The Last Two Volumes of the Ammianus Commentary

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The following review, recently pre-published online, will appear in the 2018 volume of Journal of Roman Studies (for earlier thoughts arising, see here). [Addendum: the final pagination is JRS 108, 300-302].

J. den Boeft, J. W. Drijvers, D. den Hengst, and H. C. Teitler, Philological and Historical Commentary on Ammianus Marcellinus XXX. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Pp. xix + 257, maps. ISBN 9789004299955 (bound), 9789004300927 (e-book). €112.

J. den Boeft, J. W. Drijvers, D. den Hengst, and H. C. Teitler, Philological and Historical Commentary on Ammianus Marcellinus XXXI. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Pp. xix + 357, maps. ISBN 9789004353817 (bound), 9789004353824 (e-book). €169.

Near the start of his 30th book Ammianus Marcellinus flashes forward to the disasters of the Gothic war under Valens and wonders if his narrative will ever get that far (si ad ea quoque uenerimus, 30.2.8). It is a rhetorical device, of course, one of many indications of the arduous nature of the historian’s task. The authors of the Dutch commentary on Ammianus must also have wondered if they would get to the end of this mighty enterprise. Its history reaches back more than 80 years. Pieter de Jonge produced the volumes on the first six surviving books, 14-19, amid his duties as a headmaster between 1935 and 1982 (English replacing German from 1948 onwards). While De Jonge’s dedication, ambition, and feel for his author merit admiration, these volumes are uneven, especially on historical topics, and will need replacing in due course.

This cannot be said of the work of his successors, known informally as the Quadriga Batavorum, who have now completed the remaining 12 volumes on Books 20 to 31. Three of them, the Latinists Jan den Boeft and Daniël den Hengst and the Roman historian Hans Teitler, have been working on the project since the 1980s; a second historian, Jan Willem Drijvers, joined for Book 22 in 1995. Since the completion of the second hexad (20-25) in 2005, the team has accelerated, publishing the remaining six books at the rate of approximately one every two years. The insight, comprehensiveness, and reliability of the commentaries have only increased over the years, and the last two volumes here reviewed are well up to the exacting and exalted standards of its predecessors (see my reviews of Books 25 to 29 in JRS 99 (2009), 294-6; 103(2013), 351-3; and 105 (2015), 475-8).

Ammianus’ last two books have contrasting structures. Book 30 is dominated by the death on 17 November 375 of the emperor Valentinian, and a lengthy tripartite obituary (chapters 6-9), but before that, as in the previous books on Valentinian and his brother Valens, the narrative switches between eastern and western events in geographically distinct blocs often covering several years: in chs 1 and 2.1-8, Roman foreign relations with Armenia and Persia from c. 374 to 377/8; in chs 2.9-12, 3, and 5, western events of 374 and 375; in ch. 4 an entertaining, overwritten, and highly allusive digression on the venality and incompetence of eastern lawyers, hanging on the emperor Valens’ withdrawal from hearing court cases. The book closes with an account of the elevation of the four-year-old Valentinian II by junta of high officials five days after his homonymous father’s death (ch. 10). Book 31, by contrast, is all but monographic (but the commentators reject Kulikowski’s proposal (JRS 102 (2012), 79-102) that it was originally a separate monograph written much earlier): the book focuses almost exclusively on how the Gothic migrations in response to the pressure of the Huns turned from a peaceful crossing of potential allies in 376 into a Roman-Gothic war, climaxing on 9 August 378 in the Battle of Adrianople and Valens’ death. Certain important events of the period – Saracen and Isaurian revolts – are left out altogether, and the only western episode, the successful campaign of the emperor Gratian against the Lentienses (ch. 10), is only included to explain why Gratian was delayed in bringing reinforcements to the east and why his uncle Valens’ jealousy led him to engage without awaiting them. The ‘Chronology’ in the front matter of each volume and the excellent chronological guidance passim is very welcome, and in Book 31 the commentators also point out Ammianus’ historical omissions.

