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.

Mosaics of Time

A book review from Journal of Ecclesiastical History 65, 872-3 

Mosaics of Time. The Latin Chronicle Tradition from the First Century BC to the Sixth Century AD. 1. A Historical Introduction to the Chronicle Genre from its Origins to the High Middle Ages. By R.W. Burgess and Michael Kulikowski. Pp. xvi + 446. Turnhout: Brepols, 2013. €100 (hbk). ISBN 978-2-503-53140-3.

This is the first of four projected volumes on the Latin chronicle tradition in the Roman world. Although the surviving elements of that tradition are mostly late antique, with Jerome the central figure, one of the main emphases of the authors is that chronicle writing is a much enduring continuous tradition than those highlights might imply, and one which it is misguided to see as intrinsically Christian. The second, third, and fourth volumes will offer texts, translations and full historical commentary, covering respectively the early Latin chronicle tradition and consularia; Jerome and his continuators in Gaul and Spain; and the last Latin chronicles of antiquity. Burgess is acknowledged as the first author in terms of contribution as well as alphabetical order; and anyone familiar with the accuracy and acuity of his previous work in this area (from The Chronicle of Hydatius and the Consularia Constantinopolitana (1993) to the collected pieces in Chronicles, Consuls, and Coins (2011)) will look forward to the coming volumes, not only for providing reliable texts and accessible translations, but also in revising our chronologies of the period: the authors give notice that the fifth century will be particularly affected. The present volume is an introduction different in purpose and broader in scope. It aims to characterise the chronicle genre and place it in a wider context reaching back beyond the Greek world to the ancient Near East, and forward to medieval Europe. The authors start by carefully defining their terms, arguing convincingly that confusion has arisen from the use of different terminology in different periods (medievalists in particular are urged to mend their ways). Inter alia they argue for the acceptance of consularia as a subtype, for the abandonment of the term ‘annals’, and for the designation of some longer works which are often called chronicles as breviaria or epitomes . Chapters 2 to 5 then cover the early history of the chronicle from third millennium BC Egypt to the early Roman empire; Eusebius’ apologetic use of chronography (a practice traced to pre-Christian models); Roman calendars and consularia; and the late Roman chronicle. The last and longest chapter, drafted by Kulikowski, is a remarkably wide-ranging treatment of the medieval chronicle in both east and west down to Sigebert of Gembloux at the turn of the twelfth century; a highlight is the spare summary of Burgess’ innovative conclusions on the Irish chronicle tradition, to be published separately. Appendices follow, including some which are spillover footnotes. This volume, notably readable considering its comprehensiveness of reference and general complexity, is an important moment in the study of the chronicle and historiography in general: it deserves a wide readership among scholars of both the ancient and medieval worlds.

A review of Doug Lee's From Rome to Byzantium

From Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2014.06.23 (12 June 2014)

A.D. Lee, From Rome to Byzantium AD 363 to 565: The Transformation of Ancient Rome (Edinburgh History of Ancient Rome). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013. pp. xxii + 337. ISBN 978-0-7486-2790-5. £29.99 (paperback). Gavin Kelly, University of Edinburgh (Gavin.Kelly@ed.ac.uk)

Preview

This history of the Roman empire from the death of Julian to the death of Justinian is the eighth and final volume in the Edinburgh History of Ancient Rome, and the fifth to be published (we await volumes on early Rome and the empire from Tiberius to Commodus). (1) Each of the eight volumes is by a separate author, and while the General Editor, John Richardson, has not quite maintained the original plan of shepherding all eight to the press within two years, which would have been a miracle of scholarly husbandry, the overall achievement is nevertheless impressively efficient. The series places a stronger emphasis on chronologically ordered narrative than rivals with other publishers do. Covering the late Roman period, where in recent years social and religious change have received more scholarly attention than political and military history, this is welcome, and A.D. Lee, as the author of important studies on diplomacy, warfare, and religion in the period, is a well-qualified guide.

The work falls naturally into three smaller periods, each with different challenges for the historian: two well-attested and heavily studied ones – the post-Constantinian empire of the later fourth century, and the age of Justinian in the sixth century – and in between them the long fifth century, when eastern and western empires diverge and the sources become more lacunose and the historiographical problems greater, especially those surrounding the ending of Roman power in the west. Accordingly, following a scene-setting chapter on ‘The Constantinian Inheritance’, Lee divides the work into three chronologically organized Parts (I. ‘The later fourth century’, II. ‘The long fifth century’, IV. ‘The age of Justinian’) and one diachronic Part (III. ‘Longer term trends’).

