating his own hypotheses as fact (for example the idea that the elder Nicomachus Flavianus served in the east under Theodosius in the early 380s), he shares it with most other scholarship on his author: it is an indirect product of Symmachus’ maddening vagueness. With the Relationes, he is on well-covered ground, not least by the detailed commentary by Domenico Vera (Pisa, 1981); the Orationes have been less well trodden (though cf. Pabst’s 1989 text and translation). Here Callu rejects Seeck’s deletion of certain phrases as authorial variants, rightly seeing them as a feature of Symmachus’ luxuriant style. He redates the panegyric on Gratian to that emperor’s tenth birthday, 18 April 369, which is plausible; the first panegyric for Valentinian’s Quinquennalia he puts in February 368, rather than 369, which has a minor impact on reconstructions of Symmachus’ career. He may well be right (but note confusion on p. x, n. 1; note also erroneous dates on xxii, where “28 mai 364” should be “28 mars” and xli, where “13 janvier 383” should be “19 janvier”).

I have one significant reservation. The apparatus criticus for the Orationes is flawed in several ways. The situation is complicated by the fact that the MS readings have been destroyed by the acids used to reveal them and are no longer available to be consulted. Mai’s early transcriptions were thoroughly overhauled by Seeck in his great edition of 1883. Thus the names of Mai and Seeck can represent either conjectural emendation or, sometimes, alternative transcriptions of the MS: in the former cases the apparatus should offer an MS reading, in the latter it should not (whether including Mai’s much inferior transcriptions contributes anything may be questioned, but it was reasonable to note them). Unfortunately, in a few places, Callu confuses the two categories, and what is in fact the undisputed MS reading is attributed to Mai: I noticed Or. 1.2 frigentia, 1.18 optauit, 2.5 perueniret, 2.17 fraudamur, 3.7 uinces, 4.14 subripuisset, 4.15 defuit (emendations by Seeck or others are thus implied to be alternative transcriptions). At 2.17 inermitas is not Seeck’s conjecture but the MS reading. A further problem: at places where Callu has adopted Seeck’s or his own transpositions, it is not made clear where the transposed text originally stood in the MS (Or. 1.16. 2.11, 3.3, 3.5). Those interested in serious study of the text of the Orationes will need to use this edition in conjunction with Seeck’s. That said, this volume will be valued for a fine text, translation, and notes.

[Copyright, The Classical Association]

Eduard Norden on Rutilius Namatianus

2011-05-19T19:03:00.002Z

From E. Norden, Die römische Literatur, mit Anhang: Die lateinische Literatur im Übergang vom Altertum zum Mittelalter (sixth edition, 1961), 113-114.

In the year 408 the emperor Honorius permitted the execution of his First Minister and General, Stilicho, to whom he owed everything. Then the Visigoths, who no longer needed to tremble before this great military leader, broke into Italy and plundered Rome (410). The threatened catastrophe was deferred by Alaric’s death. Honorius gave Alaric’s successor Athaulf southern Gaul and northern Spain as a prize in order to save Italy. The Goths retreated pillaging to the land that had been delivered to them. The successor of Athaulf (died 415), Wallia, became the real founder of the Gothic state, based around Toulouse and in Spain, and joined in a loose federal relationship with the Roman empire. During these events there lived in Rome an aristocrat, Rutilius Namatianus, who deserves to be made known to a wider audience. He was from southern Gaul, but lived in Rome, where he held the highest offices of state; whether he was of the old belief or a Christian cannot be said with certainty, but his sentiments were notably patriotic. In autumn 416 he left Rome to look after his Gallic possessions, which were endangered by the aforementioned plundering of the Goths. When he had returned home, he described his journey in a long poem in elegiac metre. The fact that it has only survived incomplete must be considered a great loss, as it is an extremely important piece of writing in terms of cultural history, and also a notable achievement poetically. The language and metre are of a purity which even his contemporary Claudian did not reach, to say nothing of the Gallic poets of that time. Apart from the poet’s decided aptitude for portraying landscape and people vividly, what attracts us is his amiable, strongly personal manner. He lives and moves in the mighty memories of Rome. In his beautiful song in praise of the city, with which he opens his poem, he has the skill to enrich the rhetorical schema lyrically through personal touches, and thus transfers the warmth of his feeling to the reader; he promises the Regina mundi eternal life, even though she has been desecrated by the Goths. He shortens the wait at Ostia, from where he wanted to begin his northwards coastal journey, by gazing towards the distant city: Odysseus had yearned to recognize his home from rising smoke; he recognizes Rome from the brightness that hangs over the seven hills, since in Rome the sun had shined on him and there the day was clearer than elsewhere; with eyes not dry he bids farewell. The romantic tones of the modern traveller to Rome are heard in his verses, a brightness mixed with melancholy which contrasts refreshingly with the delusive belief with which the medieval pilgrim shyly wandered through the holy places following by a fantasy guide to Rome, the so-called book of mirabilia. Of high religious-historical interest are the attacks on Jews and monks, with whom he came into contact on his journey. The Jewish leaseholder of a villa (on the coast opposite Elba) where they had had to land, raised a huge complaint for the downtrodden grass in the park and begrudged them drinking water; so they then bombard him with curses; it is one of the most unrestrained expressions of anti-Semitism in antiquity since Juvenal, whom Roman aristocrats greatly enjoyed reading. The journey past a monastery (on a little island between Corsica and Elba) gives the poet occasion for an invective against the monks, the men who fled the light, who found joy in filth and misanthropy; that Christians too could thus abuse monasticism is elsewhere attest. There follows besides a second assault full of bitterness when he sails past another monastery. Through such passages the poet is able to draw in the reader and to raise his poem above the coincidental and personal. Earnest and full of feeling, this last poem stands on the grave of ancient culture.

Ammianus and the difference between chapter headings and text

2011-04-29T13:08:00.005Z

Texts of Ammianus' history are usually printed divided into chapters - between six and sixteen per book of 30 or so pages- each of which has a heading. Editors never tell you the status of these chapters -- but the divisions were made and the headings written in 1681 by Adrien de Valois (Hadrianus Valesius) for his revised version of his brother Henri de Valois' edition of 1636. Adrien intended them as epitomes at the beginning of each book, though more often than not they are printed at the start of each chapter. A couple of years back I published an article on these headings (Classical Philology 104 (2009), 233-242). One effect of them is to make Ammianus look more late antique and less classical, more like Eusebius and less like Tacitus, because many late antique texts have chapter headings, whether authentic or editorial, and classical texts don't. Another issue, since the texts were written by a learned scholar with a deep knowledge of the period, is that sometimes the headings reflect Adrien's reading or inference rather than Ammianus' text.

To give two examples of many: (1) the chapter heading at 30.10 says that the emperor Valentinian II was acclaimed at the town of Brigetio (Szöny in Hungary): this is an inference from Ammianus, who is unspecific, but in fact a contemporary text states that he was acclaimed emperor in Aquincum (Budapest). Plenty of scholars wrongly place Valentinian's elevation in Brigetio, following Adrien's chapter heading. (2) Or take the heading of 25.7, which calls the peace treaty of 363 by which the emperor Jovian ceded the city of Nisibis to Persia "very shameful but necessary." Adrien took his wording from another historian, Eutropius; but it is misleading since Ammianus thought the treaty shameful and unnecessary.

I have now found another case which I missed in my article, thanks to discussion with Dr Kyle Smith. When Nisibis (Nusaybin, on the modern Turkish/Syrian border) was surrendered to the Persians, the inhabitants were allowed to leave under the treaty. The heading of chapter 25. 9 includes the following: oppidani inviti patria excedere et Amidam migrare compulsi, "the townsfolk were compelled against their will to leave the homeland and move to Amida." But though Ammianus describes compulsion, the townsmen are not described as moving to Amida, (modern Diyarbakır) (25.9.6): exin variae complentur viae qua quisque poterat dilabentium, "then the various roads were filled with people slipping away wherever each was able to." It would make sense for people to move to Amida, which had been sacked by the Persians in 359 but which became a much more important centre in the following centuries; and Zosimus, whose account is close to Ammianus and who is presumably Adrien's source, tells us (3.34.1) that "most, indeed nearly all emigrated to Amida, a few settled in other cities."

Adrien's chapter heading here is not badly misleading; but if I had been asked I would have said that the citizens of Nisibis were resettled in Amida, and a closer look shows that the situation was not as simple or as orderly as that. Ammianus reinforces his pathetic picture of the refugees by not naming their destinations - indeed implying (see above) that they are going on various roads in different directions.

So men were appointed to drive them out, who threatened death if anyone postponed departure, and the walls were filled with wailing and laments, and through all parts of the city there was a single sound of everyone groaning, since the matron tore her hair on being driven out an exile from the home in which she had been born and brought up, and the mother bereft of her children or widowed from her husband was driven far from their graves, and a tearful throng embraced the doorposts of their houses or the thresholds and wept (25.9.5).

Rutilius' Return: Edward Gibbon's Journal

2011-03-06T20:43:00.003Z

19 December 1763

I read Claudii Rutilii Numantiani Iter, lib. i. v. 1-644; lib. ii. v. 1-68. This is all that remains of a work that contained two complete books. I read it in Burmann's Edition of the Poetae Latini Minores. Leyden, 1731; one of those Dutch editions, cum notis Variorum, in which the text only peeps out amidst a heavy mass of commentary. The 700 verses of Rutilius are spread over 200 quarto pages, crowded with the remarks of Simler, Castalio, Pithoeus, Sitzmanus, and Barthius. Yet Rutilius is not a difficult author; once or twice only I should have been glad of an explanatory note; I looked for it in vain, but knew commentators too well to be surprised at the disappointment. The author of this little poem lived under the Emperor Honorius, by whom he had been raised to the first employments. He was Consul, Praefectus Praetorii, or Governor of Rome [a misinterpretation arising from the first edition. GK]: being a Gaul by birth, he embarked at Ostia the 9th of October 416, A. U. C. 1169; [Cl. Rutilii Iter. lib. i. 183. 205.] to return to his native country. The account which he has left us of his voyage along the coasts of Etruria and Liguria is imperfect, concluding at the town of Luna. His work may be considered in relation, 1. to its subject; 2. Its style and poetry; 3. the personal character of its author.

1. If Rutilius had lopped off the first 180 verses of his poem, the reader would not have been a loser. After briefly mentioning the object of his voyage, and his sorrow at leaving Rome, his adopted country, and the scene of his honours, he expatiates on the glory of the capital, that eternal city, to whose empire Jupiter had not assigned any limits, and which was destined to reign over all nations, and during all ages. Such a subject required a truly poetical genius; and Rutilius is only a cold declaimer, who strains his faculties to string common-place thoughts, without finding in nature and himself colours fitted to adorn his theme. This theme indeed would not have been chosen by a judicious writer; for the reign of Honorius was not a proper period for describing the greatness of Rome; a greatness long since fallen to decay. A veneration, and even terror for her name, had been supported by her antiquity and extent of empire. But the illusion was now over. The barbarians gradually knew, despised, and destroyed her. Great Britain separated from the empire; the Goths, Vandals, and Suevi overflowed the finest provinces of Spain and Gaul; and when Rutilius wrote, Alaric had already been for six years master of Rome [wrong! GK]. I acknowledge that our poet, who was sensible of these calamities, endeavours ingeniously to dissemble their disgrace; comparing them with the defeats of Allia and Cannae, to show that Rome never suffered a reverse of fortune without rising more vigorous from the shock. But the comparison is feeble and false. Since the Punic wars, circumstances were totally changed. In the time of Rutilius the springs of government were worn out; the national character, religion, laws, military discipline, even the seat of the empire, and the language itself, had been altered or destroyed, under the impression of time and accident. It would have been difficult to revive the empire; but even could that have been effected, it would have been the empire of Constantinople or Ravenna, rather than that of Rome. Rutilius might have felt how destitute his panegyric was of truth or probability, from the false and confused ideas excited by his personification of Rome. In the time of Virgil, this figure would have been natural. Rome, regarded as a goddess, and invoked in temples, had an existence in the opinion of the multitude as well as in the fancy of poets. As the mother of the citizens, and the mistress of the provinces, her name recalled the image of her empire; but when this empire consisted in the assemblage of nations, subject to the same prince, Rome was no longer its sovereign; and this city, reduced to an idea merely physical, represented nothing more but walls, temples, and houses, built on seven hills and on the banks of the Tyber. The remainder of Rutilius’ voyage is stamped with a higher value. The objects which he describes have not only more simplicity, but also more reality; and as they were observed with attention, they are painted with those colours of truth and nature, which always distinguish the result of experience from the fruit of study and invention. By a distinct and easy road he conducts us along the coast of Etruria, which was become almost a desert; he points out the ruins of cities, the beauties of the landscape, and all those places which were distinguished either by art or nature. Our traveller forgets not the neighbouring isles; and his curiosity leads him more than once into the interior of the country. The dryness of a didactic poem is occasionally enlivened by digressions either immediately, or not too remotely connected with the subject; [I except his invective against Stilicho, lib. ii. v. 41] such as the character of the Lepidi, the discovery of the use of iron, the Jewish religion, and the Christian monks. He is worthy of commendation for not giving to his narrative, serious as it is, too much of the marvellous; which never becomes a poem, where the author is his own hero. The marvellous is pleasing to our fancy, but is rejected by our reason. When we consider that conditional faith and imperfect delusion with which we are affected in works of fiction, it should seem as if there was a conflict of two hostile powers, by which the mind is kept in a state of suspense, that can only be maintained by distance and obscurity, and an air of mystery hanging over either the actor or the author. When the poet unites both characters in his own person, we are disposed to examine his narrative by the maxims of experience; and our voluntary delusion cannot, without the greatest difficulty, be supported.

2. Rutilius's voyage is read with pleasure: it is interesting and useful; but why was it written in verse ? Poetry seems equally to misbecome the subject and the genius of the author. The narrative of a voyage comes very properly from a philosopher, a man of parts, or a fine writer, but has no connexion with verse. When we attempt to adorn with numbers a subject plain and simple, it is scarcely possible that our style should not be either unpoetical or improper. The subject requires ease, perspicuity, precision, and some ornaments introduced seasonably, and with a sparing hand. Rut the poet, in order to affect his reader with enthusiasm, must first feel it himself; he must aim at energy of expression and harmony of numbers; and be willing to sacrifice to them all beauties of an inferior order. The language of poetry suits only those strong passions of the soul by which it aas originally produced; and he who attempts to employ this language on topics which leave the mind in tranquillity, will find himself between two rocks, on one of which he must shipwreck; the brilliancy of his expression will either misbecome the simplicity of his thoughts, or the tameness of his words and phrases will disgrace the dignity of verse. All these reflections are applicable to Rutilius's voyage. His thoughts are ingenious, artfully arranged, and expressed with clearness, precision, and taste. But his poetry is mean and creeping, destitute of strength, and devoid of harmony. We see that he distrusts his natural rigour, and has recourse to contrivances of art; contrivances weak and common, scarcely pardonable in great authors, and for which they seldom stand in need of pardon. 1. Rutilius seems to have thought that swelling words, which best filled the mouth, were also most pleasing to the ear. But I wish such words were resigned to Oriental poets, of whom only they are not unworthy. I doubt whether Bellerophonteis solicitudinibus [Rut. Iter. lib. i. 450] be ever quoted, except on account of the singularity that two words should compose a pentameter verse. 2. He is bold even to licentiousness in forming new words, or giving new combinations to the old. What can be more forced than using connubium for concilium? [Idem. lib. i. 18. – a mistake of the editio princeps GK]. I am pleased however with this epithet legiferi, applied to the Roman triumphs. [Idem. lib. i. 39, 107, &c.] Laws, order, and civility were produced by those triumphs, and were their ordinary fruits. 3. I thought that I had discovered some rhymes, but they are too few to enable us to determine whether they ought to be ascribed to negligence, or were the effect of that bad taste, which the corruption of language and connexion with the barbarians, who were fond of rhyme, gradually introduced among the Romans.

