Translating Ammianus Marcellinus, Book 14

This piece was written for the new blog of the Last Historians of Rome project, a collaboration between the Universities of Edinburgh and Nottingham funded by a Standard Grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). I have cross-posted it here both for completeness and because we do not yet have a comment function on the Last Historians blog. 

The centrepieces of the Last Historians of Rome project are the team’s new critical editions of the five historians we are studying, and for me in particular, the biggest task is to edit Ammianus Marcellinus, the longest and greatest of the five. But we are also producing translations: at the moment, Justin Stover and George Woudhuysen are polishing off Aurelius Victor, and I am in the very final stages of the translation of Ammianus, which has occupied me for many years, off and on. The translation is for Robert Strassler’s Landmark series, will be published by Oxford University Press in New York, and is a collaboration with Michael Kulikowski: he is the volume editor and responsible for everything that isn’t the translation – the introduction, notes, lavish maps and illustrations, and appendices – as well as for working over the translation with me and making sure that it is as stylish and readable and clear as possible. 

Right now, however, rather than discussing style, readability, or the explanatory help for readers which we hope will make this markedly more accessible than previous translations, I am going to discuss the most fundamental task of a translation: working out what the original actually means. Something can have been translated many times but there will be occasional passages where translators go different ways – or where they all go one way but might be wrong. There is a rider, especially in the case of texts in ancient languages that survive because people made a series of manuscript copies: namely, that you need to be willing to ask ‘Is this actually the original?’ 

Let me give three examples from the first surviving book of Ammianus Marcellinus’ history, though it is one of the later ones I translated, at the start of this year (I started with the books that had the benefit of commentaries by the Dutch team of Den Boeft, Den Hengst, Drijvers and Teitler). In the first case, I translate in a way different from everybody else. In the second, I concluded that what I was translating was not the original and that some text has been lost. In the third, I spent time wondering if the transmitted text was correct, before concluding that it was but that it didn’t mean quite what I had originally thought – and I found that though most translators had gone slightly astray, two Italian translations had nailed it. 

1. How to fight the Isaurians (14.2.7) 

The Romans of the fourth century thought that there were baying barbarians encircling their empire’s frontiers. The Isaurians were an exception – they were barbarians inside the empire, in the rugged heart of the Taurus Mountains in central Anatolia. Isauria was a province, but some of its population were prone to raiding their prosperous neighbours and fighting Roman troops.

Isauria as imagined in the late Roman Notitia Dignitatum; copy made in Basel, 1436 (Oxford, Canon. Misc. 378) 

In chapter 2 of book 14, Ammianus gives a memorable account of Isaurian raids in the year 353, which begin as retaliation when some Isaurians were thrown to the wild beasts in the amphitheatre at Iconium (Konya). There is an unforgettable story of their capture of merchant shipping at anchor off the Cilician coast –the attackers climbing silently up the ropes by night and slaughtering the sailors without mercy. In neighboring Lycaonia, they keep defeating small Roman garrisons, in part by their extraordinary surefootedness and speed in the uplands. Ammianus continues (14.2.6): 

And at times, our infantrymen were compelled to climb up high cliffs in order to pursue them, and even if they reached the mountaintops, grasping at thickets or brambles when their feet slipped, still they could not, in the narrow and trackless places, extend a battle line or gain a firm footing despite all their powerful efforts, since the ubiquitous enemy rolled broken rocks on to them from above; they either made a perilous withdrawal downhill or else, battling bravely in their desperate necessity, were flattened by the vast weights crashing down. 

The problem lies in the following section, which I give first in Rolfe’s translation and then in Latin (14.2.7): 

Therefore extreme caution was shown after that and when the marauders began to make for the mountain heights, the soldiers yielded to the unfavourable position. When, however, the Isaurians could be found on level ground, as constantly happened, they were allowed neither to stretch out their right arms nor poise their weapons, of which each carried two or three, but they were slaughtered like defenceless sheep. 