Part I, ‘The later fourth century’, covers the period 363-395. Though the starting date is presumably an imposition of the series, Lee makes the case for the division of the empire between Valentinian and Valens in 364 rather than that between the sons of Theodosius in 395 as being the fundamental moment of separation of east and west (one can see it prefigured long before, of course). This part begins with chapters on political and military history (2. ‘Emperors, usurpers and frontiers’), one on religious history (3. ‘Towards a Christian empire’): the division of political and religious topics into successive chapters is maintained in all three narrative parts of the book, and works reasonably well. The bias of chapters on religion throughout is towards what might be called ecclesiastical history (emperors, heresies, councils, anti-pagan legislation) above the more fashionable sociological approaches to religion, though Lee is by no means blind to the latter. The third chapter of the section focuses on Rome and New Rome, which also offers the opportunity to treat the senatorial aristocracy.

Part II (‘The long fifth century’), covers 395 to 527, and its chronological breadth leads to a more thematic treatment overall. The first chapter of the section (5. ‘Generalissimos and imperial courts’) boldly combines the different trajectories of east and west in the first half of the fifth century, and is followed by chapters on ‘Barbarians and Romans’ and on ‘Church and state, piety and power’ (again, primarily ecclesiastical history, though with a few pages on holy men). The last two chapters of the section treat the resurgent east and the post-Roman west separately (8. ‘Anastasius and the resurrection of imperial power’, 9. ‘Rome’s heirs in the west’). Lee chooses to include some highly insightful pages on the emperor Justin (519-527) in the ‘long fifth century’ section, deliberately resisting the trend, begun by Procopius, of treating his reign as an overture to his nephew’s.

In Part III, on ‘Longer term trends’, Lee’s themes of choice are urbanism and the economy, both of which enable broad geographical coverage over the longer durée. A subsection on ‘education and culture is included in the cities chapter. Part IV, ‘The Age of Justinian’, comprises once again separate chapters on politics and religion (12. ‘Justinian and the Roman past’, 13 ‘Justinian and the Christian present’) and finally a relatively short closural chapter that includes the briefest flashforward to the turmoil of the great war against Persia and the Arab invasions of the seventh century. A slightly later formal terminus might have worked, though I have no quarrel with 565; on the other hand it is welcome that the series as a whole takes the story into the sixth century and avoids the traditional trap of identifying the end of Roman rule in the west with the end of the Roman world in either west or east.

The book has many virtues. Accuracy, as Housman remarked, is a duty not a virtue, but Lee is extremely accurate in comparison to some of his competitors. The only errors I spotted were trivial or arguable ones (p. 45: is it not anachronistic to think of Thessalonica, a city of the Illyrican prefecture, as being ‘eastern’ when Theodosius moved there in 379-80? It had been ruled by western emperors since 317 and only became attached to the east long term in the 390s). University students must surely comprise the majority of the target audience and Lee does not forget the book’s didactic purpose. Scholarly quarrels are generally kept out of the text (a prudent exception being explicit discussion of the controversy between Goffart and others on barbarian settlements in Chapter 6), but the footnotes tend to highlight stimulating and up-to-date works, not solely though predominantly Anglophone, in a manner that bright students will be able to make excellent use of (this is particularly welcome when many ancient history textbooks either lack annotation at all, or only have endnotes – hardly a good example if students are expected to produce properly referenced work themselves). Illustration is not lavish, but there are twenty-two well-chosen, well photographed and well-captioned pictures, as well as eight maps, not all as good as they might be: the larger-scale ones cut off Britain and pointlessly include most of the Sahara; those showing provinces lack boundary lines.

My one reservation about the book arises from a decision which was presumably not Lee's: that the last volume of this multi-author history should cover a period of over 200 years. I have no argument with the terminus, as I have said, but it is striking that the previous volume in the series covered a mere eighty years, and the one before that (dealing with the third century, the worst attested period in imperial history), ninety years. A great deal of material is crammed into 300 odd pages, but to balance the other volumes in the series it would have worked better to divide the period into two or even three volumes. Lee has space to introduce some interests of his own beyond what had to be covered, but I cannot help feeling that a more detailed canvas would have given the work a greater degree of individual flair to go along with its undoubted authority. He foregrounds both familiar and unfamiliar source texts from the period, but discussion of them is usually curt; there could have been more on the practice of administration, among many examples. In short, a fine achievement, but I wish it were longer.

1. The first seven volumes in the series are as follows: 1. Guy Bradley, Early Rome to 290 BC: The Beginnings of the City and the Rise of the Republic (forthcoming); 2. Nathan Rosenstein, Rome and the Mediterranean 290 to 146 BC: The Imperial Republic (2012), reviewed at BMCR 2014.05.13; 3. Catherine Steel, The End of the Roman Republic 146 BC to 44 BC: Conquest and Crisis (2013), 4. J.S. Richardson, Augustan Rome 44 BC to AD 14: The Restoration of the Republic and the Establishment of the Empire (2012), reviewed at BMCR 2012.09.45; 5. Jonathan Edmondson, Imperial Rome AD 14 to 192: The First Two Centuries (forthcoming); 6. Clifford Ando, Imperial Rome AD 193 to 284: The Critical Century (2012, reviewed at BMCR 2012.11.31), 7. Jill Harries, Imperial Rome AD 284 to 363: The New Empire (2012).