Ammianus Marcellinus and funny names

I want to make an observation on a Latin usage, as found in Ammianus Marcellinus. I have not seen it commented on with regard either to Ammianus or to other authors (surely somebody must have done so, though?). The usage is a particular variation on the use of nomine (i.e. ‘by name’) alongside a personal name when that person is introduced for the first time: a very familiar construction, for example A Bear called Paddington: Ursus nomine Paddington. This is definition 3 in the Oxford Latin Dictionary.

Ammianus has dozens of occurrences of the ablative nomine both with place names and with personal names. As in English, it can occur at any point where a name is introduced for the first time. However, one might expect it to be more usual with unfamiliar names (so not ‘the city called Alexandria’), and for toponyms, so indeed it is: the usage clusters in the digression on Persia and the east, for example, is used for Syriac names within the Roman east (Meiacarire, Abarne), or for the barbarous names of unfamiliar rivers of northern Europe like the Main and the Neckar. Likewise, the 25 or so contemporaries who are introduced this way (out of 480 odd whom Ammianus names) often have odd foreign names. They include Persians (Nohodares), men of Germanic origin (Sandan, Bainobaudes, Rando, Viderichus), and North Africans (Stachao, Igmazen), and the perhaps slightly unusual slave name Apadaulus.

However, there are a few individuals who are introduced this way more than once, which may seem unexpected: Maurus (the soldier who crowned the emperor Julian with a torque in place of a diadem in Paris in early 360 at 20.4.18 and 31.10.21); Romanus (the corrupt count of Africa, at 27.9.1 and 29.5.2); and – no fewer than four times! – the Sarmatian general Victor (24.4.13, 24.6.13, 31.12.6, 31.13.9). What do these have in common? The answer is clearly that their names are also familiar adjectives or substantives meaning ‘(the) Roman’, ‘(the) Moor(ish)’ and ‘(the) victor(ious)’ respectively. Latin had no definite or indefinite article, and the distinction between capitals and minuscule letters was not used to distinguish names from other words, so we seemingly have here a usage of nomine to indicate that the word it follows is a personal name. Let us look at the examples of Maurus and Romanus:

sed cum id quoque turpe asseueraret,/ Maurus nomine quidam,/ postea comes/ qui rem male gessit apud Succorum angustias,/ Petulantium tunc hastatus,/ abstractum sibi torquem… capiti Iuliani imposuit./ (20.4.18)

successor Maurus nomine mittitur comes/… (31.10.21) 

quam rem militaris augebat socordia/ et aliena inuadendi cupiditas/ maximeque Romani nomine comitis. (27.9.2)

Zammac comiti nomine Romano acceptus (29.5.2)

   

‘But when Julian asserted that that too would be base [to wear his wife’s jewels as a diadem], a man called Maurus [not ‘a certain Moor’] (later the Count who fought badly at the pass of Succi, then standard bearer of the Petulantes) took off his torque… and put it on Julian’s head.’

‘Count Maurus [not ‘a Moorish general’] was sent to succeed him’

‘This was increased by the soldiers’ idleness and passion for taking over other people’s property, and particularly that of Count Romanus’ [not, ‘the Roman general]

‘Zammac, who was close to Count Romanus’ [not, ‘the Roman general]

In the case of Victor, the ambiguity would potentially not be so great, but nomine is used when he is called dux (24.4.13 and 24.6.13) or magister equitum (31.12.9) or comes (31.13.9). The two nouns victor and dux in apposition would not necessarily be normal Latin for ‘victorious general’ (Ammianus does not use uictor adjectivally), but they might lead readers to a momentary double take (perhaps there was also potential confusion with the regiment called the Victores?). There are of course plenty of cases where Romanus and Victor are mentioned without this use of nomine – when they are part of a list of names, when they have already been mentioned, or simply when the narrative can make it absolutely clear that we are dealing a personal name.