Quam ob rem circumspecta cautela obseruatum est deinceps,| et cum edita montium petere coeperint grassatores,| loci iniquitati milites cedunt;| ubi autem in planitie potuerint repperiri,| quod contingit assidue,| nec exertare lacertos| nec crispare permissi tela quae uehunt bina uel terna| pecudum ritu inertium trucidantur.| 

This is Rolfe’s translation, and it is more or less the same as all others of which I am aware. The problem is, however, that except for obseruatum est the main verbs are in the present tense, and the verbs in the subordinate clauses are either perfect subjunctive following cum iterativum or present. Ammianus does sometimes use the historic present main verb, but if it was talking about events in the past, he would at least have put quod contingit assidue, ‘which constantly happens’ in the perfect (and even though the perfect contigit would be an easy emendation we know that he did write contingit, since the perfect would require a different word order, assídue cóntigit, to make the prose rhythm work). It seems that Ammianus is talking about a permanent change in Roman strategy towards the Isaurians in response to their experience in 353, nearly forty years before: 

Accordingly, it has been the practice since that time to show circumspection and care; whenever the raiders start making for the highest uplands, the soldiers give up in the face of the unequal terrain. But whenever the Isaurians happen to be caught on the plain – which constantly happens – they are given no chance to thrust out their strong arms or to hurl the two or three javelins each of them carries, and they are slaughtered like helpless cattle. 

2. Warding off the Isaurians near Laranda 

Somewhat later, after a setback against the legions wintering at Sidē, the Isaurians arrive by a back route near Laranda, modern Karaman (we can tell from the prose rhythm that Ammianus pronounced it Láranda, following the Greek accentuation). There they attack some wealthy villages but are beaten off. Again I give Rolfe’s translation and the Latin text (14.2.12): 

There they were refreshed with food and rest, and after their fear had left them, they attacked some rich villages; but since they were aided by some cohorts of cavalry, which chanced to come up, the enemy withdrew without attempting any resistance on the level plain; but as they retreated, they summoned all the flower of their youth that had been left at home. 

Ibi uictu recreati et quiete,| postquam abierat timor,| uicos opulentos adorti| equestrium adiumento cohortium, | quae casu propinquabant, | nec resistere planitie porrecta conati| digressi sunt, | retroque cedentes| omne iuuentutis robur relictum in sedibus acciuereunt.| 

Rolfe’s translation accurately captures what the passage must mean, but does not escape from the awkwardness (‘they were aided’ must in context mean ‘the villages’, as the equestrian cohorts are assuredly Roman troops). If we look at Ammianus’ other uses of adiumento, ‘with the help of’, followed by a genitive, it is quite clear that we need reference to the action in which they helped and probably also the actors whom they helped. It seems an inescapable conclusion that a few words have been lost after adorti. As a minimum, one might suggest et aegre repulsi (‘and were with difficulty held off’), perhaps better et ab incolis aegre repulsi (‘and were with difficulty held off by the inhabitants’). Best of all might be if repulsi were replaced by a participle ending in -ti so that we could explain the loss of the words as an eye-skip, a scribe having jumped from the ending of adorti from a similar ending a little later. I will be very grateful for suggestions! 

Accordingly, I translate: 

There they recovered their strength with food and sleep, and once their fear had left them, they attacked some opulent villages, but were with difficulty driven off, with help from some cavalry cohorts who happened to be nearby. And they made no attempt to resist on the broad plains, but withdrew, and, as they retreated, they called up all the strong young men who had been left at home. 

A footnote will explain the textual problem. In the edition, meanwhile, I will probably simply mark a lacuna rather than inserting text, as the omission could only be two or three words, as translated here, or something longer – perhaps a whole line. That text is lost seems overwhelmingly likely, but the wording is a complete guess. 

