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.

The Dutch Commentary on Ammianus Marcellinus 29

A review forthcoming in the Journal of Roman Studies 105 (2015), now pre-published online (the punctuation on this blog is the preferred version).

J. DEN BOEFT, J. W. DRIJVERS, D. DEN HENGST and H. C. TEITLER, PHILOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL COMMENTARY ON AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS XXIX. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Pp. xxi + 298, maps. ISBN 9789004261532 (bound); 9789004267879 (e-book). €125.00.

Book 29 of the Dutch commentary on Ammianus Marcellinus has appeared at the now regular interval of two years after its predecessor. Three of the four authors have been on the team since Book 20 in 1987 (Drijvers joined for Book 22) and they look set to reach the 31st and last book in 2017. The applause merited by previous volumes (see my reviews of 25 and 26 in JRS 99 (2009), 294–6, and of 27 and 28 in JRS 103 (2013), 351–3) is equally due here. Reviews of commentaries will tend to pick up on points of detailed disagreement, but any quibbles below should be read bearing in mind the consistent thoroughness, good judgement, and originality of the authors across linguistic, literary, and historical scholarship.

In Book 29, as in 27, 28 and 30, sections tend to cover particular regions for periods of several years; as in earlier volumes, the authors follow the introduction with a useful chronological discussion, though the problems are less vexed in this book. Book 29 begins with treason trials under the emperor Valens in Antioch and elsewhere in the eastern provinces (chs 1–2); these should perhaps be seen as starting in A.D. 372 rather than in winter 371/2. The account forms a pair with the Roman magic and adultery trials at the start of the previous book (various significant intratexts are pointed out). The commentators also demonstrate the interesting likelihood that Ammianus used a handbook of magical practices for the famous scene where the conspirators divine the first letters of the next emperor’s name, ΘΕΟΔ-. Meanwhile, in the West, under the baleful influence of the prefect Maximinus, the emperor Valentinian also permits cruel injustices (3), but remains an exemplary Commander-in-Chief (4). The long fifth chapter describes the Mauretanian campaigns of Count Theodosius, Valentinian’s best general, against the rebel Firmus, between 373 and 375. Sallust’s Jugurtha is an obvious influence. The fact that Theodosius’ homonymous son later became emperor (fulfilling the conspirators’ prophecy) has led to the confusing juxtaposition in Ammianus’ narrative of panegyrical celebration with frank description of the hero’s old-fashioned discipline. In a previous article (in the commentators’ edited book Ammianus after Julian (2007)), Drijvers had sympathized with the view of Robin Seager, who argued beguilingly in Histos 1999 that Ammianus subtly and deliberately undermines Count Theodosius; however, the detailed examination of relevant passages here leads, regrettably but rightly, to a rejection of this argument. The sixth and last chapter tells how the treacherous murder of King Gabinius of the Quadi led to barbarian attacks across the Danube and how the younger Theodosius as dux Moesiae successfully resisted, before closing with the peaceful urban prefecture of Claudius (attested in 374), including a brilliantly impressionistic description of Rome transformed by the Tiber’s floods into an archipelago: the commentators let their appreciation of the writing shine through at such moments. But in commenting on the fact that, after describing every prefecture of Rome between 353 and 372, Ammianus omits at least two (xii, xviii, 246, cf. ix), they should at least have mentioned the theory of Otto Seeck (Hermes 18 (1883), 291), recently revived by Timothy Barnes (1998, App. 8), that an account of these prefectures has been lost in the lacuna of 29.5.1.

For the text of Book 29 is not good. The principal ms, Vat. Lat. 1473 (V ), is beset by a series of lacunae marked as around three lines long, between 29.3.4 and 29.5.1 and again between 29.5.22 and 36 (probably not coincidentally, these fall within a quaternion misplaced after 29.1.17 earlier in the transmission). For the most part Den Boeft et al. ably reconstruct the contents of lacunae, and are also in commanding form on textual problems elsewhere: they suggest or consider over forty changes from the text of Seyfarth’s conservative Teubner. With a few exceptions where the text of V is restored (rightly with aliqua at 29.2.13 and procincti at 29.4.5, dubiously with consonans against Gelenius’ consonos at 29.1.31), these are conjectural emendations, including about half a dozen of their own. The best is at 29.2.17, where they modestly credit comparison to Suetonius, Tib. 61.5 for poenarum maturitate (‘an early end to their tortures’); at 29.2.19 they use comparison to Ammianus’ source Gellius in repairing the exemplary tale of Dolabella and the woman of Smyrna. There are a few places where problems in the text have not been spotted. At 29.2.6–8, they regrettably stick to an extraordinarily forced interpretation of the text, admittedly found in all translations that I know of, that makes the conspirator Heliodorus a court chamberlain — who then has secret discussions with the court! The passage is correctly interpreted by Josef Češka in SPFB 39 (1994), 139–45. At the start of ch. 6, the transmitted text tells us that the Quadorum natio mota est inexcita repentino: they point out reasonably that inexcita, unaroused, needs to be qualified by something like diu (transposable, following Heraeus, from a few lines below); but the problem with repentino is not whether it can be an adverb, which it can, but its position. The simplest solution is the conjecture of ms E: motu est excita repentino. As I have commented in previous reviews, Den Boeft et al. often adduce Ammianus’ exceptionally regular accentual clausulation as a factor in textual decisions, but sometimes do not mention it when it supports a case made on other grounds: 29.2.24 nóta ac pervulgáta (Gelenius), 29.1.32 lítterae pósterae (Heraeus, for postrémae); they sometimes regard linguistic rarities as defensible even though against the cursus. In 29.4.5 there is no intrinsic problem with the participial form animati replacing a main verb, or with suspecti (E’s emendation of V’s suspencti) having an active meaning (though nowhere else in Ammianus), but prose rhythm requires animati sunt and suspicati. 