Historical contextualisation is uniformly thorough. In the initial episode of Book 30, where various generals of Valens attempt unsuccessfully to detain, and then successfully to assassinate, his ally king Papa of Armenia, the commentators use Armenian sources to point out the religious subtext ignored or suppressed by Ammianus: they are perhaps slightly more willing than in previous books to see oblique jibes at Christian piety (see on 30.1.2). Equally good is the clarification of Valentinian’s movements in his last campaign on the Danube in 375, and they rightly point out the clear signs of a whitewash in the narrative of Valentinian II’s promotion (and suggest, correctly in my view, that Ammianus was therefore writing before Valentinian II’s death in May 392). If I may be permitted a personal quibble, however, their argument that this promotion took place in Brigetio (Szöny), where the young emperor’s father had died, is false. Neither Ammianus nor any other ancient source explicitly states this, though Hadrien de Valois evidently inferred it from Ammianus’ text, as indicated by his chapter heading for 30.10. But the chronicle known as Descriptio consulum or Consularia Constantinopolitana, which is exceptionally reliable for the 370s and 380s, places the event in Aquincum (i.e. the right bank of modern Budapest), and this is surely correct. It is irrelevant (p. 204) that Socrates’ church history, based on a version of this same chronicle, garbles its source and puts Aquincum in Italy. Also irrelevant is the fact that Valentinian I had not thought Aquincum suitable winter-quarters for himself, since emperors on the northern frontier would not necessarily winter in the same place as most of their troops, who were scattered over the whole region: e.g. 17.10.10 (Julian in Paris; compare also the situation at the time of his acclamation in 360), 27.10.16 (Valentinian and Gratian in Trier). Indeed the point is implied by the difficulty in finding a doctor to tend the dying emperor, as they were tending to an epidemic among the soldiers and scattered per varia, 30.6.4). Aquincum was the provincial capital of Valeria with a massive military camp and a second amphitheatre, the largest north of the Alps, for the army: it was the obvious place for an acclamation that would be approved by as many troops as possible. In Book 31, a particularly significant contribution is the late dating of Gratian’s campaign against the Lentienses in 378, in summer rather than spring, ensuring that he really was very late indeed. The massacres of Gothic teenagers in the eastern provinces after Adrianople (31.16.8) are dated to late 378, against Zuckermann’s proposal of early 379.  

While Book 30 has been transmitted in a slightly better condition than 28 and 29 (some passages of which are marred by repeated lacunae), Book 31 has particular problems of its own. The better of the two ninth-century manuscripts of Ammianus was the Hersfeldensis, which was haphazardly used for Gelenius’ 1533 edition before being dismantled in the late sixteenth century, to the extent that only a few recycled pages survive, a bifolium from book 30 among them. But by Gelenius’ time, the Hersfeldensis went no further than the penultimate chapter of book 30, where Gelenius accordingly stopped. For Book 31 the Vaticanus (V, Vat. Lat. 1873) is therefore the sole authoritative source for the text. An additional problem arises between 31.8.5 and 31.10.18, where at some point after the first copies were taken the Vaticanus lost two pages (the central bifolium of a gathering, not a single page, as on p. 146 and in most Ammianus scholarship). The apparatus of Seyfarth’s Teubner, from which the lemmata are taken, is inadequate here, as was sharply pointed out in the review by Rita Cappelletto (RFIC 109 (1981), 80-85), and unfortunately the commentators do not really make up for this inadequacy. For these pages Seyfarth printed the readings of only one of the three renaissance manuscripts that are direct copies of the Vaticanus, namely E (Vat. Lat. 2969), as well as those of Accursius’ editio princeps, which used both V and E. Since E was copied by an intelligent humanist who was prone to emendation, its readings cannot be trusted as representing the transmitted text. At a couple of points, the commentators follow Seyfarth in not giving relevant information. So at 31.8.5 a reader without access to Clark or Sabbah’s edition would infer that E’s acutius observantes was the transmitted text, whereas F and N both have, and V presumably had, the nonsense word adiutius (the commentators support Petschenig’s cautius; given the reconstructed reading of V, diutius should be considered). Likewise at 31.10.7, Mallobaudes alta pugnandi cupiditate raptatus, alta (where E and Accursius have autem) is not a conjecture of Valesius but the reading of F, N, and presumably V.