3. Authors describe themselves in their works: a maxim as true as it is ancient. We may add that the shades which appear in the picture certainly were to be found in the original. The character of Rutilius appears to me to have been amiable. I perceive a love for his country, especially in its adversity; a heart susceptible of friendship, and a tender and respectful regard for the memory of his father. Are so many good qualities to suffer a total eclipse from a little too much vanity? Rutilius reviews the stages of his greatness with complacence ; his country, his friends, his father, are endeared to him by their connexion with his own honours. His vanity is contemptible. Cicero boasted not of being consul, but of saving the republic in his consulship. Men may be more easily pardoned for being proud of their actions and talents, than for valuing themselves on their employments and titles, the vain and frivolous distinctions of society. Rutilius detested the Jews, and despised the monks. Was this in him a crime? I could wish indeed that his feelings had been expressed with more philosophical moderation, and rested on a better principle. But he was a Pagan, who beheld his religion sinking under the weight of years, and involving the empire in its fall. The Christians insulted the decline of his sect, which they endeavoured to hasten by persecution. A little bad humour was excusable. Nothing can be more animated than his description of the monks in the isle of Capraria, or more judicious than the reflections with which it is accompanied. The folly of these monks is extreme, in thinking that God took pleasure in the sufferings of his creatures ; but their conduct was conformable with their principles. Had Rutilius lived in the twelfth century, what would he have said of their successors, who availed themselves of their voluntary poverty and humility, to acquire the esteem of the multitude, and of that esteem, to appropriate to themselves temporal power, and half the riches of Europe.

Rutilius' Return 3: at Portus (1.165-204)

2011-03-04T15:29:00.004Z

His hymn in praise of Rome ended, and still in tears, Rutilius leaves for Portus. His friend Rufius (Antonius Agrypnius) Volusianus accompanies him longer than any other before himself returning to Rome. Once at Portus, he waits for the weather to calm, while looking back at the serene skies above the eternal city.

The basin of Trajan's harbour at Portus, over half a kilometre wide.

After these words, we begin our journey. Friends accompany us. Eyes without tears cannot say “farewell.” And now, as the others go back to Rome, Rufius sticks to me as I leave, the living glory of Albinus his father. He derives his name from the ancient line of Volusus, and recalls the Rutulian kings, as witnessed by Vergil. To his eloquent tongue the palace was entrusted: in the flush of youth he had the honour of speaking in the emperor’s name. Previously as a lad he had ruled the Punic people as proconsul: he was an object equally of fear and of love to the Tyrians. Energy and dedication have promised him the highest rods of office: if it is right to trust in merit, he will be consul. At last I sadly compelled him unwillingly to walk back: divided in body, one mind still holds us. [1.178]

Then at last I stroll to the ships, where with two-horned brow divided Tiber cuts to the right. The channel on the left is avoided for its inaccessible sands: only the glory of receiving Aeneas remains. And now Phoebus had lengthened the span of the nighttime hours in the paler sky of the Scorpion’s Claws. We hesitate to try the salt sea and sit in port, and there is no shame enduring leisure when delays are thrust on us, while the westering Pleiades rage on the faithless gulf and while the anger of the gusty season falls. It gives pleasure to look back often at the nearby city and follow its mountains with diminishing sight, where our guiding eyes enjoy the pleasing region, while they think that they can see what they desire. And it’s not from telltale smoke that I recognize the place that holds the ruling citadel and the capital of the world – although Homer commends the signs of light smoke, whenever it rises to the stars from the beloved earth – but a brighter tract of sky and a serene zone signals the bright peaks of the seven hills. There are perpetual suns, and the very day that Rome makes for itself seems to be clearer. Often my astonished ears resound with the circus games; enthusiastic applause announces dull theatres. Familiar voices return from the resounding air – either because they come or because invented by love. [1.204]

A beautiful emendation

2011-03-02T20:03:00.003Z

In the second section of his Hymn to Rome, Rutilius speaks of Rome’s ancestry (1.67-72):

Auctores generis Venerem Martemque fatemur
Aeneadum matrem Romulidumque patrem.
mitigat armatas victrix clementia vires.
convenit in mores nomen utrumque tuos.
hinc tibi certandi bona parcendique voluptas:
quos timuit superat, quos superavit amat

As begetters of our race we acknowledge Venus and Mars, the mother of the sons of Aeneas and the father of the sons of Romulus. Victorious clemency softens armed strength: both names are appropriate for your character. Hence your noble pleasure in combat and in mercy: it overcomes those it feared, which loves those it overcame.

There are obvious echoes of the hymn to Venus that opens Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura: both of the opening words, and of the famous image of Mars infatuated by Venus. The idea of Rome fighting and sparing in the third couplet alludes to a passage also alluded to in the previous lines, Anchises’ description to Aeneas of the Roman mission in Aeneid 6, parcere subiectis et debellare superbos, “to spare the conquered and war down the proud”. After the introduction of Venus and Mars in the first line of the passage, the following lines blend together the two gods and concepts associated with them, for Venus victorious clemency, sparing, love, for Mars armed strength, combat and overcoming. The arrangement is chiastic, with the Venus concepts at the start in the first couplet and at the end in the last couplet, and mingled with Martial ones in the middle couplet.

In line 71, the word bona stands out. To translate ‘noble pleasure’ smoothes over the banality. Admittedly bonus is not as banal a word as the English good, but it looks like a metrical filler: the question would be whether it was Rutilius’ filler or an editor’s. And a glance at the apparatus criticus took me to the suggestion of Emil Baehrens (1848-88):

hinc tibi certandi par parcendique voluptas.

Hence your equal pleasure in combat and in mercy.

This seems to me so obviously right that I cannot understand why it is not printed by all editors. One reason that this brilliant conjecture may not have got so far was that it was made by Baehrens, who churned out so many frivolous conjectures that all of them tended to be ignored. If the name Housman were attached to it, or that of Baehrens’ old Professor, Lucian Müller, it would have done better. Secondly, there is a manuscript reading which makes sense – if poor sense. But it would be an odd thing if the only corruptions in texts only changed them so that they made no sense. And here it is easy to see how the corruption arose, through the omission of par before parcendi by haplography, and then the conjecture of bona to fill the gap in the metre. It is generally accepted that all our manuscripts of Rutilius derive from a copy made by Giorgio Galbiate in 1493/4from an eighth-century Bobbio manuscript. And while the best ms and the first printed edition, which has the independent value, have many mutual disagreements and corruptions, it is vanishingly rare for these not to scan acceptably – in other words, there is every likelihood that metrical emendation was applied to the text at an early stage of the transmission, probably by Galbiate.

Final thought: it is the aesthetic appeal of this emendation which draws me to it. This seems to me right, proper, and inevitable -- but also something to create unease. Clever is not the same as true: was Baehrens just improving the author? And my aesthetic judgment comes into play again, in favour of Rutilius' talent.

Rutilius' Return 2: The Hymn To Rome

2011-02-24T16:02:00.004Z

In the most famous passage of his poem, Rutilius tearfully bids farewell to Rome. He begins by addressing Roma as a goddess and worldwide power (1.47-66); he moves on to describe her ancestry and to contrast her to other empire (1.67-92); her buildings, waters, and climate are praised (1.93-114). Then he urges her to return to her former glories, here referring to the Gothic sack of the city seven years earlier: Rome, unlike other empires, is reborn because she can grow from suffering (1.115-140). He prays for the pacified world to send tributes to Rome (1.141-154), and for her to grant him, her former Prefect, a safe journey over the sea.

The Hymn has much in common with earlier literature: it fits the traditional patterns of a epibaterios logos, a speech of farewell; it is likely that Rutilius knew Aelius Aristides' second-century panegyric of Rome; it is certain that he took much from Claudian's work, especially Book 3 of De consulatu Stilichonis (written seventeen years before Rutilius' journey, in AD 400); and the Hymn is framed in the language of Ovid's exile poetry. But the combination of these elements is distinct and deeply moving.

In my next post, I'll discuss some of my choices about the Latin text translated here. For the first part, see here.

We fix abundant kisses on the gates that must be left behind; unwillingly our feet pass the holy threshold. With tears we beg forgiveness, and we make an offering with praise, as far as weeping allows our words to run: [1.43-46]

“Hear, fairest queen of your world, Rome taken up among the starry skies. Hear, mother of men and mother of gods: we are not far from heaven through your temples. You we sing and will always sing, while the fates allow: nobody can be safe and forgetful of you. Wicked oblivion will sooner blot out the sun than the honour due to you retreat from our heart: for you offer gifts the equal of the sun’s rays, wherever the encircling Ocean surges. For you Phoebus himself travels his course - Phoebus who contains everything – and in your lands he sends down his horses, risen from your lands. Africa did not slow you with her flame-wielding sands, the Bear armed with her ice did not repel you. As far as lifebringing nature has stretched towards the poles, so far is the earth open to your courage. You have made from many nations one fatherland: under your rule it has benefited the lawless to be captured. And while you offer the conquest a share in your own laws, you have made a city what was previously a world. [1.66]

As begetters of our race we acknowledge Venus and Mars, the mother of the sons of Aeneas and the father of the sons of Romulus. Victorious clemency softens armed strength: both names are appropriate for your character. Hence your equal pleasure in combat and in mercy, which overcomes those it feared, which loves those it overcame. She who discovered the olive-tree is worshipped, and he who invented wine, and the lad who first pressed ploughs to the earth. Medicine has won altars through Paeon’s skill, Alcides is held a god for his nobility. You too have embraced the world in lawbringing triumphs make all things live by a shared treaty. You, goddess, you every corner of the Roman world honours, and wears a peace-bearing yoke on free necks. All the stars which maintain their everlasting orbits have seen no fairer empire. What like this did it befall Assyrian arms to knit together? The Medes utterly overwhelmed their neighbours. The great kings of the Parthians and the Macedonians’ tyrants imposed laws on each other through various reversals. And for you at your birth there were not more souls or hands, but there was more counsel and judgment. Noble in the lawful causes of your wars and in peace without haughtiness, your glory reached the highest riches. What you rule is less than what you deserve to rule. You surpass your mighty destiny with your deeds. [1.92]

It is a task to number the monuments lofty with abundant trophies, as if one wished to count out the stars, and glittering shrines confuse the wandering gaze: I would have believed that the gods dwelt in such a way. Should I mention the streams hanging from an arch through the air, where scarcely Iris would left her rainbearing waters? These you would rather say were mountains which had grown up to the stars: Greece would praise such a work as that of the giants. Captured rivers are buried within your walls; lofty bathhouses consume whole lakes. And equally, the space within your walls is full and damp with its own springs and all resounds with native fountains. Hence a fresh exhalation tempers the summer air, and a clean flow quenches harmless thirst. Indeed for you a sudden torrent of hot waters broke the path of the Tarpeian when the enemy pressed. If it were still flowing, I might perhaps think it chance: a river which was going return under the earth flowed to bring aid. Should I mention the woods enclosed within ceilings, for the home-bred bird to play with varying song? The year never ceases to be soothed by your spring, and vanquished winter keeps safe your delights. [1.114]

Raise up the laurels in your hair, Rome, and reshape the old age of your hallowed head into verdant locks. Let golden diadems gleam on your tower-bearing helm and let the golden shieldboss pour forth perpetual flames. May the destruction of injustice conceal your sad fall; may contempt for pain close and knit your wounds. From your adversities it is customary to hope for fortunate things; you undergo enriching losses in the fashion of the heavens. The stars’ fires rise anew from their setting; you see the moon ended so that it can begin. Victorious Brennus’ punishment was not hindered by the Allia. The Samnite paid with slavery for his savage treaty. After many disasters, beaten, you put Pyrrhus to flight. Hannibal himself bewailed his successes. Things that cannot be sunk rise again with great force, and leap out higher when driven in to the deepest waves; and as a downturned torch takes up new strength, you seek the heights more brightly from your lowly fortune. Stretch forth your laws that will endure to Roman centuries, and you alone should not fear the distaffs of the fates, although with sixteen decades and a thousand years gone your ninth year beyond that is passing. The times that are left you are restricted by no limits, while the lands shall stand and the sky hold up the stars. What undoes other kingdoms restores you: the law of rebirth is to be able to grow from evils. [1.140

So come, may a victim, of the sacrilegious race, fall at last: may the trembling Goths bow down their treacherous neck. May pacified lands give rich tributes; may barbarian booty fill your august lap. Eternally may the Rhine plough for you, may the Nile flood for you, and may the fertile world nourish its nurse. Yes, and may Africa convey fertile harvests on you, rich in her own soil, but more so in your rains. And meanwhile may barns of grain rise high from Latian furrows, and fat presses flow with Hesperian nectar. May Tiber himself, wreathed with triumphal reeds, fit his servant waters to the uses of Romulus’ city, and from peaceful banks may wealthy trade be brought you, downriver from the country, upriver from the sea. [1.154]

Open, I pray the main calmed by Castor the twin; let Cythera’s goddess temper soften the road over the waters, if I did not displease you, when I administered the laws of Quirinus, if I cherished and consulted the holy fathers (for the fact that no criminal charges unsheathed my steel is not the prefect’s glory, but the people’s). Whether it be granted to end my life in my ancestral lands, or whether you will someday be restored to my eyes, I shall live fortunate and more blessed than anything I could pray for, if you would deign always to remember me.” [1.164]

Rutilius' Return 1: Book 1.1-42

2011-02-18T14:39:00.003Z

Rutilius introduces his journey. The proem, lines 1-36, is divided equally, as the poet himself is, between his two homes, Rome and Gaul. Nothing could be more fortunate than to be a senator of Rome (1-18) -- but Gaul calls him back, because it has suffered from long wars, and he should be on the spot to rebuild (19-36). [These wars are usually defined as the barbarian invasions of 406 and onwards, and sometimes mysterious domestic dissidents, the Bagaudae, are added -- but in fact there had also been straightforward civil wars for much of the period]. Then a self-contained passage of six lines (37-42) explains why he made the journey by sea instead of land: here the Goths are explicitly mentioned -- who had been an independent presence in Italy from 408 to 412.

RUTILIUS CLAUDIUS NAMATIANUS ON HIS RETURN

You’ll marvel rather, reader, that my swift Return can so quickly do without the blessings of Romulus. What is long for those who venerate Rome for all time? Nothing is ever long that gives pleasure without end. How much and how often do I count those people blessed who have won the prize of being born on your fortunate soil! who, high-born offspring of noble Romans, heap on to their inborn glory the honour of the city! The seeds of virtues could not in other places more worthily be received from and passed to heaven. Fortunate also are those who, having won rewards close to the first, have obtained Latian homes! The venerable Senate is open to foreign merit and does not think strangers those who deserve to be hers. They enjoy the authority of the order and of their colleagues, and have a part in the Genius which they revere, just as through the heavenly poles of the world’s top, we believe there exists the council of the highest god. [18]

But my fortune is torn from these beloved shores, and the fields of Gaul summon their native—too disfigured indeed from long wars, but as less pleasant, so more to be pitied. The charge of ignoring your fellow citizens is less serious when they are untroubled: public losses demand private commitment. We owe tears in person to our ancestral roofs: toil brought on by distress often helps. It is not right any longer to ignore the long ruins, which the delay and suspension of help has multiplied. Now’s the time, on farms ravaged after cruel fires, to build even shepherd’s huts. No indeed, if the very springs could utter speech, and if our arbours could speak, they could press me on as I tarry and add sails to my longings. Now at last, with the embraces of the beloved city loosening, I am conquered and, scarcely, endure my belated journey. [36]

The sea has been chosen, since the paths of the land are soaked by rivers on the plains, and on the mountains are stiff with crags. After the Tuscan fields, after the Aurelian causeway suffered Gothic troops with fire and sword, and do not restrain the woods with lodgings or the rivers with bridges, better to entrust sails to the uncertain sea. [42]

Rutilius' Return: Introduction

2011-02-18T13:45:00.004Z

Rutilius Namatianus' poem De reditu suo describes the author's journey from Rome back to his home in Gaul in the autumn of the year 417. The poem is in two books, but most of the second book is lost, and this means that we do not know where exactly Rutilius was going or why. The poem has appealed to readers since its rediscovery in the 1490s. It has always been popular in Italy because of its descriptions of the Tuscan coast. The poem is elegiac, both literally in its metre and metaphorically in its tone; both metre and tone are also often described as elegant. Literary history often defines the Classical in opposition to Christianity, and Rutilius happens to be the last Latin poet we know was a pagan. And as an aristocrat who sings the glories of eternal Rome, but who also has a fondness for describing ruins, he can seem like the poet of a vanishing world. Old histories of Latin literature often used to end with him. (I do not endorse this interpretation of Rutilius' poem or of Latin literary history!)

