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...

Alan Cameron's Last Pagans of Rome

A review in Classical Review 65.1 (2015), which has just been pre-published on line (copyright, the Classical Association) [UPDATE pages 230-233]. Readers may notice that I have taken my time... It was, for good reasons, a hard review to write.

CAMERON (ALAN) The Last Pagans of Rome. Pp. xii + 878, ills. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Cased, £55, US$90 (Paper, £29.99, US$45). ISBN: 978-0-19-974727-6 (978-0-19-995970-9 pbk). doi:10.1017/S0009840X14002960

C. first promised a book called The Last Pagans of Rome in 1981, and references to its progress recurred intermittently in his scholarly works over the following three decades – a period in which he was far from idle. In fact, in the acknowledgments of this vast, brilliant, unusual book, C. places its origins still further back, referring to articles of 1977 (Entretiens Hardt 23, 1–30) and 1966 (JRS 56, 25–38, on Macrobius); he could equally have mentioned his 1964 article on Ammianus and the alleged circle of Symmachus (JRS 54, 15–28). This long gestation has given scholars foreknowledge of C.’s overall approach and of many individual ideas and insights, and a few earlier articles are adapted into the book. C.’s penchant for creative destruction is well known, and occasionally the ‘standard views’ polemicised against have already so wilted under his attack and that of others that readers may think them made of straw; very occasionally, works cited as ‘recent’ are anything but. But the great majority of the material is published for the first time, and the work manages to be impressively coherent and up to date despite its formidable length and despite containing discrete studies that could have made separate books.

The pagans of the title are western, mostly Italian, senatorial aristocrats of the late fourth and early fifth centuries: they are viewed through their authorship of and appearances in numerous literary works of that period, as well as through material evidence. The title appears to reference Herbert Bloch, who in 1963 published the most explicit and extreme statement of the argument that the usurpation of Eugenius in 392–394 was supported by aristocrats – whom Bloch dubbed ‘the last pagans’ – as an act of resistance to Christianisation. Taking a title from his opponents is emblematic of the essentially polemical orientation of C.’s work. Disproving the alleged ‘pagan revival’ is the springboard for a wider argument, that in political practices and literary productions wherein previous scholars have seen organised pagan opposition to the encroachment of Christianity in social and political life, there is in fact nothing to be seen.Writers or individuals who are thought to embody pagan resistance do nothing of the sort; those who were pagans (Symmachus and Nicomachus Flavianus, for example) were not fanatics, and many of them were actually Christians (Macrobius, above all); literary revivals of ‘pagan’ literature and scholarship on it had nothing to do with paganism and were as likely to be the work of cultured Christians. The argument is replayed repeatedly for an exceptional range of sources and approaches. In the course of the book, C. provides something not unlike a general literary and cultural history of the Roman west between c. 350 and 430 – with the crucial difference that rather than summarising knowledge, he offers fresh insights on almost every topic.

One way in which the title may remind readers of the book’s prolonged genesis is that, since C. started writing, the very terms ‘pagan’ and ‘paganism’ have come under attack, both for representing a hostile characterisation and for implying non-existent homogeneity of belief and aims. C. repeatedly demonstrates the second point, but the first chapter argues on the basis of an exhaustive lexical study that paganus came in the mid-fourth century to be applied to non-Christians (and non-Jews) not in the contemptuous sense of ‘bumpkin’, but as a relatively neutral term: previously used for rural as opposed to urban and civilian as opposed to military, it ‘takes its precise color from an antonym’ (p. 22). His argument will be cited by anybody hereafter who prefers sensitive use of ‘pagan’ to fashionable alternatives such as ‘polytheist’. The second and third chapters cover the condition of pagan public religion under Christian emperors from Constantius II to Theodosius I (with Gratian’s withdrawal of funding from the cults in 382 seen as more significant than the surviving anti-pagan laws of Theodosius in 391–2), and the usurpation of Eugenius in 392–4, where the creation of the legend around the battle of the River Frigidus as a pagan/Christian clash is studied in close detail. Then two prosopographical chapters: Chapter 4 on the decline and disappearance of the traditional priesthoods, without which there was no formal public means for aristocrats to be pagan; Chapter 5 on pagan converts, attempting to set the parameters within which the population shifted from one set of religious beliefs to another. Arguing that too much stress has been placed on the rigorists on both sides, he conceives the population as consisting of up to five groups, including moderates on each side and undefinable individuals in the middle (incidentally, in this chapter a reference to Sandwell’s work on Antioch [p. 175] prompts C. to deploy the term ‘identity’ in the fashionable sense for the only time in over 800 pages of text – a choice which I leave to readers to deplore or applaud). C. accepts Barnes’s argument that in the fourth century Christianisation of the high aristocracy proceeded faster than generally accepted, and himself argues that its comprehensiveness has also been understated in the early fifth.