My own impression is that the text of Book 31 is in a slightly worse condition than that of 30 because of the absence of Gelenius, though it is noteworthy that the commentators propose changes from Seyfarth’s text, the lemma text, with almost exactly the same regularity in the two books (about 30 in book 30, and about 50 in book 31, which is just over one and a half times as long). Given Seyfarth’s conservatism, changes proposed to the text tend to be emendations, but there are a few vindications of the text transmitted by V: The restoration of quam at 30.8.6 with the sense potius quam is clearly right; so is the removal of Valesius’ –que at 31.16.7; etiámtum impraepedítus in the description of king Papa’s murder (30.1.20) is probably also correct, although the argument from prose rhythm against Gelenius’ reading praepeditum is false, since Ammianus also accents etiam túm in clausulae (e.g. 30.3.9). (I would also restore V’s readings at 30.1.10 iactique (for prose rhythm) and 31.16.9 aetate, doctrinis). Of the places where they advocate conjectures to improve on Seyfarth’s text, about a dozen are their own. The palm goes to 30.9.3, where sense is brilliantly rescued from ut solent occupationis spe uel impuniae quaedam sceleste committi with occultationis and impunitatis ([at the start of reigns] ‘when some criminality tends to be committed in the hope that it will be unnoticed or unpunished’: cf. 27.7.2). If other conjectures that they propose are incremental improvements, they are mostly either definitely or probably right: e.g. 30.10.1 <ex> cohortibus, 31.6.2 uiaticum [cibos] et bidui dilationem (where V actually has the lemma form cibus, surely even likelier to be a gloss], 31.14.2 in palati<n>is (‘among courtiers’). If I have a reservation in the area of textual criticism it would be that although they take Ammianus’ immensely regular prose rhythm seriously, both as part of his style and as a tool for establishing his text, they could be bolder in accepting the consequences. For example at 31.3.1 they propose an entirely cogent solution to an irregular clausula (a transposition of the first two words of Tanaitas consuetudo nominauit), before stepping back from it in favour of accepting ‘incidental irregularities’. For all that, there is no doubt that they have contributed more to understanding the text and language of Ammianus than anybody since Charles Clark and his collaborators over a century ago.

This review has focused on matters of historical detail and textual criticism; much more could have been said about points of language, geography, intertextuality, and indeed the general mood of Ammianus (which they stand closer to Matthews’ optimism than Barnes’s pessimism) and his attitude to the history of his own times. Produced without fanfare or the support of large grants, and occupying the three original contributors long into retirement, this commentary is a model of learning and insight, and of selfless, collaborative scholarship, which will help Ammianus’ readers for centuries to come.

Review of Salzman and Roberts, Symmachus Letters Book 1

A review in Classical Review 65.1 (2015), which has just been pre-published online (copyright, The Classical Association). [UPDATE: the page numbers in the published version are 161-163]

SYMMACHUS, LETTERS 1

SALZMAN (M.R.), ROBERTS ( M.) (trans.) The Letters of Symmachus: Book 1. (Writings from the Greco-Roman World 30.) Pp. lxxii + 215. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011. Paper, US $34.95. ISBN: 978-1-58983-597-9. doi:10.1017/S0009840X14002406

Symmachus must be a strong contender for the most important Latin author of Antiquity to lack an English translation; the first complete translation in any modern language, J.-P. Callu’s Budé edition, was only completed in 2009. Since Symmachus’ prose is often challenging and allusive, it is a huge advance to have an English version of any of his œuvre (fragments of eight speeches, nine complete books and one fragmentary book of letters, and the Relationes he wrote to the emperors as prefect of Rome in 384–5; only the Relationes have been previously published in English, by R.H. Barrow [1973]). S.’s new work, with R. as co-translator, is therefore very welcome. The translation comes with S.’s lengthy introduction, introductory sections for each correspondent and letter, and detailed annotation covering dating, literary references, social nuance and prosopography: this material is frequently acute and always sedulously referenced but, as we shall see, not always accurate enough. The commentary is more detailed than Callu’s, but less so than that of the Italian commentaries on Symmachus’ letters (which do not yet include Book 1). The letters and the problems arising are made accessible to Latinless readers (it is perhaps unhelpful that the Relationes are called ‘State Papers’ and Horace’s Epistles ‘Letters’). However, a Latin text of each letter, based on Seeck and Callu, is included: this will be a convenience for scholarly readers. Though there is no apparatus, the more important variants are discussed in the notes.