My task for 2011 is to write a book on Rutilius - and though there have been lots of editions, there have been no monographs on Rutilius in English, and none in any language other than Italian since 1904. And to help me think about text and interpretation, I have decided to write a prose translation. There are three other translations in English that I know of, in decent blank verse by J.F. Savage-Armstrong in the 1907 edition by Keen, in prose by J.D. Duff and A.M. Duff in the Loeb Minor Latin Poets, and, in (sort of verse) by Harold Isbell in a Penguin Classics, now out of print. The latter is not recommended. I am going to be as accurate as I can, and never mind if it doesn't sound like natural English. For comparison, the Duffs' text and translation can be found at the ever useful Lacus Curtius, along with some excellent maps.

A review for BMCR

2010-12-05T14:08:00.003Z

A review in Bryn Mawr Classical Review (somewhat late) of a collection of essays, edited by David Gwynn, on A.H.M. Jones' The Later Roman Empire.

Symmachus declines an invitation from Ausonius (Ep. 1.20)

2010-11-16T19:54:00.002Z

In 378, Ausonius, already joint praetorian prefect of the whole western empire except Illyricum, was appointed consul for the following year by his former pupil, the emperor Gratian. He invited his old friend Symmachus to come and celebrate his inauguration. Symmachus was in Italy, Ausonius was in Trier, the capital of the prefecture of Gaul. It is unsurprising that Symmachus avoided a month’s journey to Germany in midwinter. He may also have calculated that an invitation to Trier was not as attractive as it might have been had the emperor still been there; but Gratian was in the Balkans, dealing with the crisis after the eastern emperor Valens’ defeat and death at the hands of the Goths.

The letter opens with an unmistakable allusion to Pliny the Younger’s thanksgiving for his consulship (Panegyric 1.1), no doubt hinting at the speech of thanks which Ausonius would make (in fact he wrote his Gratiarum actio not for 1 January, but later in 379). The panegyrical mode can also be found in section 2, where we see comparisons of other teachers of great men (the first, unnamed pair being Aristotle and Alexander).

Well and wisely our forefathers (as in other things of that age) placed temples to Honour and Virtue together with twin façade, thinking, just as we have seen with you, that where the prizes of Honour are, there too are the rewards of Virtue. But nearby, in fact devotion to the Latin Muses is turned towards a holy spring, because the journey to winning magistracies is often advanced by literature. These institutions of our forefathers are the story of your consulship; the seriousness of your morals and the antiquity of your teaching have borne you the dignity of a curule chair. 2. Many hereafter will strive for the fine arts as the seeds of praise and the mothers of honours, but to whom will befall a pupil so fortunate or so ready to remember his debt? Or are we unaware that that great man, for whom fortune flowed beyond his prayers, bestowed nothing on his master, the man of Stagira? Doesn’t the fact that Ennius got only a cloak from the Aetolian booty dishonour Fulvius? And indeed neither was the price of his liberal teachings repaid to Panaetius by the second of the Africani, nor to Opillus by Rutilius, or to Cineas by Pyrrhus, or to his Metrodorus by Mithradates of Pontus. But now, a most educated emperor, and generous with riches and honours, as though he has conveyed the first things on you as interest payments, goes beyond that to the capital of the loan.§

3. In this great happiness of mine, what words can I offer for the fact I cannot come? I fear that, interpreting my excuses wrongly, you will fail to believe how much I congratulate you. I wanted to come before your eyes in an instant, but, at the end of my strength, which sickness has long drained, I decided to avoid lengthy travels and uncomfortable lodgings, as well as the arrival of the cold weather and the shortening of the days, and all the other things which are opportune for importuning. If you have a regard for me in your heart, I beg you to be fair to me and to accept my excuse which I put forward.* May luck befall that I obtain my old position of favour; now, what is enough, let me avoid giving offense. Farewell.

§I am not sure I have fully understood the financial metaphor here.

*has adlegationes boni consulas, an untranslatable play on Ausonius’ status as consul.

Two more letters of Symmachus (Ep. 1.44, 52)

2010-10-18T13:31:00.003Z

When Gratian became the senior emperor in the west, and Symmachus’ father was recalled by the senate from his temporary exile, Symmachus decided to use the opportunity of a bread-and-butter speech in the senate on quite another matter to push himself forward. His speech “For Trygetius”, or what is now left of it, is translated here. He sent copies to various friends and associates. One of these was Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, the former Urban Prefect (Ep. 1.44). Covering letters of this sort for rhetorical works are also found in the letters of Pliny the Younger, though it is my impression that Symmachus is even less modest than Pliny. Praetextatus replied with the expected praise, enabling Symmachus to reply to that reply (Ep. 1.52).

1.44:

To Agorius Praetextatus

It is only fair, given your sedulous attitude towards me, that I should not let you be kept in the dark about things that have brought me glory. I think that rumour must have informed you that my father, in the country and on retreat, cooling off after the injustice of losing his house, was summoned by the senate with abundant requests and finally envoys sent to beg him, an unprecedented honour. For this reason, the very first time a day came with the opportunity of speaking before his colleagues, my father expressed his gratitude to the senate with that weighty eloquence for which he is well-known. That was on the Kalends which open the year [i.e. 1 January 376]. 2. Shortly afterwards, when I had promised to assist the son of my friend Trygetius, a candidate for praetor, duty pressed on my heart so that, taking the opportunity of this fixed obligation I fulfilled a task which I still owed my father, though he had discharged it to the senate. So on the ninth of January I made a speech before the most distinguished order. When it comes into your hands, you will guess from you own feelings the judgments of the rest. Uncertain of your critical eye, I thought that the opinions of the others should be concealed, so that I should not seem to press on you with the pre-judgment of so great an order. Farewell.

1.52:

To Agorius Praetextatus

I rejoice not a whit less that my speech pleased you than that the senate, better part of the human race, heard it with a favourable opinion. You have added the weight of an oath and sworn in due form, being one you knows that the judgments of those who love one fall under suspicion of doing favours. For where friendship is undoubted, there the truthfulness of praise is more doubtful. Accordingly, sure of your critical eye I dismiss the opinions of the rest. What if you had been there, to hear such goodwill? Why, I would have touched the vault of heaven, as they say, with a finger. Some other time, perhaps, we shall have the opportunity, yet more desirable, to have you there at hand. For now we enjoy the testimony of your letter, then we shall benefit from the assistance of your support. Farewell

The date of accession of the emperor Valentinian I

2010-10-11T18:03:00.005Z

This is a pedantic post (aren’t they all?). I was reading the relatively recent Budé edition of Symmachus’ speeches and relationes, wherein Jean-Pierre Callu rounds off the first complete translation of Symmachus into French or indeed any modern language (he published the first of the five volumes in 1972 and the last in 2009). Callu dates Symmachus’ first speech to 26 February 368; the 1883 edition of Seeck had placed it on 25 February 369. The principal dating criterion is that the speech explicitly celebrates the fifth anniversary of Valentinian’s accession in February 364, his Quinquennalia (Or. 1.16 lustrum imperialium iam condis annorum, “you now bring to their close a lustrum of imperial years”). It is clear that the whole of the fifth (and tenth, and fifteenth) year of an emperor’s rule was celebrated, so it could be any time within that period from February 368 to February 369. But it is likeliest to belong to the anniversary itself, and judging by parallel cases, the bigger celebration is likelier to be at the beginning of the year than at the end. So we should probably, though without complete confidence, follow Callu and count the five years inclusively: 364, 365, 366, 367, 368.

But on which day, 25 or 26 February? Reference works usually date Valentinian’s accession in 364 to 26 February. Seeck’s invaluable Regesten (published 38 years after his Symmachus edition) places it on 26 February. So does The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire and the Cambridge Ancient History.

Two sources give us the date: the chronicle known as Consularia Constantinopolitana gives die. v k. Mar. (“the fifth day before the Kalends [the first] of March”, counting inclusively). Ammianus tells us that the Roman empire was without a ruler for 10 days after the emperor Jovian died (which we know from other sources to have been on 17 February). But he also shows why counting inclusively from 17 to 26 February is not a straightforward answer. 364 was a leap year, and Ammianus takes the opportuinitry for a faux-learned digression on the leap year (26.1.8-14). The Romans added the leap-day not at the end of the month of February, but as a second 24 February – or in Latin, bis sextum kalendas Martias. It was therefore called the bissextile day. This was a day of ill-omen, and although Valentinian had arrived in Nicaea in time to be acclaimed on that day, he waited till the day after (26.1.7). If we choose to mark Valentinian’s dies imperii as the Romans did, it will be (as the Constantinopolitan Chronicle tells us), the fifth day before the Kalends of March, or 25 February. If we choose to translate to the modern Gregorian calendar, it will be 26 February. But we should remember that the anniversary would have been celebrated willy-nilly on the fifth day from the Kalends of March: 25 February in non-leap years, the day which we call 26 February only in leap years. So if Symmachus gave his speech in 368, you could describe it as being either 25 or 26 February, depending on your perspective. If he gave it in 369, it was on 25 February.

One final thought. Ammianus devotes a good deal of attention to depicting Valentinian’s reluctance to be acclaimed on a traditional ill-omen. On the fifth day before the Kalends of April (a month later, in Roman terms, 28 March in ours), Valentinian appointed his brother Valens as co-emperor at the suburb of Hebdomon, before processing with him back into Constantinople. As Neil McLynn has pointed out, this was also a significant day: Palm Sunday. Is Ammianus’ emphasis on Valentinian’s significant choice of the day for his accession influenced by his distaste for the day chosen for Valens?

Symmachus' letter to Gratian (Ep. 10.2)

2010-10-07T16:06:00.004Z

Symmachus' tenth book of letters, like the younger Pliny's, consists of letters written to emperors. The first catch in this comparison is that Symmachus' letters were not, with the possible exception of the first book, published in his lifetime, so there is no reason to suppose that Symmachus himself intended to model himself on Pliny. The second catch is that the first letter is written to Count Theodosius, father of the emperor Theodosius, who was officially consecrated as divus in the reign of his son, but was never an emperor. And there is no letter after the second in the book, to the emperor Gratian. Whether other letters are lost, or whether the collection now known as the Relationes were originally published as part of this book, is not clear.

The letter to Gratian was written in the summer of 376. Symmachus' cheerleading of the new regime (see here and here and here) had been recognized by the court, and he had been chosen for the task of reading to the senate an imperial letter which announced the execution of the hated praetorian prefect of Gaul, Maximinus.

The letter is addressed to Gratian specifically, but at times breaks into the second person plural, not only because it is conventional when there are multiple emperors to do this, but also because Gratian was the guardian of his young half-brother, Valentinian II, who had been proclaimed dubiously shortly after his father's death, and reluctantly recognized by the senior emperor, Valens, and Gratian.

To Gratian Augustus

I know that it arose through the love of which you generally judge leading men worthy, that I was employed as the reader of your sacred oration. But when I think that that speech in every way outshone whatever other rescripts that the senate has heard up to this point, I think that I too am esteemed higher than the rest; after all, for great affairs, as for great comedies, selected actors are placed on stage. In reciting plays the same honour didn’t belong to Publilius Pellio as Ambivius, nor did equal fame befall Aesop and Roscius. 2. Therefore, most excellent emperors, I embrace as offered by the divine what you planned so well for me. Your praise, lord Gratian, is my duty, since you are so spirited that when you bring healing to the republic you summon the help of my voice: for you have reduced public disorders into tranquility. It scarcely stood in your way that we all lay prone - such a great crime had the men who possessed the highest positions through wicked means unsheathed. 3. That Maximinus, savage because of his favourable fortunes, the trampler of judgments, unable to end feuds, ready to enter them, has expiated with capital punishment for everybody’s tears. Now this shines through for mankind: the senate holds its ancient rights; it is permitted to live, it is no regret to have been born, and all things look to safety; danger comes to none from poverty; the republic has restored itself to antiquity, spirits have changed from shadow into pleasant daylight, after you gave encouragement to virtue. 4. We see care taken with equal vigilance so that the corn supply is brought in to sate the city more generously, a general cleansing boils away the wickedness of money-coiners, the assessor does not tip the scales to increase the gold from the provincials, a thousand other things -- if I wished to continue about them, I’d be caught out as having consideration for your glory but none for my own incapacity. For no prudent man corrupts oracles with mere human words

5. Therefore, may your divine mind, young Augustus, the glory of the Roman name, be carried in the chariot of its own eloquence. In offering thanks we abase ourselves in humble fashion, better suited to the comic slipper than the tragic buskin, now that rhetorical flair has begun to be a possession of empire: for, as I know, you have given a hospitable place in your palace to the Muses. May this turn out well for you [both] and for your piety, since you have no memory of haughtiness or indolence, those faults of loftier fortune. When you are well, it brings adequate health to me. The good fortune besought in public prayers will ensure for your clemency that the opportunity of advancing your plans will prove as great as the pleasure in describing them. Farewell.

Symmachus’ first letter to Ausonius (9.88)

2010-09-12T01:13:00.003Z

If I carry on translating Symmachus at this rate, I will have plenty left for my retirement. Here is Symmachus’ first letter to Ausonius. The rest of Symmachus’ letters to his older friend are found in a group in the first book of his correspondence –the only book which it is certain that Symmachus himself edited (for examples see here and here and here and here and here). This one comes from book 9, in which this and most other letters lack an addressee; the book was almost certainly published long after Symmachus’ death. It was long known that the professor of Bordeaux, Ausonius, met the Roman aristocrat Symmachus when Ausonius was the tutor of the young emperor Gratian and Symmachus a senatorial envoy at the court in Trier of Gratian’s father Valentinian, in the late 360s. It was Sergio Roda (in the Revue des etudes anciennes for 1981) who revived a suggestion of Symmachus’ seventeenth century editors that this letter was in fact addressed to Ausonius – and that it was Ausonius’ first letter in the correspondence, when the two knew each other only by reputation. He must certainly be right.

Ancient letters were always potentially public property, liable to be read out, and they often expressed social ambitions rather less subtly than we would consider normal – but it is still revealing to see what Symmachus chose not to publish.

Your reputation for letters has long made you someone I should like to cultivate, but I long postponed an expression of respect through writing for modesty’s sake, in case I seemed to be currying favour with one in a position at court: this is a disease so frequently adopted that men who care for their reputation blush for other people’s vices. Now all reason for my vacillation has been removed, since you have honoured me first with your greeting. After this generous welcome I shall enter the open gates of friendship and plan to make up for the delays of my shamefaced silence with more than frequent missives. 2. Only look with kindly indulgence, please, on the homage of an impoverished tongue, and for a moment relax the stern judgment of an imperial teacher. You have indicated that you have read some things of mine; I just ask for the same tolerance. I shall not be new to you and shall not be afraid of an unprepared critic: you have learnt to bear everything of mine. Also, an acquaintance has arisen, so as to make you more balanced towards me as a judge. Friendship after all is inclined to favour, and is changed from harsh examination towards kinder feelings by fondness. 3. But if I put aside the fear of my impoverished talent and promise you constant letters, you see how much more I have hopes from this generous barrel. I must acknowledge to you in friendly manner: I look for draughts of Gallic expressiveness, not because eloquence of Latium has left these seven hills, but because the rules of rhetoric were instilled in my breast by an old man who was once a foster-child of the Garonne; I have a real relationship with your schools through my teacher. 4. Whatever is in me, and I know how meagre it is, I owe to your heavens. So bedew us again from those Camenae which first gave me the milk of the liberal arts, and, if anything in my writing should offend you, either save with you silence someone who once attended your townsman, or you too, start teaching again. Farewell.