Once we have identified this usage it can also make sense of a bundle of further examples. At 16.6.1, comes Verissimus nomine is count Verissimus, not a very truthful general; at 18.3.2 the general Barbatio had a wife called Assyria, not an Assyrian wife, just as at 28.1.8 the former vicarius Chilo had a wife called Maxima, not an enormous wife. Julian greeted with a kiss Celsus the governor of Cilicia, not the tall governor of Cilicia (22.9.13). Count Theodosius summoned a man called Civilis to be vicarius of Britain, not a polite man or a civilian (27.8.10, a case where the danger is not so much of ambiguity but of temporary confusion). The name Iovianus would not offer any ambiguity – there is no use of nomine for the emperor of that name, for example – but when it is the name of a soldier (23.5.12), there was potential confusion because there was a regiment called the Ioviani (after whom, one presumes, the emperor Jovian had probably been named: his father was their former commander). The name of the German king Hortarius only requires nomine, one suspects, because it appears in the genitive where there is potential confusion with the verb form hortari (17.10.5).

One case may merit a bit more thought. Immediately after Julian’s acclamation in Paris, soldiers surrounded the palace because of a rumoured attempt on his life:

strepituque immani excubitores perculsi/ et tribuni et domesticorum comes Excubitor nomine/ ueritique uersabilis perfidiam militis/ euanuere metu mortis subitae dispalati

The guards were alarmed by the terrible noise, along with the tribunes and the Count of the Domestici called Excubitor, and fearing treachery from the flighty soldiers, they vanished, scattered by their fear of imminent death.

In a short article (‘Zu Ammian 20, 4, 21: Excubitor nomine’, Chiron 5 (1975), 493-4), Joachim Szidat suggested that the comes domesticorum Excubitor, an otherwise unattested person and otherwise unattested name, may not have been called Excubitor at all. Rather, the use of nomine here is a different one, he suggests: ‘nominally (but not in fact)’ (Oxford Latin Dictionary, type 16b). He was nominally an excubitor, that is an imperial guardsman, but in fact he ran off. This is certainly attractive. It helps also to deal with the fact that there are no examples of persons with that name. Unfortunately, however, there are two objections, and two possible alternatives.

First, this use of nomine is not found elsewhere in Ammianus. Secondly, we have just seen that it is a frequent habit of Ammianus to use nomine to distinguish names from nouns when there might be ambiguity, and this is just such a case. One might of course wonder whether both senses could be present – that the general really was called Excubitor but that Ammianus wanted to hint that really, he was no excubitor. Indeed I have sometimes wondered whether Romanus nomine comes carries an undertone of ‘this supposedly Roman general’. Plays on names are not absent from the work of Ammianus. However, one would have to suspect that the simplest explanation is the best: that this is a use of nomine to make it clear that an ambiguous word is a personal name. Szidat is probably wrong. There is another, perhaps slim, possibility: this is the only sentence in the Res gestae where personal name or noun excubitor appears, and it appears twice. Could it be that the unparalleled appearance of it as a personal name is a corruption caused by a scribe rewriting the unusual word he had written a few seconds earlier in place of a not dissimilar name? In which case, the name is lost.

Some of the cases where Ammianus places nomine by toponyms may also arise from this usage:  a castle called Sumere (25.6.4; not the word for ‘to take’) or the city named Dura, not a hard city (25.6.9).

Does this exist elsewhere in Latin? Ammianus is of course a remarkably likely author in whom to see such a phenomenon, featuring as he does a great many names, in a narrative context, and in an age where people were likely to be designated by only one name and distinctive markers like the Latin praenomen had dropped out of general use. But I looked at Tacitus, Symmachus, and Sidonius. Tacitus generally uses nomine alongside exotic names, but at Annals 2.39.1 note Agrippa Postumus’ freedman, nomine Clemens, Clement by name. Symmachus does not usually use nomine with personal names at all, but his three examples are all telling: Ep. 3.36 Pirata (not the pirate); 3.49 Sabinus (not the Sabine); 4.24 Florentinus (not the Florentine). In Sidonius only one example, in letter 4.12: lectorem... Constantem nomine (Constans the reader, not the constant reader).

Since I am in Munich, I had better go and see what the slips of the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae have to say on the matter...

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 date of accession of the emperor Valentinian I

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?