The first book of letters is the most polished and interesting of Symmachus’ œuvre. Its 107 letters, mostly short, are organised by addressee. These are (1) the author’s father, Avianius Symmachus, prefect of Rome (=PVR) 364–365, who died as consul designate for 377; (2) the poet Ausonius, praetorian prefect (=PPo) 377–379, consul 379 (the book includes one letter each from Symmachus père and Ausonius); (3) Praetextatus, PVR 367–368, PPo 384, who died as consul designate for 385; (4) Petronius Probus, four times PPo between the 360s and 380s, consul 371; (5) Celsinus Titianus, the author’s brother, who died in office as Vicarius Africae, 380; (6) Hesperius, the son of Ausonius, PPo 377/8–380; (7) Antonius, PPo 376–378, consul 382; (8) Syagrius, PPo 380–381/2, consul 381. They are thus letters of the author’s youth (he was born in the first half of the 340s), all written before his urban prefecture, exclusively to family and high office holders. Some letters are literary (1.1–2, an exchange of verse compositions with his father; 1.14, praise of Ausonius’ poem on the river Mosel). Others have clear political agendas (1.13, praising the emperor Gratian’s first letter to the senate after his father’s death to its real author, Ausonius himself; 1.95, thanking Syagrius for the opportunity to read out news of imperial victories in the senate). Mostly, and especially in the second half of the book, he is studiously unrevealing: florid letters of recommendation and those simply keeping a correspondence going. The early date of the letters in Book 1, along with their disproportionately grand recipients, careful arrangement and conspicuous archaisms, led Callu in 1972 to conclude that Book 1 had been published by Symmachus in his lifetime. Two anepigraphic letters in Book 9, probably published long after Symmachus’ death, have been identified by S. Roda as addressed to Ausonius and Probus (9.88, included here, and 9.112, regrettably absent); Symmachus would have excluded them from Book 1 as inconsistent with his careful self-fashioning as his correspondents’ equal. S. supports and strengthens this consensus, also arguing that the structure of Books 1–7, of which the latter six were published posthumously by Symmachus’ son Memmius, was designed by Symmachus himself to reflect Varro’s Hebdomades.

The translation is generally very reliable and close to the Latin, with a particular sensitivity to the technical language of epistolary friendship (especially words like religio and frater, which do not have their usual meanings). Some minor corrigenda. At 1.1.3 l. 4, regum praetoria rexi is rendered ‘I ruled as the emperor’s praetorian’, which is too obscure even for verse: better to write ‘the emperors’ [pl.] praetorian prefect’. A line below, fastūs, pride, is translated as if it were fastos, calendar (actually, a reasonable emendation). At 9.88.3 word order should, I think, make amice an adverb. In 1.29 either the variant vigeret or Havet’s vegeret has been translated for the text’s vergeret. In 1.89.1, aptata has rightly been translated, but the text has aptatam.

A second impressive characteristic of this book lies in S.’s unfailingly insightful and illuminating portrayal of how these letters can serve as ‘windows into the social, political, and cultural landscape of the late fourth century’ (p. xvi). She makes real strides in nuancing Symmachus’ paganism, so often made the centrepiece of studies, and showing how far aristocratic culture tried to smooth over religious difference; she brings out details like Symmachus’ teasing of Praetextatus for preferring holidays to pontifical duties; she succeeds in making the superficially dull quite fascinating.