Statius: The Villa of Pollius Felix at Sorrento (Silvae 2.2)

2009-12-27T21:37:00.004Z

Next term colleagues and I will teach for the first time a first-year course on the Roman empire. The aim is to include literary and archaeological approaches within a historical structure. An important feature is the text of the week, and one week is reserved for descriptions of villas, by Pliny and Statius. But we can't make students buy a copy of the Silvae for one poem, and nothing was available online. So I have done a translation. I have represented Latin hexameters with English blank verse; the number of lines is regularly greater in the translation than in the original, but as the original has abundant enjambment I hope that it is not thereby misrepresented. I have translated Shackleton Bailey’s text, and in many places been influenced by the wording of his prose translation. A couple of lines which are conjectural are represented in italics.

As with other poems in the Silvae, Statius makes a point of his facility of composition, when he describes this one in the prose preface to book 2: ‘My dear Pollius’ villa at Sorrento, which follows, should have been put into words by me with greater care, if only in honour of his eloquence, but my friend forgave me.’

There stands, between the Sirens’ famous walls
and the cliffs weighed down by great Minerva’s shrine
on the Tyrrhenian sea, a lofty villa
that watches all the Dicarchaean deep.
The soil there’s well-beloved by Bromius,
and on the lofty hills the grapes are baked,
grapes which don’t envy the Falernian press.
Here came I, glad after the festival
my homeland holds five-yearly, when a lull
had fallen on the stadium, when the dust
lay white, and athletes turned to Ambracian laurels;
across my native bay the eloquence
of gentle Pollius, the youthful grace
of glittering Polla brought me, though I longed
already to turn my steps where Appia runs,
familiar route, and queen of all long roads.
Delay soon turned delight. Both sides, curved cliffs
break up the seas, lunate in calm recess.
Nature gives way; a damp beach pushes through
the rock, runs in between the lowering crags.
The place’s first delight: from double dome
a bathhouse smokes, freshwater nymphs run out
from land into the bitter sea. Here Phorcus
with lightfoot chorus, here Cymodocē,
her locks all sodden, Galatea here,
green sea-nymph, all alike delight to bathe.
Before the house, blue Neptune keeps his watch,
the ruler of the swelling wave and guard
over a blameless home; his temple foams
with friendly surge. The happy fields’ defender
is Hercules. Its twin god cheers the port.
One keeps the lands, one stops the savage waves.
Wondrous the quiet of the main! Exhausted seas
here lay aside their fury, and mad winds
breathe gentler; here the headlong storm dares less;
an untumultuous moderate pool lies still,
and imitates the morals of its lord.
From there, at angles creeps a colonnade
over the hills, a city’s work, and tames
harsh rocks with its long ridge. Where sunlight once
mingled with darkling dust, and where the path
was charmless wilderness, joy now to walk:
just like, if you ascend the lofty peak
of Bacchis’ city, Ephyrē, there runs
a covered path from Inoan Lechaeum.
If Helicon should grant me all his streams,
Piplēa quench my thirst, the flying horse
give waters generously from his hoof;
should trusty Phemonoē open up
her waters chaste, or those my Pollius
disturbed when with Apollo’s auspices
he dipped his urn in deeply, I could still
not equal in Pierian songs the sights
innumerable, the adornments of that place.
In that long list, scarcely my eyes sufficed;
scarcely, while I was led past everything in turn,
my steps sufficed. What a great crowd of things!
Is it the place’s brilliance, or the master’s,
that should amaze me first? This mansion views
the sunrise and Apollo’s youthful beam;
this one detains him as he falls, forbidding
him to dismiss the light that’s rightly spent,
when day’s fatigued, when the dark mountain’s shade
falls in the water, when the palace swims
in glasslike sea. Some buildings bustle with
the ocean’s roar, others are ignorant
of the sounding waves, and favour earthly silence.
Some places Nature’s favoured, but in some,
beaten, she’s given way to cultivation,
learnt to be mollified for unknown ends.
A hill once stood where you see level ground;
there once were lairs where now you enter houses;
where you spy lofty groves, no land was there.
Their owner tamed them; while he shapes the rocks
or fights them out, the soil rejoicing follows.
Behold the cliffs learning to bear the yoke,
the houses entering, mountain moving back
when ordered. Let Methymna’s bard withdraw
his hand; with it the Theban lyre withdraws;
the Gothic plectrum’s glory yields to you.
You too move rocks, high forests follow you.
Why should I tell of ancient shapes in wax
or bronze: whatever with his paints Apelles
rejoiced to animate; whatever marvel
the hands of Phidias carved, when still the shrine
of Jupiter was empty; what the skill
of Myron or what Polyclitus’ chisel
ordered to live; bronzes from Corinth’s ash
worth more than gold, the heads of generals
and poets, heads of ancient sages, whom
you strive to follow, whom in all your heart
you feel – untroubled as you are by cares,
your mind always composed in tranquil virtue,
your mind always your own. Why should I list
the thousand rooftops and changes of scene?
Each bedroom has its own delight, its own
particular view, and different lands, across
reclining Nereus, serve different windows.
This looks on Ischia, and from that appears
rugged Prochyta; Hector’s armourer
lies open here; there sea-girt Nesis breathes
malignant breezes, while from here is seen
Euploea, sign of luck for wandering ships;
Megalia juts and wounds the curving waves;
your Limon’s pained, because his master lies
across the bay; he watches from afar
your Sorrentine headquarters.
Just one room,
one only, far apart from all the rest,
stands out and offers you across the sea’s
straight path, Parthenopē. And here, dug deep
from Grecian quarries, marbles: this the vein
of eastern Syenē has tinged, and this
in mournful Synnas Phrygian axes mined,
among the fields of grieving Cybelē,
where on the painted marble, purple rings
set off the pure white base. Here too, cut from
the mountain of Amyclaean Lycurgus,
a stone that’s green, rock mimicking soft grass;
here shine Numidia’s yellowing stones, and Thasos,
and Chios, and Carystos that delights
to match the rolling wave. All turn and all
salute the towers of the Chalcidian city.
Hail to your spirit, for you love and live
in Grecian country! May Dicharchus’ walls
that gave you birth not envy – for it’s right
that we possess our learned foster-son.
Why should I now recount the country’s wealth,
and ploughlands thrown upon the main, and rocks
dripping with Bacchus’ nectar? Oftentimes
in Autumn, when the vines are ripening,
there climbed the rocks, hidden in shades of night,
a Nereid; she wiped her dewy eyes
on shoots, and snatched sweet bunches from the slopes.
And often too, the neighbouring waves threw spray
on to the vintage, satyrs tumbled down
into the shallows, and the mountain Pans
longed to catch Dōris, naked in the waves.
Be blessed, earth, for lord and lady both,
for all the Trojan’s and the Pylian’s years;
and do not change your noble servitude.
Let the Tirynthian hall with its display
surpass you not, nor the Dicharchan bay;
Let not the pleasant vineyards please them more
beside Galaesus, Therapnaean stream.
Here Pollius practices Pierian arts
whether he ponders Epicurus’ lore,
or strikes my lyre, or weaves unequal songs,
or threatens to unsheathe the avenging iamb.
Here lightly flies the Siren from her rock,
to better songs than hers; Tritonia there
listens and moves her crests. Then blustering gusts
are calm, the seas themselves no longer roar,
delightful dolphins rise up from the deep,
drawn to his lyre, and wander past the cliffs.
Live long, live wealthier than Midas’ treasure,
than Lydian gold, more blest than diadems
of Troy or Persia. The uncertain rods
of state, the fickle crowd, the laws, the camp,
shall not irk you, who in your mighty heart
tame hopes and fears, lifted above all prayers,
one who’s immune to fate and who rebuffs
indignant Fortune. When your last day comes,
you’ll not be found engulfed in doubtful doings,
but ready to depart, replete with life.
We, worthless crowd, always prepared to slave
away and long for fleeting benefits,
we’re scattered to the winds of chance; but you,
you from your mind’s high citadel despise
our wanderings, and laugh at human joys.
There was a time when you yourself were torn
by a twin land’s votes, when you were lifted high
through the two cities, by Dicarchus’ folk
greatly revered, adopted too by mine,
and generous here and there in equal share,
in the heat of youth, proud in your wandering
from the right path. But now, the fog dispersed,
you see the truth. Others are tossed about
again upon that ocean, but your ship
has come unshaken to a tranquil calm
in a safe harbour. So proceed, and never
send back your well-sailed ship into our storms.

And you, who stand above all Latin daughters,
whose mind equals your man’s, whose heart no cares,
whose brow no threats have turned, but in whose face
is candid joy, and pleasure free from cares:
for you no luckless strongbox suffocates
your wealth, no loss from greedy usury
torments your soul; your riches can be seen,
and with restraint and wisdom you enjoy them.
No hearts are joined under a better god,
no other minds has Concord better taught
to love their bonds. The joys of fleeting life
learn now carefree; flames mingled from your breasts
have made a lasting bond, and hallowed love
preserves the laws of honourable friendship.
Go through the years and centuries to come,
and outdo all the claims of ancient fame.

Symmachus to Ausonius again

2009-12-24T15:15:00.004Z

This letter combines several of the cliches of Symmachus' style; it begins with the 'nothing-to-write' topos, then identifies a subject, and reveals itself by the end as yet another letter of recommendation. The Rhetor Palladius had a successful career in Rome; it was not under Ausonius as Praetorian Prefect (376-9) that he moved on to a political career, but a few years after this letter, under Theodosius I in the east (he became Comes Sacrarum Largitionum in 381 and Magister Officiorum in 382-4).

What exactly the situation was in which Symmachus heard Palladius is not clear, nor what exactly the Latiare concilium, the group which heard Palladius put his declaiming skills into practice, was. John Matthews attractively adduces the parallel case of Augustine of Hippo; Symmachus as Prefect of Rome and famous orator heard the young rhetor in 384 and sent him off to Milan with a recommendation, with results that changed the history of Christian thought ("Four funerals and a wedding: this world and the next in fourth-century Rome", in P. Rousseau and M. Papoutsakis, Transformations of Late Antiquity: Essays for Peter Brown, Farnham, 129-146). I should also admit that I am not too sure of whether the text or my translation can be trusted in section 2, when Symmachus suggests that Palladius is part of a (non-literal?) family of speakers. I would love to be illuminated!

Ep. 1.15

1. It almost turned out that I communicated succinctly and briefly with you, since there was a lack of things worthy of mention, and when facts are absent there’s no point indulging in words, but in a timely fashion our rhetor Palladius’ declamation has lengthened my page. As it pleased the leading men of literature it should not be secret from you. So since such a report befits both my sense of duty and your enthusiasm, although our gathering has scarcely scattered, I have dictated with red-hot judgment an account of what I heard, while it’s still ringing in my ears. 2. The logos of our Athenian guest moved the Latian assembly with with the skill of his division, the abundance of his inventiveness, the seriousness of his feelings, the clarity of his words. I speak my opinion: he’s as proper in his speech as his morals. On this occasion the men of our city, who often disagree with each other about other things, held a united view of his excellence. I firmly believe, and my credence is not misplaced, that this is a family of rhetors; this race, full of genius, can be recognised. It is not features or complexion alone that claim descendants for their ancestor’s honour; nature has surer ways of claiming paternity. Heirs of thinking well and speaking well are born, not written into the will. What others have from teaching, he had from birth.
3. About this, my lord, I did not believe I should not keep silence, because I consider nothing of any weight beside my love for you, and because in turn I will never regret how valued I have become with you, and because I want for Palladius that things honourable to proclaim should not be hidden. Take care of your health, and since you have at hand the capacity to write, add to that the wish to do so.

Three more letters of Symmachus to Ausonius

2009-12-08T22:59:00.002Z

Two letters of recommendation and a thank you letter for a favour. This is the bread and butter of Symmachus' correspondence. Ausonius is at the peak of his power, Praetorian Prefect and either consul or consul elect.

Ep. 1.19

People who have been deserted by their self-confidence accept my letters to use their recommendations. It’s different in this case. I have given my letter to my brother Potitus on condition that he recommends it to you. He is, you see, no differently from me, among the highest of your friends. When he has brought you to share his presence, I fear that you will think my evasion not pardonable. But if through my experience I have properly become acquainted with your toleration towards me, I think it will turn out that you won’t attack me, who has stayed behind, in comparison with the other person who has come, but that you will welcome him all the more for the sake of us both. Farewell.

The letter is assumed to have been written at the end of 378 to excuse Symmachus for not coming to Trier for Ausonius' inauguration as consul on 1 January 379. Potitus was appointed Vicar of Rome later in 379.

Ep. 1.21

I rejoice that I’m worth more to you than the rest, when you are so energetic that on your own initiative you take care of my problem and don’t await entreaties, but follow the mere rumour of my wishes. I have received the four passports which will be incredibly convenient for my goings and comings. May the gods reward you for such kindness, and, since nothing can be added to blessings which are perfected and raised in a heap, may they keep safe with you and in your possession what they gave you. Farewell.

This letter is assumed to be from 379, when Ausonius holds both the senior consulate and the Praetorian Prefecture; he has sent Symmachus passes for use on the cursus publicus.

Ep. 1.26

I am making use with you of the confidence which you have given me. You have long been sparing of letters, but I shall not imitate your example, since I know that, for a man who’s placed at the pinnacle of honours and who therefore looks after varied and mighty concerns, it is not so much enthusiasm that is lacking as opportunity. It’s of course the way of the world that we consider things neglected despite all efforts as pardonable. But I, sure as always of your love, will not abstain from my customary sense of obligation, and will count it as the highest favour and honour, if profit in some form could fall to the good friend who will give you this letter, in proportion to his considerable attentions towards us. Farewell.

From around the same date, though it could be earlier on in Ausonius' period of power from 376-9.

Symmachus' speech for Trygetius

2009-11-08T12:53:00.006Z

Symmachus’ speeches were rediscovered in the early nineteenth century by Cardinal Angelo Mai. The manuscript is a fragmentary palimpsest from Bobbio, the same codex as gave us what we possess of Cicero’s De Re Publica and the letters of Fronto. None of Symmachus’ speeches survive complete.

This speech, we know from Ep. 1.44, was delivered on 9 January 376, just over a week after the events described in Ep. 1.13. The context is the same: the immediate aftermath of the accession of Gratian and a change of attitude towards the senate, and of his father’s return from temporary exile. The speech was to support the designation of the young son of his colleague Trygetius as praetor in ten years’ time. The praetorship was the office which in this period launched a senatorial career, in the holder’s late teens: it’s suggested that the games a praetor had to put on were so expensive that time that the family needed time to prepare. Symmachus appears to have hijacked this speech in order to thank the senate for his father’s recall, and to praise the young emperor in terms reminiscent of Pliny on Trajan. He later sent copies to many leading senators.

I am not aware of any previous translation into English. There is a German version by Angela Papst; and the speeches were translated in the fifth and final volume of Callu's Budé of Symmachus, published about a month ago. Symmachus' precise meaning is often hard to gauge. Any corrections gratefully received!