3. Senior officers with mixed loyalties (14.10.7-8) 

My final example comes from the following year, 354. The emperor Constantius’ forces are gearing up to fight the Alamanni based on the far side of the Rhine from Rauraci (modern Kaiseraugst, near Basel). I give my translation, except for the phrase on which I got stuck, which I give in Latin (14.10.7-8): 

But lo and behold, there arrived all of a sudden an informant with expertise in these regions, and after taking a payment he showed them a shallow place by night where the river could be forded. And with the enemy’s focus elsewhere, the army would have been able to cross here, not expected by anybody, and to create devastation everywhere, were it not that a few individuals from that nation, quibus erat honoratioris militis cura commissa, informed their countrymen of this attack through secret messengers – or so some thought. 8. At any rate, this suspicion blotted the reputation of Latinus the Count of the Domestici, Agilo the Tribune of the Stables, and Scudilo the commander of the Scutarii, who were respected at that time as if they carried the Republic in their own hands. 

If one were translating verbatim in the manner of a teenage Latinist, this might come out as ‘to whom the care of a/the more honoured soldier had been entrusted’. Most translators proceed as if this is verbiage, and paraphrase (‘who had achieved high rank in our army’, Hamilton; ‘who held military positions of high rank’, Rolfe; ‘qui s’étaient vu confier les plus hauts grades dans notre armée’, Galletier; ‘die bei uns als höhere Offiziere dienten’, Veh; ‘die bei uns höhere militärische Stellen bekleideten’, Seyfarth). But this seems like a fudge. 

At this point we might consider an emendation or two. Gelenius’ edition of 1533 wrote militiae instead of militis. Now Gelenius had access to the lost Hersfeld manuscript, since lost, which was on the whole slightly better than its twin, the Fulda manuscript, from which our text derives. It is also easy to imagine that an s could be written in place of ae (or e or ę, all possible spellings in a medieval manuscript), especially when the change is from the rarer to the commoner word. On the other hand, Gelenius was a bold conjectural emendator who consulted his own instincts more often than the Hersfeld manuscript. Honoratioris militiae cura could mean ‘an office of high rank in the service’, and this reading could perhaps result in a translation like those cited above. But is it needed? I wondered about emending to honoratior militis cura, ‘who had a more highly-ranked command of the soldiers’ – here taking militis as a collective singular for the soldiery, as Ammianus often does. But once I had made that step, I realised that the transmitted text is fine, and honoratioris militis cura means ‘command over elite troops’. And that point I realised that I really should have thought about the individuals who are later named: the protectores domestici, commanded by Latinus, are Ammianus’ own regiment; the scutarii of this period are another elite regiment; and the Tribunus stabuli commanded the corps of stratores, who had responsibility for publicly owned horses. 

After I had fixed on the translation ‘who had been entrusted with command of elite troops’, I found that two Italian scholars had already reached the right conclusion, Selem (‘che ... comandavano i reparti migliori dell’esercito’) and Viansino (‘che comandavano militari di grado elevato’). Of course the distinction in meaning is not a huge one, but it does make the passage much more pointed. It also reflects Ammianus’ consistent interest in his own unit of the protectores et domestici. 

And there is one final implication for another passage. After the emperor Julian had been killed, the council to appoint a successor was stalled, when an anonymous soldier intervenes to suggest that the high command lead the army out of Persia and elect a new emperor once back in Roman territory and reunited with the other army in Roman Mesopotamia. The soldier is called honoratior aliquis miles (25.5.3). Based on this passage, I would suggest that the sense here is ‘a soldier from an elite regiment’: it is about prestige not rank. This soldier has sometimes been identified, since the Abbé de La Bléterie and Gibbon in the eighteenth century, with Ammianus himself. That is highly speculative, but the implication of this passage is that we cannot rule it out. 

* * *

I hope that these three passages give a sense of the challenge of the translation as well as the pleasure that comes from the progress of hundreds of small advances. And examples also show the truth of a point made by many famous textual scholars – it is always a good idea for an editor to translate the text first.