The book’s excellent qualities are marred, though not undermined, by a persistent flaw, that S. is not consistently accurate in dealing with the problems of chronology and prosopography. It must be acknowledged that no Symmachus scholar has ever been immune from error in these knotty and intractable areas; but too many errors have slipped through. For example, she reconstructs the fourth of Probus’ four prefectures, in Illyricum, Italy and Africa, as lasting from summer 383 to late 384 (p. 118), without noticing that she has allocated the same office to Praetextatus from May 384 until his death in December 384 (pp. 91–2; the death is ‘November or December’ on p. xxxv n. 113, but in fact, Cameron’s Last Pagans now confirms, as already argued by Cecconi, that Praetextatus probably died well before December). Other errors are contradicted by accurate statements of the facts elsewhere (suggesting that good editing should have caught them). For example, Gratian’s accession was 375 not 376 (p. 36; correct elsewhere). Ausonius was quaestor under Valentinian as well as Gratian (p. 36), so from 375 or earlier, but a start date of 376 is given at p. 164 and assumed in the dating of, for example, 1.28 (on a related note, Ep. 9.88, from the 360s, cannot possibly refer to his quaestorship, p. 37 n. 11). Symmachus Or. 5 was delivered not on 5 January 376 (p. xxx) but 9 January (correct elsewhere, including the footnote on the same page). Symmachus père was nominated consul for 377 but died before 1 January (correct on p. 1, contra p. 34 n. 1; but the inscription attesting gold statues of him is posthumous, from 377 not 376, p. xix). Symmachus’ brother Titianus died not in 381 (p. lii) but 380 (correct on p. xxxi and elsewhere). By S.’s reconstruction Syagrius was consul in 381, but for Ep. 1.102 he is suddenly only consul designate in that year (correct for the previous and following letters). The claim that in 394 Symmachus’ children ‘were married to the Nicomachi Flaviani’ (p. xli) is false: his daughter had wed the younger Flavianus but his son, a child in 394, did not marry into the family till 401 (rightly on p. xliv). Further prosopographical errors are more tangential. Olybrius (Probus’ father-in-law) is to be distinguished from his grandson of the same name (p. li n. 189). The Valentinus who was the dedicatee of the Codex Calendar of 354 would have been too old to be one of Symmachus' brothers (p. xx n.39). Further confusions involve the sequence of events in the coup that toppled Gratian in 383 (pp. 36, 146) and Jerome’s departure from Rome (p. lvii n. 212).

The pity of these and other slips is that S. makes numerous effective prosopographical points, and often improves on Callu in the dating of individual letters. However, perhaps because she has not got as deeply involved in these issues as she should, she has missed some open goals for dating various individual letters more precisely. Given the high quality of the translation, and the compelling picture of Symmachus and his social world, it would be excellent to have a second, improved edition; even without it, this is a valuable work.

The Dutch Ammianus Commentary, Books 27 and 28

A review from the Journal of Roman Studies 103 (2013), 351-3. The Dutch Commentators continue on outstanding form, and to produce their commentary at high speed.

J. DEN BOEFT, J. W. DRIJVERS, D. DEN HENGST and H. C. TEITLER, PHILOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL COMMENTARY ON AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS XXVII. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Pp. xxxiv + 347. ISBN 9789004180376. €127.00.

J. DEN BOEFT, J. W. DRIJVERS, D. DEN HENGST and H. C. TEITLER, PHILOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL COMMENTARY ON AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS XXVIII. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Pp. xxxv + 364. ISBN 9789004215993. €130.00.

The Dutch Ammianus commentary is a glorious example of collaborative scholarship. Three of the quadriga Batavorum have been working together since the commentary on Book 20 in 1987; the fourth, Drijvers, has been on the team since Book 22 in 1995. With the three original authors in retirement, the frequency of volumes has increased and is now regularly biennial. It is only four years since my review of Books 25 and 26 in JRS 2009, and it is not unlikely that Book 29 will beat this review into press and that the two remaining books will be achieved by 2017. Before any disagreements uttered in this review, it should be said that the achievement is magnificent, a model of linguistic, literary, and historical learning; this work will be consulted with profit for generations. And before a review focusing mainly on chronology and textual criticism, it should be emphasized that the authors’ coverage is wide-ranging — from the nuances of Latin particles through subtleties of characterization to detailed questions of topography — and the bibliography comprehensive.

Book 26 described the accessions of the brothers Valentinian and Valens in February and March 364 and their subsequent division of the empire, going down to Valens’ suppression of the eastern usurper Procopius in May 366. It also introduced a new narrative principle (26.5.15): that to avoid confusion in readers the organization would be geographical, rather than leaping from place to place to preserve chronological precision. This principle (in which many later historians’ narratives of these reigns have followed Ammianus, including Gibbon, Seeck, and Blockley in CAH XIII) does not greatly affect the reader in Book 26, but Books 27 and 28 see it fully in action. Previously the actions of emperors or campaigns have been described year by year, but Book 27 focuses on events starting roughly between A.D. 365 and 368, including inter alia the German campaigns of Valentinian’s generals in A.D. 365–366 (1–2) and Valentinian himself in A.D. 368 (10), Valentinian’s promotion of his eight-year-old son Gratian as a third Augustus in A.D. 367, along with some criticisms of Valentinian’s cruelty (6–7), Valens’ war on the Goths from A.D. 367 to the treaty in early 370 (5), a sketch of Petronius Probus as praetorian prefect of Illyricum (no chronological indications in the text, but he was in ofce from A.D. 368 to 375/6) (11), and events in Armenia from A.D. 367 to 370 (12). It is hard to overstate how much this differs from the pattern of previous extant books. In Book 28, narrative blocs cover a still wider temporal expanse. Though the heart of the book treats campaigns of A.D. 369 and 370 (28.2, 3, 5), 28.1 describes the trials of Roman senators for magic and adultery between about A.D. 369 and 374, with a ash forward to the punishment of the prosecutors in A.D. 376, the year after Valentinian’s death, which brings a formal end to Ammianus’ coverage of western events; 28.6 describes the travails of the province of Tripolitania from barbarian attacks and the corruption of the military who failed to protect them, a sequence of events beginning as early as A.D. 363 and again with repercussions well after Valentinian’s death.