‘… from longing for (?) you [the senate] when we are away, from witnessing you, when we come. Nor do we fear Envy. She has felt and experienced how she benefited from hostility to my father. Now, he had of his own accord yielded to the convenience of a few though his modesty, and free of cares was cultivating his mind with literature in order to return to you a finer man. But this the most excellent order did not long tolerate: at once you besought him, as if from far away, that he should agree to return – you told him, I’d rather say, for the senate, when it asks, gives rather firm instructions. 2. This seemed too little for those who asked it. Especially noble men are sent to him as ambassadors, to convey and announce the public will. How great is this procession of your longing, which wanted its benefaction almost to seem like canvassing. I believe it was your will, that he should be called in some way by fetiales: only the rods and scared herbs were lacking. What you ask, conscript fathers, is sure to be followed and cannot be refused, but he was summoned as if he could have said no.

3. To you too, revered emperor, the highest of this praise should be offered: the man keeps a republic free, under whom something enviable is in the senate’s grant. This is why you are great, this is why you are outstanding, because you prefer to be first than to be alone. Whatever good men obtain, benefits your age. Many once dragged… [lacuna]… sighs, and, as though being loved were permitted only to emperors, trod down the merits of private citizens. But to me he seems truly the father of the fatherland, under whom the best man is not afraid to be praised. That too is the freedom from care of your time, that nobody thinks himself less in the prince’s eyes if the emperor prefers a second person to him. For what room is there for envy, since all are loved by you in their rightful place?

4. But that’s already more than enough about us! Let us give some effort, some time to Trygetius, a man who is a faultless senator, who desires that I should pray and prevail upon you, that the tenth year from now should be designated for his son to fill the duties of Praetor. If his willingness is to be examined, you ought to approve a senator who is generous; if his resources, you can impose nothing more. 5. It is fitting that I too be considered in this business, who am accustomed to offer thanks, who do not allow good deeds to be ignored. It’s right that favours are lent for the second time, when the first have been strong. Bind this man with a new debt, and me with a double…’

The Dutch Commentary on Ammianus

2009-11-03T21:56:00.007Z

A review of mine in the new Journal of Roman Studies (vol. 99 (2009), pp. 294-296). The commentators are not only remarkably good but also remarkably fast at their job. The commentary on Book 27 is due to be published on 31 December, less than two years after the last. (The bad news is that, with the collapse of the pound, it will be £110!)

J. den Boeft, J.W. Drijvers, D. den Hengst, H.C. Teitler, Philological and Historical Commentary on Ammianus Marcellinus XXV, Leiden: Brill, 2005. Pp. xxvi + 415. ISBN 978-9-00414-214-2. €119.

J. den Boeft, J.W. Drijvers, D. den Hengst, H.C. Teitler, Philological and Historical Commentary on Ammianus Marcellinus XXVI, Leiden: Brill, 2008. Pp. xxx + 356. ISBN 978-904016-212-9. €109.

The Dutch commentary on Ammianus is a remarkable achievement. The first six surviving books, 14-19, were covered single-handedly by Pieter de Jonge between 1935 and 1982. The tempo accelerated in 1987 when the baton passed to Den Boeft, Den Hengst, and Teitler; joined subsequently by Drijvers, they have now taken us as far as Book 26. De Jonge’s work focuses more on language than history and will in due course need replacing, but the current quadriga’s commentaries are unimpeachably multi-disciplinary, immensely thoughtful and learned, and likely to be used and admired for generations.

Books 25 and 26 are highlights in Ammianus’ history, with the death of the hero, Julian, and his replacement by inadequate successors, the short-lived Jovian, the brothers Valentinian and Valens, and the usurper Procopius. The commentators show due appreciation of the best passages, like Julian’s last speech (25.3.15-20) and the tsunami (26.10.15-19), while allowing themselves to be impatient of the confused pseudo-learning of the digression on the calendar (26.1.8-14). They cover almost every question raised by the text in luxuriant detail, and the bibliography is comprehensive. They march in step like the tetrarchs: this collaboration has none of the open disagreements of Woodman and Martin on Tacitus or Nisbet and Rudd on Horace, which is perhaps a pity.

The commentary is at its best on matters of philology (the province of Den Boeft and Den Hengst). They marry the grammatical expertise characteristic of their nation to an alertness to the nuances of late Latin. They comment usefully on the successes and failures of the major published translations, and in numerous places explain Ammianus’ often difficult usages (the palm goes to the explanation of why convenerat at 26.1.1 should be an irrealis). But they are notably bold – more, I think, than in previous volumes – about challenging Seyfarth’s conservative Teubner text, which they use for the lemmata. Particularly outstanding and significant textual notes come at 25.3.6 (Julian’s fatal wounding, where they propose the very meritorious in certamine), 25.7.13 (where the names of the Roman hostages guaranteeing the peace now include a senior general, Nevitta), but most of the rest are equally authoritative (see e.g. 26.10.5 paucos post dies, 26.10.16 revolutis [NB bold here substitutes for caret signs, not recognised by blogger]. They very occasionally defend the readings of the principal ms, the Fuldensis, against conjectures printed by Seyfarth (25.1.3, 26.5.1, 26.7.3), but much oftener argue forcefully for readings from Gelenius’ 1533 edition, which may well go back to the lost Hersfeldensis (fourteen times), the conjectures of earlier scholars, especially Valesius (over twenty times), and conjectures of their own (about ten times). About fifty divergences in two books prompts one to wonder whether it is not time for a new edition. Personally I would have changed the text in another ten places (e.g. they are right at 25.8.15 to commend Petschenig’s medimnus, but it should go in the text, not just the apparatus). My only criticism on textual matters is that the commentators do not always take enough account of Ammianus’ exceptionally regular prose rhythm. It is striking how often odd grammar and asyndeton coincides with poor cursus: at 26.6.17 the active detestabant is previously unattested and produces a poor clausula, and restoring the deponent regularises the cursus; at 25.3.17 an ugly asyndeton is also unrhythmical (read ínferens vel repéllens with Heraeus). At 25.4.19 the commentators should add rhythm to the arguments for their emendation cum háec ita éssent. Rhythm should have excluded E’s excogitata from consideration at 26.5.13, and also calls into question their acceptance of Sabinus’ circulo at 26.3.2 and G’s praeterlaberetur over Valesius’ praeterlambere at 25.10.5. Finally, while it is possible and plausible that Ammianus used venire for evenire, one of the three transmitted cases (neque secus venit, 26.9.4) gives a poor clausula (evenit would be fine), and in the other two (26.1.5, 29.1.26) the initial e could have been lost by haplography.

Questions of allusion – and Ammianus is very allusive – are comprehensively covered. One might pick out the use of Seneca to restore the text at 25.4.27, or a network of allusions to Lucan at 25.1.19 (apparently not previously observed). They equally expand our understanding of Ammianus’ engagement with contemporary texts (e.g. 26.2.2 on Symmachus, Or. 1 and 26.10 (introduction) on Libanius Or. 24; on Eutropius in the latter half of book 25 add my Ammianus (2008), 240-53). They are understandably cautious on questions of source criticism. In just a few places allusive engagement could be better handled. At 25.3.15 (the opening of Julian’s deathbed speech) they note the fact, but not the extent, of the similarity to one of Julian’s first speeches, at the battle of Strasbourg (16.12.30). At 25.10.13, after the emperor Jovian’s mysterious death in the night, Ammianus adduces an example: ‘although a similar departure from life befell him as Scipio Aemilianus, we find that a investigation was pursued into the death of neither.’ Earlier commentators compared Cicero, Mil. 16. Unfortunately, Den Boeft et al. quote the wrong part of the Cicero passage, relating to the death of M. Livius Drusus. The passage on Scipio’s death is much closer to Ammianus’ Latin, and attributes the death to nocturna vis. The case that Ammianus is hinting that Jovian was murdered is therefore much stronger than suggested here (‘not a good idea’).

If the historical aspects are not quite as authoritatively covered as the philological ones, they are still very good—and it is much less obvious what the responsibilities of a historical commentary are. Chronology is well covered in the introductions to each volume and passim; geography comes to the fore in the retreat from Persia; the two together in dealing with the rather tangled account of Procopius’ usurpation. They are judicious on prosopographical questions. On Ammianus’ general reliability they can be defensive. In particular they are reluctant fully to accept the case recently made by Barnes and Lenski, inter alios, for his tendentiousness about Jovian, though they occasionally offer evidence in support themselves (25.8.18). Other reviewers have commented on this (e.g. Kulikowski at BMCR 2006.04.31), so I will only add that at 25.5.9, they play down the significant echo of 21.16.21, which suggests that it was Ammianus’ own view that Jovian’s rule was shadow-like; at 25.9.11 they do not observe what was clear to Gibbon, that the exemplum of the Roman surrender of their disgraced general Mancinus to the Numantines in 137 BC hinted that Jovian deserved to be handed over to the Persians (and John of Antioch in fact tells us that people in Antioch thought the same). The authors are generally hostile to Barnes’ case that Ammianus was a militant pagan. They score a few minor hits at 25.4.3, 25.5.3 (though could this be a ‘formal’ second person plural?) and 25.5.8; but the absence of reference to Jovian’s Christianity until his obituary (Book 25, p. xiii) is not conclusive evidence against anti-Christian bias. On the contrary, it shows that something very odd is going on.

There is nothing so controversial in the coverage of Valentinian and Valens, though they do not really engage with a view conveyed both in D. S. Potter’s The Roman Empire at Bay (2004) and R. M. Errington’s Roman Imperial Policy from Julian to Theodosius (2006). The selection of emperors after the dominant Constantius and Julian passed into the hands of the military high command and they chose those whom they control. Valentinian is a much weaker ruler than his ostentatious terribilità implies, and we should reconsider the implications of anecdotes like that retailed by Ammianus about the magister equitum Dagalaifus (he told Valentinian that he could elevate his brother if he loved his family, somebody else if he loved the republic, 26.3.1).

A major controversy about these books concerns dating, and here the commentators are again helpful but not quite as helpful as they could be. In his Pauly article of 1894, Otto Seeck proposed that Ammianus had originally stopped writing at the end of Book 25 at the end of the 380s and that the last six books, 26-31, were added later. This view, which is neither unsupported nor compelling, has been taken as established by most scholars since, but in the last generation some heavyweights have argued for earlier publication of the final books (Straub, Cameron, Matthews, Barnes, and Lizzi Testa among them). The commentators have thought about these problems, but point in completely different directions. At the end of Book 25, the case is made that the final anecdote would not have been an inappropriate ending for a first edition; in the introduction to Book 26 it is argued that the last six books belong after 390 (cf. 26.5.14), and probably after the death of Valentinian II in A.D. 392 (presumably because of Ammianus’ frankness about his father, though that argument would be more convincing if Valentinian II had not been a cipher). But in the commentary at 26.1.1, the most significant single prop for Seeck’s dating (the interpretation of convenerat as referring to an earlier stopping point) is kicked away. It was a pity not to deal with the whole problem in the introduction to book 26.

However, any minor criticisms and supplements which I offer here should not detract from our appreciation for this magnificent – and thankfully ongoing – scholarly monument.

Another letter to Ausonius (Symmachus Ep. 1.14)

2009-10-31T22:52:00.006Z

This one certainly has been translated before, many times (I haven't compared this version to any others except Callu's Budé). It is usually found with editions of Ausonius' Mosella, a delicious irony given that Symmachus' letter complains of the fact that Ausonius did not send him a copy of the poem. The conceit count is through the roof, and there are doubtless some that I have missed. The date is the early 370s, as there are references to Symmachus' stay at court in Trier at the end of 360s, but the western emperors are still Valentinian (d. 375) and Gratian. The version of the Mosel here described is therefore prior to the one that now survives, which refers obliquely to Ausonius' consulship of 379. The circles in Rome to whom it was sent may have been linked to the Prefect of Illyricum, Italy, and Africa, Sex. Claudius Petronius Probus, who has plausibly identified as the holder of high office praised in the latter stages of the poem.

You ask me for a longer letter. That is a sign of true affection for me. But since I am aware of the poverty of my intellect, I prefer striving for Laconic brevity to laying open, over manifold pages, the meagreness of my immaturity. And no surprise if the vein of my eloquence is diminished, since you have not helped by letting me read any poem of yours, nor any volumes in prose. Why do you request such a sizeable loan of my conversation, when you have trusted me with nothing of your own literary credit. 2. Your Mosella is flying through many people’s hands and laps, immortalised in divine verses by you, but its flow goes past my lips alone. Why, tell me, did you wish me to be deprived of that little book of yours? Either I must seem to you too kulturlos to be able to judge, or at any rate malicious so as not to know how to praise! So you either traduced my intellect or my character. And still, against your ban, I have managed, barely, to discover that work’s secrets. 3. I’d like to be silent about what I feel; I’d like to get revenge with a justifiable silence about you, but admiration for your writings breaks through my hurt feelings. I knew your river myself, when some time ago I was a companion [i.e. comes] to the standards of the eternal emperors: it is the equal of great rivers, unequal to the greatest. This river, against my expectations, you have rendered with the dignity of your lofty verses greater than Egyptian Melo, colder than Scythian Tanais, and more famous than our fellow citizen here, the Tiber. I would absoluely not believe the many things you say about the rise and flow of the Mosel, if I didn’t know for sure that you don’t lie even in a poem. 4. Where did you find those swarms of river fish, so various in their names and their colours alike, so distinct as in their size so in their taste, which you with the palette of your song have coloured beyond the gifts of nature? Although I often experienced your table, and though I often marvelled at many other things which offered for consumption in the palace, I never managed to catch this sort of fish. When were these fish of yours born in your book (they never existed in serving dishes)? 5. You think I am joking and dealing in trifles? So may I be esteemed by the gods, I place this poem of yours by the books of Vergil. But now I’ll stop being cloying in praise of you and forgetful of my hurt, in case you also twist to your glory the fact that I am offended and amazed. Even if you scatter your books around and always leave me out, I’ll still enjoy your work—but other people’s generosity.
Farewell.

A classics issue of TLS

2009-10-03T10:47:00.003Z

The Times Literary Supplement covers classics very well - unsurprisingly, with Peter Stothard as Editor and Mary Beard as Classics editor. Their reviews on all subjects tend to be the right length, finding a golden mean between the curt notices of Literary Review or the newspapers, and the endless narcissistic non-reviews of the ghastly London Review of Books.

Those classicists who are not subscribers may want to buy this week's issue. It contains reviews by Mary Beard on two books, one on the Verrines (Margaret Miles) and one on the Borghese collections (Carole Paul), which she links by an argument about cultural property; Christopher Kelly on collections edited by Walter Scheidel and by Fritz-Heiner Mutschler and Achim Mittage on comparisons between the ancient Roman and Chinese empires; Peter Stothard on Robert Harris' new Cicero novel, Lustrum (which I'd rush out and buy, were it not that I can't see time to read novels coming up in the next few weeks); Rowland Smith on a new edition of Seneca's De Clementia by Susannah Braund; Denis Feeney on Ruth Webb's Demons and Dancers: performance in late antiquity, as well as an edited volume on ancient pantomime; Malcolm Schofield on the final volume of Simon Hornblower's monumental commentary on Thucydides (the one review which should definitely have been given more space); and Gail Trimble on Katharina Volk's book on Manilius.