After coverage of a miscellany of pagan writers in Chapter 6, including those like Pacatus who turn out not be pagans, Macrobius (Chapter 7), subject of one of C.’s earliest groundbreaking articles, is shown to be a Christian. Writing c. 430, he is nostalgic for but far removed from the pagan past – an interpretation fully accepted by the latest editor of the Saturnalia, R. Kaster. Chapter 8, on the Carmen contra paganos, provides the book’s most brilliant display of philological and historical fireworks, demonstrating first that this attack on a pagan prefect cannot refer to Nicomachus Flavianus at the time of the Frigidus, next that it must instead refer to Vettius Agorius Praetextatus ten years before, and finally, on the basis of an attribution in a medieval library catalogue from Lobbes and of metrical, stylistic and intertextual comparison, that the poem was written by Pope Damasus before his own death on 11 December 384 (text and translation of the poem are included in an appendix). Chapter 9, on other anti-pagan verse invectives of the period, includes discussion of the centonist Proba, slightly misplaced alongside the Carmen ad senatorem (the senator is tentatively and unpersuasively identified as Domitius Modestus), the Carmen ad Antonium and Prudentius’ Contra Symmachum. In Chapter 10, C. reconstructs the circle of Symmachus that he long ago deconstructed, using the letters to build up a picture of the alleged champion of paganism as a practical politician keen to use his letters to show himself a broad central figure, corresponding collegially with friends of whatever religion. There follows a brief and authoritative history of the fourth-century revival of early imperial Latin literature, which will be an immensely useful starting point for future studies, even if only loosely connected to the theme of the book by the demonstration that this revival has nothing to do with paganism: another chapter of which many scholars would have made a monograph. Chapters 12–14 incorporate an actual monograph, drafted in the 1980s, on the phenomenon of the late-antique subscriptions that survive in many manuscripts. These usually refer to ‘emending’ or ‘reviewing’ the text, and have often been associated with pagan aristocrats courageously saving classical civilisation. C. uses a comprehensive collection of subscriptions to show that they are far from exclusive to aristocrats or pagans or classical texts, and that they refer not to editing in any modern sense but simply the practice, vital before printing, of correcting texts, usually against their exemplars. Romantic nonsense, like the supposed ‘edition’ of Livy laboured over by the Nicomachi and Symmachi, is punctured. Chapters on knowledge of Greek and on the alleged pagan nature of Virgilian scholarship are followed by a pair of chapters on the lost Annales of Nicomachus Flavianus. Their inclusion reinforces the sense of C. as a scholar willing to cross the road to knock down a bad argument: since the Annales are attested only in two inscriptions, and nothing solid is known about them, most scholars who do not believe that they were an important and influential work of pagan historiography which influenced many other histories of the period have not confronted the arguments of those who do. A chapter on pagan art and its patrons reminds us of the remarkable breadth of C.’s skill. The last full chapter before the substantial and thoughtful conclusion treats the Historia Augusta (another case where C. goes out of his way, since few serious scholars believe that the HA has a serious anti-Christian agenda). To remark in a footnote that ‘little or nothing written since [Dessau 1889] has added anything important to the sum of knowledge’ is mischievous and, if understandable, somewhat unfair. Re-examining the unquestionable intertextual relationship between the prefaces of Jerome’s Life of Hilarion and HA Vita Probi, he makes Jerome the imitator, and backdates the HA into the 370s or the 380s. On the first point he is very likely right. All the circumstantial detail of the intertextuality is on his side, and the argument is certainly stronger than the alleged allusions to Ammianus or Claudian or other authors that have been used to argue a later date. But his dating of Jerome’s VH as early as 385/6 (p. 770) is unconvincing; the life postdates the Vita Malchi, which refers (2.1) to Jerome’s friend Evagrius as papa, bishop, putting it after 388, in turn retarding C.’s terminus ante quem of the HA.

In such a large work some arguments will prove less convincing. Paschoud has already pointed out (in his review in Antiquité Tardive 20 [2012], 359–93, at 362 n. 5) that a dramatic date for Macrobius’ Saturnalia in 382 immediately before Gratian’s disestablishment of pagan cults only works if that disestablishment took place in precisely the last week of the year. Better not to seek an exact dramatic date in a work written half a century later. In the third chapter of the mini-monograph on subscriptions, C. misinterprets a subscription to Livy’s first decade (emendavi Nicomachus Flavianus v.c. ter praefectus urbis apud Hennam), though with little harm to the overall argument. Since ter means not ‘for the third time’ but ‘on three occasions’, this implies that the correction took place not during Flavian’s third prefecture – as C. argues, while acknowledging the strangeness of a prefect going as far from the city as Sicily while still in office – but afterwards. These are minor points. My largest doubt is whether in the period following 395, not too well attested by narrative sources, C. is overly influenced by the model he has destroyed in Chapter 3, of the civil war against Eugenius as a religious conflict (esp. pp. 187–95). He is right that the evidence adduced for widespread paganism among high office holders in the reign of Honorius is illusory, but his counterargument, essentially that the mere fact of being high office holders after 395 makes them likely to be Christians (which would certainly not have been true in 390), seems nearly as presumptuous, and out of kilter with the undramatic fizzling away of paganism that he persuasively presents elsewhere.

C. has given the thesis of aristocratic pagan resistance the treatment that Hercules gave the Hydra, though plenty of room for debate remains across the work’s full range, as already illustrated by a thoughtful collection of essays by distinguished Italian scholars (R. Lizzi Testa [ed.], The Strange Death of Pagan Rome [2014]). Some forceful responses have come in areas which might seem tangential, such as the HA or Flavianus’ Annales (see Paschoud’s review, op. cit., also reprised in Lizzi Testa). This book will stimulate much more besides in the coming decades. It offers a virtuosic breadth of coverage and approach that must in the end justify its length. It is also wonderfully readable – a fact which in part (whatever one might think of this feature otherwise) is down to the polemical tone.

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.

A review of Callu's Symmachus

From Classical Review 61, 634

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

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

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

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

[Copyright, The Classical Association]

Symmachus declines an invitation from Ausonius (Ep. 1.20)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1.44:

To Agorius Praetextatus

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

1.52:

To Agorius Praetextatus

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

The date of accession of the emperor Valentinian I

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

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

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

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

Symmachus' letter to Gratian (Ep. 10.2)

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

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

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

To Gratian Augustus

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

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

Symmachus’ first letter to Ausonius (9.88)

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

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

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

Three more letters of Symmachus to Ausonius

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

Ep. 1.19

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

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

Ep. 1.21

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

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

Ep. 1.26

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

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

Symmachus' speech for Trygetius

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

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

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

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

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

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