Chronology, then, is the largest single problem in these books, and is given fteen or so pages in each introduction as well as copious discussion ad loc. On the whole, the commentators show exemplary good sense and clarity, balancing the evidence of Ammianus against that from other authors and from dated constitutions in the Theodosian Code. Good examples are the painstaking examination of the end of the Gothic war in 27.5, Theodosius’ British campaigns in 27.8 and 28.3, and Roman and Persian interactions with Armenia in 27.12; in the latter they engage with the Armenian historiographical tradition and use the new chronology that Noel Lenski set out in the authors’ edited book Ammianus after Julian (2007). In a few places, they can be mildly corrected. In 28.6.30, they place the final fizzling out at Milan of the legal battle between the province of Tripolitania and the comes Romanus at a time after Gratian’s court moved there from Trier in A.D. 379. They are surely fundamentally right in arguing for a late date and an extended process — but in fact the court did not move to Milan until A.D. 381 (see Barnes in Ant. Tard. 7 (1999), not cited). The most difficult section in chronological terms is certainly 28.1, the Roman trials, instigated by the odious upstart Maximinus as prefect of the annona and vicarius of Rome and continued under subsequent vicarii when Maximinus had become praetorian prefect of Gaul. Their thorough treatment of the chronology on the whole follows Barnes, who demonstrated that most of the perceived confusions in Ammianus’ account arise from a misdating of Maximinus’ promotion to prefect.

Other questions surround the beginning of the trials, and their end. At 28.1.1, Ammianus dates the trials anno sexto decimo et eo diutius post Nepotiani exitium: the bloodshed associated with the killing in Rome of the usurper Nepotianus in June 350 had been the last major disaster to befall the Roman aristocracy. The sixteenth year would be A.D. 365/366, but all the other indications in Ammianus’ text and outside it point to c. 369/70. It is a pity that they do not give more serious consideration to Barnes’ suggestion of emending sexto decimo to uicesimo, 16 to 20. Their reluctance is perhaps understandable, as Barnes’ solution seems drastic, and Ammianus is certainly capable of errors in chronology (the worst by far, well-illustrated by the commentators, at 27.7.1). However, his text is also capable of serious corruption, as they demonstrate elsewhere, and if numerals were used in the transmission, for which there is evidence, xx and xvi could easily be confused (Barnes also offers xxi as a possibility). The overall sense must be ‘in the nth year after Nepotianus’ death and lasting beyond it’, which works far better if n = 20, since the chapter describes events from A.D. 369 to the mid-370s: et eo diutius is not, as implied on p. xvi and ad 28.1.1, a cover against possible criticism (is the suggestion that Ammianus gave a precise chronological indicator but suspected it was wrong?).