In the novels section is a much slighter review of mine on a piece of popular fiction set in the ancient world, the second volume of Glyn Iliffe's Adventures of Odysseus. Regrettably, an editorial intervention at a late stage, after I had already corrected it back, led to the review implying that the book includes the tale of the Trojan horse. It doesn't. So I offer here the full review before cuts:

Glyn Iliffe, The Gates of Troy
478pp. Macmillan. £12.99
978 0 230 52929 8

One consolation for Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy (2004) was to be reminded through the film’s flaws of Homer’s brilliant selectiveness in narrative: the Iliad starts in medias res and ends with the sack of Troy still unachieved but inevitable (and thus evades the charming but silly story about the horse). The long list of those who have, with varying success, expanded and elaborated on Homer is now joined by Glyn Iliffe: his six-volume Adventures of Odysseus are projected to cover the hero’s whole career, though it appears that he may intend to focus on events not described in the Homeric poems. This, the second volume, opens ten years after the events of the first (King of Ithaca, 2008). Odysseus is established on Ithaca with Penelope and the newborn Telemachus, when the news comes of Helen’s elopement with Paris. The story is taken through a series of semi-familiar set pieces from the epic cycle – the feigned madness of Odysseus, Achilles among the women of Scyros, Iphigenia at Aulis, the marooning of Philoctetes – and climaxes with the Greeks landing at Troy.

Iliffe is a talented storyteller, but it is hard not to see him struggling somewhat with the episodic nature of the material, and also the fact that some of it is just as hard to take or describe seriously as the Trojan horse. Still, his plotting is very much helped by having the archetypal plotter as protagonist. Odysseus’ wiliness is sharpened by being observed through his guard-captain, Eperitus, a more stolid and traditional hero.

Eperitus does not know what to think when Odysseus tells him that ‘the age of heroes is gone… we’re entering a time of kings’. Eperitus’ uncertainty here can stand for what is distinctive and potentially problematic about this book. It straddles the genres of historical novel (a paradox in a period of which we know next to nothing), and fantasy (unlike Petersen, he keeps the gods in his story). Iliffe does not so much offer an imaginitive reconstruction of Greek life in the heroic age, in the manner of Mary Renault’s Theseus books, as a blend of elements taken from different periods of Greek history: Mycenaean, dark-age, and occasionally classical. Readers will have varying feelings about how successful this melange is – but they should consider that his practice is not so different from Homer’s.

Bishop Lucifer of Cagliari

2009-09-21T22:53:00.007Z

A recent holiday in Sardinia took me to the (alleged) tomb of Lucifer, bishop of Cagliari in the mid-fourth century. Lucifer of Cagliari's reputation is founded on being the most wackily-named bishop of late antiquity, and also for his trailblazing status as a bishop who used his status to call a Christian emperor (Constantius II) names (the anti-Christ, etc.). He was exiled to Egypt, but was treated altogether more pleasantly that Constantius treated civilian enemies. A translation of his works is being made by Richard Flower of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.

When the cattedrale di S. Maria was built in the early seventeenth century, the crypt was almost wholly dedicated to relics of martyrs brought over from the old church named for San Saturnino. There is row upon row of little wall monuments. Lucifer's statue is placed at the east end of the chapel on the right. It has three inscriptions. The one on the statue base records the role of Archbishop Ambrogio Machin (1627-40) and refers, quite anachronistically, to Lucifer as a spirited speaker in the Roman curia. The next one reads:

+die xxi iunii MDCXXIII inventum corpus S. Luciferi ar[chiepisco]pi Cal[aritani] in capellam hanc eius nomini per ill[ustrem] d[ominum] Franc[iscum] Desquivel Ar[chiepisco]pu[m] Cal[aritanum] dicatam translatum fuit die xxi [M]aii MDCXXVI
On the 21st day of June 1623 was found the body of S. Lucifer archbishop of Cagliari, transferred to this chapel, dedicated to his name by the illustrious Don Francesco d'Esquivel archbishop of Cagliari, on the 21st day of May 1626.

For a late Romanist, it is amusing to see the convenient 'discovery' of bodies, as pioneered by Ambrose of Milan, still in practice (not that there aren't more recent examples). I also wonder why Lucifer was translated on 21st May and not on his feast day, the 20th. The third inscription (below) also calls Lucifer an 'archbishop', anachronistically, and additionally makes him primate of Sardinia and Corcica [sic!] (I don't know if this is an anachronism but would expect so). But the weird thing is that it calls him B.M., which I think has to mean Beatus Martyr (by the way, if anyone can explain the first half of line 4, let me know!).

Lucifer was no martyr, and he was a questionable sort of Catholic saint, when you consider that he inspired a sect, the Luciferians, who were castigated as heretics by Jerome. What is most interesting here is the (literal) rediscovery and reuse by seventeenth-century archbishops of a predecessor who might have been thought quite problematic. I wonder how far their factual slips were based on ignorance, and how far they were calculated. It would be a fine subject for a historian who combined an expertise in the history of patristic scholarship and seventeenth-century Sardinia!

The church of Cagliari also commemorated several doublets of Lucifer: the crypt contains wall memorials covering the remains of S. Lucifer the Presbyter, and S. Lucifera, both martyrs of Cagliari. Whether Lucifer was a common name in Cagliari, or whether this is a neat illustration of how catholic cult despised birth control when it came to engendering martyrs, I leave to readers to decide.

Harry Sidebottom's Ballista

2009-09-17T22:52:00.006Z

A recent short review of mine from the Times Literary Supplement of 7 August.

Harry Sidebottom
WARRIOR OF ROME: PART TWO. KING OF KINGS

King of Kings is the second volume in a trilogy of military-historical novels set in the mid-third century AD Roman empire. Few people know as much about this shadowy period of Roman history as Harry Sidebottom: the title page credits him with his doctorate, and there are over twenty pages of historical apparatus, with suggestions for further reading and a glossary. Such academic material may seem jarring in this rollocking page-turner. In fact, the author’s learning, though lightly worn, combines with his narrative skills to produce a superior example of genre fiction, with unusual depth, authenticity, and sense of place.

The lack of known names and dates in the period gives plenty of scope for the historian’s and novelist’s imagination; the first volume, Fire in the East (2008), focused on the fiectional Persian siege of a fictional Roman city in AD 256, modelled on the siege of Amida a century later. The present tale is woven around a military campaign of 257, contemporary persecutions of Christians, and the capture of the emperor Valerian by Shapur I of Persia in 260. This division into three separate narratives means that this story is perhaps not quite as consistently successful as the previous volume (which should certainly be read first); but the climax is very well done.

Sidebottom captures the group psychology of soldiers, and he is good on the peculiar role of ‘barbarian’ soldiers in the Roman army. His hero, Ballista, is an Angle (his chief sidekicks are a large-hearted Irishman and a grumpy Caledonian). Although he has as much culture, and greater linguistic ability and strategic intelligence, than Roman colleagues, Ballista is seen as suspect and is expendable when the chips are down. Having the Romans viewed through the eyes of semi-outsiders also helps the novelist to avoid didacticism. The text offers a number of hints as to Ballista’s future career, and in the next volume he will merge with the little that’s known of the historical Ballista.

One colleague wrote wondering how favourable I had meant to be, perhaps because quite a few of my adjectives were removed in order to fit this on a page with three other reviews. Lest there be any doubt, these books are a great read. There is plenty of good robust historical military fiction about, but it is striking to see it combined with such academic expertise without loss of narrative vigour.

I did think that the second volume was not quite as unremittingly exciting as the first; and I should expand on an oblique comment above. It seemed clear to me that the central and recurring model for the siege which is the principal episode of Fire in the East is a later event, the Persian invasion of Roman Mesopotamia and the sack of Amida (Diyarbakir) in AD 359, described in detail by Ammianus Marcellinus in books 18 and 19. Sidebottom has detailed supplementary material about ancient sources and further reading, but he never mentions Ammianus. I don't see that this is wrong - it's a work of fiction, after all - but it is odd. I shall put the novel in the bibliography when I teach Ammianus books 18 and 19 in the new year, and take pleasure in the thought that my favourite historian inspired - as well, perhaps, as exhibiting - 'the creative and imaginitive powers of a novelist'.

Symmachus to Ausonius (2)

2009-09-16T22:04:00.007Z

So what is Symmachus letter 1.13 all about (incidentally, I decided to add the Latin text to the previous post)? Perhaps I should have read more widely, but I have yet to see the context of this letter properly explained. Here is my take.

Symmachus was a prominent and aristocratic young member of the Roman senate in January 376. But he was not yet what he was to become: a Prefect of the City (in 384-5) or a consul (in 391). Indeed, his father L. Aurelius Avianus Symmachus had on the very same day returned to Rome from unofficial exile, after after an unwise alleged remark prompted the plebs to burn down his townhouse. But Symmachus did have one advantage over his peers: most of them had never been to court – indeed, the senate had a notoriously bad relationship with the emperor Valentinian – but Symmachus had, on an embassy at the turn of the 360s/370s. At Trier he had given panegyrics of the emperor Valentianian and of his young son Gratian and been promoted to Count, third class; he had also met Gratian’s tutor, Ausonius. And Ausonius, like his imperial masters, had never been to Rome. They maintained a correspondence thereafter (occasionally, as the opening lines of this letter suggest).

On 17 November 375, a month and a half before the events described in this letter, the emperor Valentinian died of a stroke, in Brigetio, near modern Budapest. The heir to the western empire was Gratian, who had held the title of Augustus since 367, but who was many hundreds of miles away in Trier. The civil and military high command on the ground, aided by Valentinian’s widow, decided on the quite unconstitutional promotion to Augustus of Gratian’s half-brother, Valentinian II, in Aquincum (Budapest) on 23 November.

Imagine the position of the teenage Gratian, hearing, perhaps in late November, that his father is dead and that he is the sole western ruler, and then a week later, that the army in Illyricum, many hundreds of miles away, has proclaimed his four year old half-brother as an emperor. He can’t disown his brother, but neither can he allow the civil and military authorities in Illyricum, abetted by his stepmother, to establish a puppet emperor (it is vitally important, I think, that Gratian is in a separate Prefecture, that of Gaul, which also covered Britain and Spain, from that of Illyricum, which also covers Italy and north Africa).

Gratian needs to exercise his control over the whole of the Roman west, the Gallic and Illyrican prefectures, and particularly over Rome itself; he needs to make sure that Valentinian II is not a threat to him. So he needs to win over the senate, who have suffered under his father from investigations on charges of magic and treason. Torture and executions have occurred. A message of conciliation needs to be got to them – by New Year’s day they have spent weeks wondering how Gratian will react to Valentinian II. If you consider that Gratian in Trier may not have heard of his father’s death and the threat from his younger brother till well into December 375, it is not incredible that his messenger to the senate may only have arrived in Rome on the night of the New Year, the day when the new consuls were announced. The messenger’s breathless haste may not be a commonplace! He may really have been in a desperate rush.

To whom had Gratian turned to compose his message to the senate, asserting conciliation and control? Roman emperors had on official who drafted laws and speeches, the quaestor sacri palatii – and Gratian’s quaestor was Ausonius. This is why Symmachus represents Ausonius as so keen to know how the message went down (though preserving the established fiction that the speech is Gratian’s own). In a different sense, the fact that Ausonius was Gratian’s quaestor, and that Symmachus is one of the only senators who has actually met him, is why Symmachus is so keen to exploit the connection. Gratian’s and Ausonius’ concessions to the senate obviously helped to establish their control over the whole of the west. And, as I shall show in future posts, Symmachus’ sycophancy worked in making him a leading spokesman of the Roman senate and in reestablishing his and his father’s credentials.

A letter to Ausonius (Symmachus Ep. 1.13)

2009-09-14T22:26:00.005Z

Soon after 1 January 376, Q. Aurelius Symmachus wrote from Rome to Ausonius, who was serving as Quaestor to Gratian, now the senior emperor in the west. Perhaps, as with Festus, this has actually been published in English translation before, but if so I don't remember seeing it anywhere in complete form.

Symmachus to Ausonius

Joyfulness is accustomed to be eloquent and, spurning the narrows of a closed heart, to exult: as for you, my friend, good fortune has made you forget to write. This could not be a point for me to imitate, whom our Lord Gratian’s heavenly speech has filled with good hope and joyfulness. So I have not refrained for my own part from addressing a sluggard, because it’s my duty to do so, or my joy: our friendship suggested one of these options, public felicity the other. 2. If you can spare the time, please cast your mind back just a bit for my purposes.

Janus was opening the first Kalends of the year. We had come, a packed senate, into the curia that morning, before clear day could undo the dark of night. By chance a rumour had been brought, that the words of a longed-for prince had arrived far into the night. And it was true, for a courier stood there exhausted from his sleepless nights. We rush together when the sky was not yet white: with the lamps lit, the destinies of the new age are recited. Need I say more? We welcomed the light which we were still awaiting. 3. ‘Tell me’ you say – for this is important to hear – ‘what did the Fathers feel about that speech.’ May Nature herself answer with those wishes with which longed-for piety is heard. We know to embrace our blessings. If you can believe it, I even now suffer a certain indigestion of that joy of mine. Good Nerva, toiling Trajan, guiltless Pius, Marcus abounding in responsibility were helped by the times, which then did not know other morals: it is the nature of the prince that is a matter of praise now, then it was the blessing of olden times. Why, with order reversed, should we think these examples of outstanding traits and those remnants of an earlier age? 4. May Fortune preserve her blessing, and desire at least to save for the Roman name this beloved! Let the public joy be bitten by no witchcraft! You have heard everything – but only the very first tiny effusions from my lips. The glories of our curia will talk more fully with you. Then, when you find more written to you, think how much more eloquent are the thoughts of one man’s mind than all our effusions of applause. Farewell.

Symmachus Ausonio

Solet facundia esse laetitia et angustias clausi pectoris aspernata gestire; tibi, amice, scribendi officium oblivionem peperit res secunda. id mihi imitationi esse non potuit, quem domini nostri Gratiani caelestis oratio bonae spei et hilaritatis implevit. Ultro igitur adloqui residem non peperci vel officii vel gaudii mei gratia, quorum alterum familiaritas nostra, alterum felicitas publica suggerebat. 2. nunc si operae est, utendum mihi tantisper animum fac remittas. primores Kalendas Ianus anni aperibat. frequens senatus mature in curiam veneramus, priusquam manifestus dies creperum noctis absolveret. forte rumor adlatus est sermonem desiderati principis multa nocte venisse. et erat verum; nam tabellarius vigiliarum fessus adstabat. nondum caelo albente concurritur; luminibus accensis novi saeculi fata recitantur. quid multa? lucem, quam adhuc opperiebamur, accepimus. 3. dic mihi, inquies - nam id praestat audire - quid nostri patres super ea oratione senserunt? rerum tibi natura respondeat quibus suffragiis exoptata pietas audiatur. novimus bona nostra complecti. si credis, etiamnum illius gaudii mei quandam patior cruditatem. bonus Nerva, Traianus strenuus, Pius innocens, Marcus plenus officii temporibus adiuti sunt, quae tunc mores alios nesciebant: hic in laude est natura principis, ibi priscae munus aetatis. cur verso ordine ista optimarum artium putemus exempla et illa de saeculo priore vestigia? 4. beneficium suum fortuna tutetur et has saltem Romano nomini velit servare delicias! nullo fascino felicitas publica mordeatur! audisti omnia, de summo tenus ore libata; monumenta curiae nostrae plenius tecum loquentur. ubi cum plura scripta reppereris, aestima quanto uberiora unius mens optaverit, quam plausus effuderit. vale.

A conjectural supplement to Festus

2007-04-08T22:46:00.000Z

quam magno deinceps ore tua, princeps inuicte, facta sunt personanda! quibus me licet imparem dicendi nisu et aeuo grauiorem parabo. maneat modo concessa dei nutu et ab amico, cui credis et creditus es, numine indulta felicitas, ut ad hanc ingentem de Gothis etiam Babyloniae tibi palma pacis accedat.

Thenceforth with how great a voice should your deeds, unconquered prince, resound! I shall prepare myself for them though unequal to the task of speaking and weighed down by age. Let only that good fortune remain, granted by God’s will and allowed by that friendly deity in whom you trust and to whom are entrusted, so that to this great [victory] over the Goths you may add the palm of peace in Babylon.

The closing words of Festus’ Breviarium allow us to date it. Valens had ended his (first) war with the Goths in the summer of 369, in a stalemate presented as victory, and he was preparing to move to the Eastern front – a move which is the context of the whole second half of the Breviarium (15-30).

Like his contemporary Eutropius, and Ammianus twenty years later, Festus referred in his closing words to the commonplace that the current reign was material worthy not of history but panegyric. And the style of his closing words is appropriately loftier. But not without awkwardness. In particular, after ad hanc ingentem de Gothis (‘to this enormous [something] over the Goths’) the reader has to supply a feminine noun from what follows, which will have to be palma, palm. Arnaud-Lindet’s translation shows the awkwardness:

‘…de telle façon qu’à celle, magnifique, remportée sur les Gots, s’ajoute encore la palme de la paix imposée à Babylone!’

Better, I think, to assume that a word has dropped out, and it can supplied easily enough:

…ut ad hanc ingentem de Gothis uictoriam etiam Babyloniae tibi palma pacis accedat.

As indeed I have supplied it in the translation above.

The reason for the disappearance of uictoriam is the similarity of ending with the word etiam which follows. The metaphor is also a rendered much more satisfactory. After all, in fourth-century art, the goddess/ personification Victory is standardly shown carrying a palm. Although palma can be a virtual synonym for victory in this period, an enormous (ingens) Victory/ victory is less incongruous than an enormous palm of peace, and a victory over the Goths is expressed as uictoria de Gothis far more easily than as palma de Gothis. See, for example, a few chapters earlier, where Constantine was ‘more glorious from his recent victory over the Goths’, recenti de Gothis uictoria gloriosior (26.1).

The Breviarium of Festus

2007-04-07T23:18:00.003Z

The first post should doubtless be short. 6000 words, short? In its way. Festus' Breviarium, dedicated to the emperor Valens in 370, has not previously been translated into English, as far as I know. I shall hope to follow it up with comments on individual points. The text translated is Arnaud-Lindet's Bude, for the most part.

Disclaimer: this is a tentative translation, undertaken at speed and intended as a guide to the content of the breviary. I have aimed to be literal not elegant. For example, I have adopted the late Roman usage of referring to countries which the Romans divided up into provinces in the plural (the Spains, the Mauritanias). Festus’ brevity led him to make some embarrassing mistakes, but not all the mistakes are his by any means. I have not had time to think carefully about all the textual problems. The existing editions do not offer a very translatable text, and it would be misleading to offer something smoother.

1.1. To become brief Your Clemency advises; I shall gladly obey the advice, as one who lacks the capacity to elaborate expansively; and following the practice of accountants, who express huge sums with abbreviated figures, I shall outline and not elaborate history. 2. So receive a work such as is totted up more briefly than words briefly spoken: so that you seem, glorious prince, not so much to read of the years and age [n.1] of the republic and the deeds of past time, as to count them.

2.1. From the foundation of the city, then, up to the rise of Your Perpetuities, by which the rule of brothers became Rome’s lot with happier outcome, there are counted 1117 years. So under the kings are counted 243 years, under the consuls 467 years, under the emperors 407 years. 2. There reigned at Rome for 243 years kings seven in number. Romulus reigned 37 years, the senators, five days each, for one year, Numa Pompilius reigned 43 years; Tullus Hostilius reigned 32 years, Ancus Martius reigned 24 years; Priscus Tarquinius reigned 38 years; Servius Tullius reigned 44 years; Lucius Tarquinius Superbus was driven from the kingship in the 24th year. 3. The consuls from Brutus and Publicola down to Pansa and Hirtius were 916 [or 917?] in number, except those who by some chance were substitutes for the same year, over 467 years. For in nine year there were not consuls at Rome; in two years under the decemvirs, in three years under the military tribunes, and Rome was without magistrates for four years. 4. The emperors from Octavian Caesar Augustus down to Jovian were 43 in number over 407 years.

3.1. To what extent Rome advanced under these three types of empire (that is, royal, consular, imperial) I shall briefly make known. Under the seven kings over 342 years, the Roman Empire did not advance further than Portus and Ostia, within the eighteenth milestone from the gates of the city of Rome, still small as she was and founded by shepherds, while neighbouring cities pressed around. 2. Under the consuls, among whom there were also occasionally dictators, over a total period of 467 years Italy up to beyond the Po was occupied, Africa was subdued, the Spains were added, the Gauls and Britains were made tributary. Out of Illyricum, the Histrians, Libyrnians and Dalmatians were tamed; the crossing to Achaea was made; the Macedonians were subdued; war was waged on the Dardanians, Moesians and Thracians, and as far as the Danube was attained. 3. In Asia the Romans first set their feet when Antiochus was expelled, when Mithridates was vanquished Pontus, his kingdom, was occupied; lesser Armenia, which the same man had held, was taken with arms; a Roman army reached into Mesopotamia; a treaty was entered with the Parthians; war was made on the Carduenians and Saracens and Arabs; all Judaea was vanquished; Cilicia, the Syrias came into the power of the Roman people; the kings of Egypt had been made federates. 4. Under the emperors over 407 years, when many emperors ruled and the republic’s Fortune was variable, there were added to the Roman world the Maritime Alps, the Cottian Alps, the Rhaetias, Noricums, [n.2] Pannonias and Moesias and the whole shore of the Danube was turned into provinces. [n.3] All of Pontus, Armenia minor, the whole of Oriens with Mesopotamia, Assyria, Arabia and Egypt passed beneath the laws of the Roman Empire.

4.1. And the order in which the Roman state acquired the individual provinces is shown below. Sicily was made the first of the provinces. It was obtained by Marcellus the consul, when Hiero king of the Sicilians was vanquished. It was then ruled by Praetors, afterwards was entrusted to praesides: now it’s governed by consulares. 2. Sardinia and Corsica Metellus conquered; he triumphed over the Sardinians – the Sardinians often restarted the war. The government of these provinces had been joined, afterwards they had their own praetors, now they’re individually ruled by praesides. 3. Roman arms moved across to Africa for the defence of the Sicilians. Three times Africa returned to war; at the last, when Carthage had been destroyed by Africanus Scipio, it was made a province, and now is under proconsuls. 4. Numidia used to be held by friendly kings, but against Jugurtha war was declared, because he’d killed Adherbal and Hiempsal, the sons of King Micipsa; and when he had been ground down by Metellus, and captured by Marius, Numidia came within the power of the Roman people. 5. The Mauritanias were obtained by Bocchus. But when all Africa had been subdued, King Juba ruled the Mauri, and having been conquered in the course of civil war by Augustus Caesar he chose by his own wish to kill himself. 6. So the Mauritanias began to be ours and throughout all Africa six provinces were made: Africa herself, where Carthage is, is proconsular, Numidia is consular, Byzacium is consular, Tripolis and the two Mauritanias (i.e. Sitifensis and Caesariensis) are under praesides.

5.1. The Spaniards we first helped against the Africans through Scipio. We acquired the Lusitanians when they made war again in Spain, thanks to Decimus Brutus, and we reached as far as the sea of Ocean at Cadiz. Afterwards Sylla was sent against the restless Spaniards and defeated them. 2. The Celtiberians in Spain often restarted hostilities, but the younger Scipio was sent and they were subdued with the sack of Numantia. Almost all the Spains, as a result of the war with Sertorius, were taken under jurisdiction through Metellus and Pompeius. Afterwards, his command having been prorogued for five years, they were tamed by Pompeius. At the last, also the Cantabrians and Astures, who were relying on the mountains for resistance, were destroyed by Octavian Caesar Augustus. 3. And throughout all the Spains there are now six provinces: Tarraconensis, Carthaginensis, Lusitania, Gallaecia, Baetica; across the strait too there is a province of the Spains on African soil, which is called Tingitana Mauritania. Of these Baetica and Lusitania are consular, the rest are under praesides.

6.1. With the Gauls the Roman people had the gravest wars. The Gauls even used to occupy that part of Italy, in which Milan is now, as far as the river Rubicon; they were confident in their strength to such an extent that they made for Rome herself in war; after the slaughter of Roman armies they entered the walls of the city; they besieged the Capitolium, to whose citadel six hundred most noble senators had fled; these ransomed themselves from the siege with a thousand pounds of gold. Afterwards as the Gauls returned in victory, Camillus, who was in exile, defeated them with a host he had raised in the countryside; he took back the gold and the statues which the Gauls had captured. 2. With the Gauls many consuls, praetors and dictators engaged with various results. Marius expelled the Gauls from Italy, and having surmounted the Alps he fought successfully against them. With ten legions, which had three thousand Italian soldiers each, Gaius Caesar over nine years subdued the Gauls from the Alps up to the Rhine, engaged with the barbarians across the Rhine, crossed into Britain, in the tenth year made the Gauls and the Britains tributary. 3. There are in Gaul, Aquitaine, and the Britains eighteen provinces: the Maritime Alps, the province of Vienne, Narbonensis, Novempopulana, the two Aquitaines, the Graian Alps, Maxima Sequanorum, two Germanies, two Belgiums, two Ludgunenses; in Britain, Maxima Caesariensis, Flavia Caesariensis, first Britain, second Britain.

7.1. We attacked Illyricum gradually from the sea-coast. The consul Laevinus first entered the Adriatic and Ionian Sea and took the cities on the shore. Crete was made a province by the proconsul Metellus, who was called Creticus. 2. When the Greeks fled into our protection we reached Achaia. The Athenians sought our help against Philip, king of the Macedonians. Achaia was long free under our friendships; at the last, when the emissaries of the Romans had been violated at Corinth, through the proconsul Lucius Mummius Corinth was captured and all Achaia was taken. The Epirotes, who at one time had even presumed with King Pyrrhus to cross to Italy, were vanquished and the Thessalians, together with the regions of the Achivi and Macedonians joined us. 3. Macedonia three times took up arms again, under Philip, under Perses, under Pseudophilip. Flamininus defeated Philip, Paulus Perses, Metellus Pseudophilip, and by their triumphs Macedonia was annexed to the Roman people. 4. The Illyrians, who helped the Macedonians, we conquered on the same occasion through the praetor Lucius Anicius, and accepted their surrender together with Gentius their king. The proconsul Curio subdued the Dardanians and Moesiaci, and became the first Roman commander to reach as far as the Danube. 5. Under Julius Octavianus Caesar Augustus a path was made across the Julian Alps. When all the Alpine peoples were conquered, the provinces of the Noricums joined. When Batho king of the Pannonians had been subdued, the Pannonias came under our sway. When the Amantini had been laid low between the Savus and Dravus, the Savian region and the country of the Second Pannonians were taken.

8.1. The Marcomanni and the Quadi were driven from the country of Valeria, between the Danube and the Dravus, and a boundary between the Romans and barbarians was set up, running from Augsburg through Noricum, the Pannonias and Moesia. 2. Trajan conquered the Dacians under King Decebalus and made Dacia across the Danube on the land of Barbaria a province, which had a circumference of ten thousand miles, but it was lost under the emperor Gallienus, and through Aurelian, the Romans were removed thence and two Dacias were created in the regions of Moesia and Dardania. 3. Illyricus [n.4] has 18 provinces: two of the Noricums, two of the Pannonias, Valeria, Savia, Dalmatia, Moesia, two of the Dacias, Dardania, and in the Macedonian diocese there are seven provinces: Macedonia, Thessaly, Achaia, two Epiruses, Praevalis, Crete.

9.1. On the occasion of the Macedonian war, the crossing was made into the Thraces. The Thracians were the most savage of all races. In the regions of the Thracians the Scordisci also lived, equal in cruelty and cunning. Many things of a fabulous nature are said about the savagery of the aforementioned, that they sometimes appeased their gods with sacrifices of captives, that they were wont to drink human blood in skulls. Often through them the Roman army was cut down. 2. Marcus Didius stopped the wandering Tracians, Marcus Drusus kept them within their own borders, Minucius laid them waste in the ice of the river Hebrus. Through the proconsul Appius Claudius those who inhabited Rhodopa were vanquished. The Roman fleet previously took the coastal cities of Europe. 3. Marcus Lucullus was the first to enter into conflict with the Bessi in the Thraces. He conquered Thrace herself, the heartland of the race; he subdued the Haemimontani; Eumolpias (now called Philippopolis) and Uscumada (recently named Hadrianople) he reduced to our sway; he captured Cabyle; he occupied the cities situated on the Black Sea: Apollonia, Calathus, Parthenopolis, Tomi, Hister. Reaching as far as the Danube he showed Roman arms to the Scythians. 4. So for the republic’s jurisdiction six provinces of the Thraces were acquired: Thrace, Haemimontus, Moesia inferior, Scythia, Rhodopa, Europa. In Europa the second citadel of the Roman world is now established, Constantinople.

10.1. Now I shall unfold the areas of the dawn, and the whole East and the provinces set beneath the neighbouring sun, and which begetters laid the way for your rule, so that the enthusiasm which your clemency has for increasing the same may be spurred on all the more. 2. Asia became known to the Romans through the alliance of King Attalus, and we possess it by hereditary right, left to us in Attalus’ will. But so that the Roman people should have nothing which was not achieved through might, it was defended by our arms from Antiochus, the great king of the Syrians. On the same occasion, Lydia too, ancient home of kingdoms, Caria, Hellespont and the Phrygias came within the power of the Roman people under joint jurisdiction. 3. With the Rhodians and peoples of the islands, at first most hostile, we contended; afterwards we found the same people most faithful helpers. So Rhodes and the islands first were free, afterwards arrived at the habit of obedience at the clement invitation of the Romans and under Vespasian the province of the Islands was created.

11.1. Pamphylia, Lycia and Pisidia were taken by Servilius acting as proconsul in the war against the pirates. 2. Bithynia we obtained from the will of the deceased King Nicomedes. 3. Gallograecia, that is Galatia (indeed the Galatians come from the Gauls, as the name echoes), we invaded for having brought help to Antiochus against the Romans. Mummius acting as proconsul pursued the Galatians and as they fled partly on to Mount Olympus, partly on to Mount Magaba (now called Modiacus), he pushed them down from the heights on to the plains, and having defeated them brought them into a perpetual peace. Afterwards the tetrarch Deiotarus held Galatia with our consent. At the last, under Octavian Caesar Augustus Galatia was brought into the form of a province and Lollius first governed it as a pro-praetor. 4. The Cappadocians first sought our alliance under King Ariathes and afterwards Ariobarzanes king of the Cappadocians was expelled by Mithradates and restored with Roman arms. The Cappadocians were always among our helpers and so honoured Roman greatness that in honour of Augustus Caesar Mazaca, the greatest city of Cappadocia, was named Caesarea. Finally under the emperor Claudius Caesar, when Archaelaus king of the Cappadocians had come to Rome and after lengthy detention there died, Cappadocia moved to the form of a province. 5. Pontus took the condition of province through Pompeius, when the Pontic king, Mithridates, had been defeated. Paphlagonia was held by King Pylaemenes, a friend of the Roman people. Often driven from it, he was restored to kingship by us, and when he died the status of province was imposed on the Paphlagonians.

12.1. How Roman possession spread beyond the ridges of Mount Taurus will be shown, keeping to the geographical rather than chronological order which follows. Antiochus, most powerful king of Syria, brought fearsome war on the Roman people. He had three hundred thousand armed men; he even drew up his column with scythed chariots and elephants; he was vanquished by the consul Scipio, brother of Scipio Africanus, in Asia at Magnesia, and when peace was agreed he was allowed to reign within Taurus. His sons kept the kingdom, under the clientship of the Roman people; and when they died we took power in the provinces of the Syrias. 2. The Cilicians and Isaurians, who had allied themselves with pirates and marine brigands, were subdued by Servilius who had been sent as proconsul for the war on brigands; he first established a road over Mount Taurus. And he triumphed over the Cilicians and Isaurians and was surnamed Isauricus.