The date of the last trials, those of Aginatius and Anepsia under the vicarius Doryphorianus, is debated. Ammianus’ narrative clearly implies that Doryphorianus entered ofce and that the executions took place before the death of Valentinian on 17 November 375: since his predecessor Simplicius is attested in office on 23 March 374, the date must lie between those termini. The commentators point to a letter of the emperor Gratian from A.D. 379 (Collectio Avellana 13.3) which refers to an earlier letter he had written to Simplicius as vicarius, who they argue must have remained in office after Valentinian’s death. However, since Gratian had been Augustus since A.D. 367, it could have been written under his father’s authority but included his name in the heading. The commentators claim ad 1.53 that ‘when citing constitutions issued when he was a minor member of the imperial college, [Gratian] attributed these explicitly to his father’ (they cite CTh 1.6.8, 16.6.2, and 16.7.3) and conclude that the final trials belong after Valentinian’s death. However, all of these citations come in lists of earlier legislation, and it is not hard to find counter examples: CTh 10.19.8 (1 March 376) and 16.5.4 (probably 18 April 376) are constitutions from very soon after Valentinian’s death in which Gratian refers back to previous legislation using the first person plural, and though that legislation is lost, chronology means that it should belong to his father’s reign. So there is no reason to doubt Ammianus’ implications that the trials belonged exclusively in Valentinian’s reign — and indeed Ammianus would be guilty either of serious error or an extraordinary and wilful deceit if the authors’ chronology were correct on this point.

The most unequivocally successful aspects of the commentaries are philological: in explaining usage, in detailing intertextuality, in exploring the nuances of pronouns they cannot be bettered. There are many fresh observations, including at 28.4.21 the fact that editors have printed a sentence with no main verb, simply two present participles: perhaps an authorial error? I turn to their textual choices. As in the previous volumes, Den Boeft et al. diverge frequently from the standard Teubner edition of Seyfarth from which they take their lemmata. I counted over sixty divergences, excluding patently corrupt and lacunose passages where they reject overly optimistic attempts at rescue (there is a marked increase in such passages in Book 28). At only three points, by my count, do they vindicate the manuscript reading of the Vaticanus against other readings printed by Seyfarth (27.1.2, 28.2.4, 28.4.28); at another dozen they argue for readings of Gelenius’ edition of 1533, which may represent either the readings of the lost Hersfeldensis or simply his conjectural acumen. In just over forty they argue for the conjectures of others (ten by Petschenig, six by Henri de Valois), and they make about ten conjectures of their own (personally I would alter his text still further). In half a dozen or so cases where they disagree with Seyfarth, Ammianus’ prose rhythm, which is remarkably regular, is mentioned as favouring their change, but in another half dozen cases, they do not mention the fact that their solutions repair the rhythm. At 27.7.7 their solution breaks the cursus, but justifiably, given Ammianus’ practice in pithy excerpts of direct speech. There are also places where cursus should have been taken into account and was not: at 27.4.10 in favour of Clark’s defluentem; at 27.7.9 perhaps tipping the balance in favour of Adrien de Valois’ efficere rather than Madvig’s effici; at 28.1.37 as an obstacle to their proposed punctuation. Whereas some of their disagreements attest Seyfarth’s perverse conservatism more than their good judgement, there are countless astute choices and some outstanding conjectures: at 28.1.22 tutus for V’s tectus, while rescuing the ms reading tectius a line before; at 28.1.47 coartato for V’s contracto makes lurid sense of a Roman matron’s suicide by self-suffocation. Of course, my focus on emendation does not mean that they do not just as often explain the unexplained: for example by identifying eiusdem in 28.1.27 as Lollianus mentioned in 28.1.26 (the two sentences therefore should form a single paragraph). I read through the commentaries while writing a translation of the two books, and can rarely remember learning as much about Latin in as short a time.

A few minor corrigenda. 27.3.9: Gelenius’ reading is not fremitu but fremituque; 27.3.15: lemma and commentary have been accidentally duplicated from 27.4.14; 27.5.9: Augustus’ grandson Gaius Caesar is confused with his namesake and nephew the emperor Caligula; 27.6.2: the emperor Gratian is better described as ‘assassinated’ than ‘executed’; 27.12.2: the praetorian prefect ‘Sallustius’ (or to be precise, Saloustios) described in John Lydus, Mag. 3.51.6–52.4 should have been identied with Saturninius Secundus Salutius; 28.2.10: the villa Murocincta, normally identified as Parndorf near Vienna, is certainly nowhere near Sirmium. The authors probably assume that readers will have a critical text, but if they do not, they will not realize that at 27.2.6 insueta is the reading of Accursius and Gelenius, not C. F. W. Müller’s conjecture; at 28.2.4 His is not added in Gelenius’ edition but is a conjecture by Müller; and at 28.1.38 Valesius’ conjecture implacabilitate is anticipated by the scribe of manuscript E.

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

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

Symmachus' letter to Gratian (Ep. 10.2)

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.