13.1. Cyprus, well-known for her wealth, attracted the Roman people in their poverty into occupying her. A federate king ruled her, but so great was the treasury’s penury and so mighty the rumours of Cypriot wealth that a law was passed and Cyprus ordered to be confiscated. When this news was reported the Cypriot king took poison, so he would lose his life before his riches. Cato transported the wealth of Cyprus to Rome in boats. So we obtained sway over that island more greedily than justly. 2. Cyrene with the other cities of Libya Pentapolis we received by the generosity of the elder Ptolemy. We acquired Libya from the final wishes of King Appion. 3. All Egypt had been governed by friendly kings, but when Cleopatra was vanquished along with Antonius, it took the form of a province, in the times of Octavian Caesar Augustus; and it was Cornelius Gallus who first governed as a Roman judge among the Alexandrians.

14.1. It was through the area of the Armenias that Roman arms were first sent across the Taurus under Lucius Lucullus. The Phylarchs of the Saracens surrendered beaten in Osrhoene. In Mesopotamia, Nisibis was captured by the same Lucullus. 2. Afterwards, through Pompeius, the same places were taken by arms. The Syrias and Phoenice were captured in war from Tigranes, king of the Armenians. The Arabs and Jews were defeated in Palestine. 3. At the last, under the principate of Trajan the diadem was taken from the king of greater Armenia, and through Trajan Armenia, Mesopotamia, Assyria and Arabia were made provinces and the Eastern frontier was established beyond the bank of the Tigris. But Hadrian who succeeded Trajan, envious of Trajan’s glory, voluntarily returned Armenia, Mesopotamia and Assyria and desired the Euphrates to stand midway between the Persians and Romans. 4. But later under the two Antonines, Marcus and Verus, and Severus Pertinax and other Roman princes, who fought against the Parthians with various outcomes, Mesopotamia was four times lost, four times recovered, 5. and in the times of Diocletian, the Romans had been defeated in the first engagement, but in the second battle King Narseus was overcome, his wife and daughters captured and guarded with the utmost protection of their honour; when peace was made, Mesopotamia was restored and the frontier redrawn beyond the bank of the Tigris, so that we acquired sway over five peoples established beyond the Tigris. This treaty agreement was kept and endured up to the time of the late emperor Constantius.

15.1. I know now, famous prince, where your attention is heading. You are asking, of course, how often the arms of Babylonia and the Romans have clashed, and with what changed of fortune the pilum and the arrow have been matched. I’ll briefly count out the results of the wars. You will find that, from their trickery, the enemy have rejoiced in a few cases, but you will approve the fact that by their true virtue the Romans have always ended up the winners. 2. It was first Lucius Sylla as proconsul, that Arsaces king of the Parthians sent an embassy which asked and obtained the friendships of the Roman people. Lucius Lucullus pursued Mithridates, stripped of the kingship of Pontus, to Armenia. The Armenian king, Tigranes, who had seven thousand clibanarii and one hundred and twenty thousand archers, was vanquished by Lucullus with eighteen thousand Romans. 3. He stormed Tigranocerta, the greatest city of Armenia. He took Madena, a wealthy region of Armenia; he descended via Melitene to Mesopotamia; he captured Nisibis alongwith the king’s brother. When he was ready to march on the Persians, his successor replaced him.

16.1. Gnaeus Pompeius, known for good fortune, was sent to the Mithridatic war, and, attacking Mithridates in lesser Armenia in a night battle, defeated him, and, with two and forty thousand of the enemy slain, he took his camp. Mithridates fled with his wife and two companions to the Bosphorus: there despairing of his situation he drank poison and when the strength of the poison had little effect, got a soldier of his to run him through with his sword. 2. Pompeius pursued Mithridates’ helper Tigranes king of Armenia: the man gave himself up to him at Artaxata, offering up his diadem. Mesopotamia, the Syrias and a certain part of Phoenice were taken from him; and he was allowed to reign within greater Armenia. 3. The same Pompeius set up Aristarchus as king of the Bosphorians and Colchians; he fought with the Albani; to Orhodes king of the Albani he granted peace after thrice defeating him; he received the surrender of Hiberia together with King Artaces; he vanquished the Saracens and Arabs; Judaea having been captured, he took Jerusalem; he struck a treaty with the Persians. On his way back, at Antioch, he sanctified the wood of Daphne with an additional grove, delighted by the loveliness of the place and the abundance of the waters.

17.1. The consul Marcus Crassus was sent against the Parthians when they started war again. Crassus, when a legation was sent from the Persians and a request made for peace, said he would give his answer at Ctesiphon. At Zeugma he crossed the Euphrates and guided by a certain defector Mazarus he descended to an unknown and deserted part of the plains. There, with columns of archers flying around him on all sides under Silates and Surena the royal Prefects, the army was surrounded and overwhelmed by the mass of weapons. 2. Crassus himself, though he could almost have been taken alive when enticed to a parley, had escaped as the tribunes fought back, and trying to flee was killed. His head, cut off together with his right hand, was brought to the king, and treated as an object of scorn, to the extent that liquified gold was poured into his jaws. This was done so that, since burning with desire for plunder he’d refused to grant the king peace when asked, the flame of gold might burn his remains too when dead. 3. Lucius Cassius, Crassus’ quaestor, a vigorous man, collected the remains of his scattered army. He fought three times most impressively against the Persians as they broke into Syria and laid them waste, throwing them back over the Euphrates.

18.1. Led by Labienus, who had been a member of the Pompeian faction and had fled to the Persians from defeat, the Parthians broke into Syria and occupied the whole province. Publius Ventidius Bassus, meeting the Persians who had invaded Syria under Labienus’ leadership at Mount Capros, put them to flight with only a few men, killed Labienus, chased the Persians and laid them low to the point of annihilation. In this battle he killed Pacorus, the king’s son, on the same day that Crassus had been killed, lest ever the death of a Roman leader should be left unavenged. Ventidius was the first to triumph over the Persians. 2. Marcus Antonius entered Media (now called Madena) and brought war on the Parthians, and in the first battles vanquished them. But afterwards, with two legions lost, when he was pressed by hunger, sickness and storms, he scarcely got the army back through Armenia with the Persians on his heels; he was at moments struck with such terror that he begged to be killed by his sword-bearer, so as not to come alive into the power of the foe.

19.1. Under Octavian Caesar Augustus, Armenia plotted with the Parthians. Claudius Caesar, the grandson of Augustus, was sent with an army to the East. And when, in proportion to the greatness of the Roman name, he had easily suppressed everything, and the Armenians (who were stronger then) together with the Persians had surrendered to him, and following Pompeius’ practice Claudius Caesar was setting magistrates over the aforementioned peoples, a certain Donnes, whom Arsaces had set over the Persians, pretending a betrayal, offered him a book allegedly containing a list of treasuries. 2. While the Roman general read it carefully, he attacked Claudius with a knife and wounded him. The attacker was run through by the soldiers. Claudius returned to Syria because of the wound, and died. To make good such a daring crime the Persians then first gave hostages to Octavian Caesar Augustus and brought back the standards stolen under Crassus. Having pacified the tribes of the East, Augustus Caesar was also the first to receive an embassy from the Indians.

20.1. Nero, the most shameful emperor endured by the Roman state, lost Armenia. At that time two Roman legions were sent under the yoke by the Persians and shamed their oaths, to the extreme disgrace of the Roman army. 2. Trajan, who after Augustus flexed the muscles of the Roman republic, took back Armenia from the Parthians, and, having taken the diadem of greater Armenia, he suppressed the kingship. He gave the Albani a king; he received the Hiberi, Bosphoriani and Colchians within the protection of Roman sway; he occupied the lands of the Osrhoenians and Arabs; he took the Cardueni and the Marcomdi; he captured and held Anthemusium, the best region of Persis, Seleucia, Ctesiphon, and Babylonia. 3. He advanced as far as the borders of India, after Alexander. He created a fleet in the Red Sea. He made provinces of Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria, which, situated between the Tigris and Euphrates, is made fertile by channels of irrigation like Egypt. 4. It is sure that Hadrian envied Trajan’s glory. He was his successor in empire and voluntarily recalling the armies he gave up Armenia, Mesopotamia, Assyria, and wished the Euphrates to stand midway between the Romans and the Persians.

21.1. The two Antonini, Marcus and Verus (that is, the father-in-law and son-in-law), joint Augusti, were the first to hold the empire of the world with equal power. But the Antoninus who was younger of the two set out on a Parthian expedition; he performed with good fortune many great and mighty deeds against the Persians; Seleucia, a city of Assyria, he captured with four hundred thousand of the enemy; with huge glory he triumphed over the Persians together with his father-in-law. 2. Severus, African in origin, a most fierce emperor, strenuously overcame the Parthians, destroyed the Aziabeni, took over the Arabs of the interior and made Arabia a province. Surnames were won for him from his victories, for he was surnamed Aziabenicus, Parthicus, Arabicus. 3. Antoninus, surnamed Caracalla, the son of the emperor Severus was preparing an expedition against the Persians when he died a natural death at Edessa in Osrhoene, and he was buried there.

22.1. Aurelius Alexander, as though reborn by some fate for the destruction of the Persian race, took up very young the helm of the Roman Empire. He gloriously vanquished the Persians’ most noble King Xerxes. This Alexander had as master of the books the jurisconsult Ulpian. He triumphed over the Persians at Rome with a spectacular procession. 2. Under Gordian, a prince fierce from the confidence of youth, the resurgent Parthians were crushed in vast battles. And while he returned victorious over Persia, by the deceit of Philip, who was his Praetorian Prefect, he was killed. The soldiers built a mound for him at the twentieth milestone from the camp which now stands at Circesium, and they lead back his funeral procession to Rome with the greatest attentions of veneration.

23.1. It is unpleasant to recount the fortune of Valerian, an ill-omened prince. He took up the empire with Gallienus, since the army made Valerian and the senate made Gallienus emperor. In Mesopotamia fighting against the Persians Valerian was overcome by Sapor, king of the Persians, and, having been captured, grew old in shameful servitude. 2. Under Gallienus, after Mesopotamia had been invaded, the Persians had begun to lay claim on Syria, had not (shaming to report) Odenathus, a councillor of Palmyra, gathered a band of Syrian countrymen and fiercely resisted; and after several times putting the Persians to flight he not only defended our frontier, but even (astonishing to report) penetrated as far as Ctesiphon as avenger of the Roman Empire.

24.1. To the emperor Aurelian’s glory Zenobia added, the wife of Odenathus. She, you see, following her husband’s death held the empire of the East under female sway. Aurelian defeated her, supported as she was by many thousands of clibanarii and archers, at Immae, not far from Antioch, and led her captive before his chariot in his triumph at Rome. 2. The emperor Carus’ victory over the Persians seemed excessively mighty to the supreme godhead; it must be thought to have led to the resentment of heavenly indignation. For Carus entered Persia and laid it waste as if nobody was resisting; he captured Coche and Ctesiphon, the most noble cities of the Persians. When, victorious over the whole race, he pitched his camp over the Tigris, he died struck by a thunderbolt.

25.1. Under Diocletian’s principate a victory procession over the Persians was known. In the first encounter, although he had fought fiercely with a few men against a countless host, Maximianus Caesar retreated beaten and was met with such displeasure by Diocletian, that he ran before his wagon for some miles dressed in the purple. 2. And then, though he barely obtained approval to make up his army from the Dacian border-troops and again seek the outcome of Mars, in greater Armenia he himself as general with two horsemen scouted out the enemy, and suddenly surprising the enemy camp with twenty five thousand soldiers, he attacked the countless columns of Persians and slew them to the point of annihilation. 3. The Persian king, Narseus, fled; his wife and daughters were captured and guarded with great respect for their chastity. For this admirable deed, the Persians admitted that the Romans were superior not only in arms but also in morals. They gave back Mesopotamia with the regions across the Tigris. The peace that was made endured to our own memory, useful to the republic.

26.1. Constantine, master of affairs, in the last period of his life prepared an expedition against the Persians. For his glory greater from pacifying tribes throughout the whole world, and from his recent victory over the Goths, he was falling on the Persians with all his columns. 2. At his coming the kingdoms of Babylon trembled so much that a legation of Persians was running to him in supplication, they promised to do his commands, and yet for the constant outbreaks, which they tried through the East under Constantius Caesar, they did not obtain forgiveness.

27.1. Constantius fought against the Persians with mixed and more difficult outcome. Besides the light skirmishes of excubantes on the border, there were fiercer contests of Mars nine times, through his generals seven times; he himself was present twice. In fact, at the battles of Sisara, Singara and the second battle of Singara (where Constantius was present), and Sicgara (also Constantian) and when Amida was captured, the republic took a serious wound under this prince. 2. And on three occasions Nisibis was besieged by the Persians, but the enemy was affected by greater loss on his own side while he besieged. But in the battle of Narasara, where Narseus was killed, we departed the better off. 3. However, in the night battle of Elia near Singara, when Constantius was present, the outcome of all the campaigns would have been balanced, if with the ground and the night unfavourable, the emperor had been able to call back soldiers, who had been whipped to a frenzy, from fighting at an inopportune time. 4. Although they were unconquered in strength, with supplies of water against their thirst unforeseen, and evening now coming on, they attacked the camp of the Persians and having broken the defences occupied it, and with the king having been put to flight, while resting from battle they were panting to find water, with torches held before them: they were overwhelmed by a cloud of arrows, since they themselves stupidly provided lights shining through the night so that they could be aimed at more accurately.

28.1. For Julian, a prince known for good fortune against external foes, moderation was lacking against the Persians. For he moved hostile standards against the Parthians with huge array, seeing he was the ruler of the whole world; he took a fleet prepared with supplies down the Euphrates. Vigorous in his outward journey, he received in surrender or took with his hand many towns and fortresses of the Persians. 2. When he had pitched his camp opposite Ctesiphon, on the bank of the Tigris and Euphrates (here joined), and had performed games on the plain during the day, to remove the enemy’s anxiety, in the middle of the night he suddenly placed soldiers in boats and transported them to the further shore. Struggling over steep ground, where the climb would have been difficult even by day and with nobody stopping them, they filled the Persians with sudden terror and, with the columns of the whole nation turned in flight, our soldiery would have entered the open gates of Ctesiphon victorious, had not the opportunity for plunder been greater than the concern for victory. 3. Having obtained such great glory, though he was warned by his companions about the return journey, he trusted more in his own purpose, and having burnt the ships, when led on by a defector who had presented himself for the purpose of deception, he pursued a short cut into Madaena, taking the right hand route on the far side of the Tigris with his soldiers’ flank exposed: he was wandering too carelessly along the column, when he was snatched from the view of his men by the dust which was aroused, struck through the groin as far as the base of the stomach, he was wounded. From losing too much blood, when despite his wounds he had restored the ranks of his men, he breathed out his hesitating soul, having talked at length to his followers.

29.1. Jovian took over an army superior in battle but confounded by the sudden death of its lost emperor. While supplies were short and a lengthier return journey threatened, the Persians, with frequent raids now from the van now from the rear, raiding also the flanks in the middle, slowed down the movement of the column; 2. when some days had been used up, there was such reverence for the Roman name that the Persians talked about a peace first and the army, finished by hunger, was allowed to be led back, when conditions (as never happened before) costly to the Roman republic were imposed, so that Nisibis and part of Mesopotamia was handed over. To these Jovian, inexperienced in empire, acquiesced, being more desirous of kingship than of glory.

30.1. Thenceforth with how great a voice should your deeds, unconquered prince, resound! I shall prepare myself for them though unequal to the task of speaking and weighed down by age. 2. Let only that good fortune remain, granted by God’s will and allowed by that friendly deity in whom you trust and to whom are entrusted, so that to this great victory over the Goths you may add the palm of peace in Babylon.

[1] annos ac aetatem vel sim, mss] annosam aetatem Arnaud-Lindet, maybe rightly.
[2] Norici B, Noricae other mss, Norica A.-L.
[3] provincias] some mss have -am.
[4] sic.