For all these minor disagreements, this is a model work of collaborative and interdisciplinary scholarship. Fans of Ammianus look forward eagerly to the quadriga Batavorum on 30 and 31.

Review of Bocci on Ammianus' Later Books

To appear in Classical Review 65.2 (2015), now pre-published online (copyright, the Classical Assoication)

BOCCI (S.) Ammiano Marcellino XXVIII e XXIX. Problemi storici e storiografici. (Il Potere e il Consenso 3.) Pp. 271. Rome: Aracne, 2013. Paper, €16. ISBN: 978-88-548-5349-2. doi:10.1017/S0009840X1500013X

This book is the publication of B.’s second Ph.D. thesis (Università Roma Tre, 2012), some 25 years after his first. The title is misleading. Having started with the intention of writing a commento storico on Ammianus Marcellinus’ 28th and 29th books (p. 10), B. decided instead to write on themes arising from Ammianus’ final six books, 26 to 31, which cover the reigns of Valentinian and Valens. An extensive introduction and substantial conclusion frame chapters on (1) Ammianus’ satirical digression on the senate and people of Rome, 28.4, along with the similar digression at 14.6; (2) the frontier policy of the western emperor Valentinian (364–75); (3) the characterisation of Valentinian. It is hard to agree with B.’s claim in the title and elsewhere that a particular focus remains on the two books that first caught his interest: fewer than half of the twelve chapters in those two books receive any detailed attention and there is plenty of worthwhile discussion of elements from Books 26, 27, 30 and 31. The book’s main contribution is on Ammianus’ portrait of Valentinian and his government of the west.

Presumably one of the deterrents to a focus specifically on Books 28 and 29 was the fact that the Dutch commentary team of Den Boeft, Drijvers, Den Hengst and Teitler has been efficiently working through Ammianus’ latter books, reaching Book 28 in 2011 and Book 29 in 2013, and perhaps B.’s work was originally intended for earlier completion and publication. There is certainly a lack of reference to more recent works suggestive of a book whose publication has somehow been unfortunately delayed. One or two works from 2007, including Den Boeft et al.’s edited volume Ammianus after Julian (2007), are cited plentifully; but the only later item in B.’s bibliography, sporadically cited in the text, is their 2011 commentary on Book 28. Among books important for the theme that are entirely absent from the bibliography or notes are D. Brodka’s Ammianus Marcellinus: Studien zum Geschichtsdenken im vierten Jahrhundert n. Chr. (2009), J. Drinkwater’s The Alamanni and Rome (2007), my own Ammianus Marcellinus: the Allusive Historian (2008) and R. Lizzi Testa’s Senatori, popolo, papi (2004). The absence of the most important Italian book on the reign of Valentinian, and plentiful reference to English, French and German scholarship, make clear that the problem is not with works being in foreign languages. Still, in a book that tends to start arguing not so much from the text as from judicious and sometimes overly courteous consideration of the opinions of earlier scholars, these are striking gaps. There are also plenty of less striking gaps throughout the work; in general B. is better with works on Ammianus than those on other authors or on the history of the period. The worst effects of his bibliographical shortcomings are to be seen in the introduction. It treats various long-standing assumptions about Ammianus’ life as undoubted fact (see now Chapter 3 of my Ammianus); the idea, originating with Seeck in 1894, that the last six books are an addition to the original publication, is left all but unchallenged. But there is plentiful scholarship that undermines this claim, including both the uncited Lizzi Testa and various items that are cited, and B.’s own plausible belief that Ammianus was inspired to write by Valens’ defeat at Adrianople should itself be seen as an argument in favour of unitary publication in c. 390.

The chapters proper merit greater attention. In Chapter 1, ‘Ammiano e Roma’, the digression at 28.4 on the senate and people of Rome is rightly considered alongside its twin at 14.6: these are treated as essentially serious pieces of moral analysis, for all their satirical tone. The conclusion, that Ammianus’ audience should be sought in the administrative classes outside Rome, has been well argued already by D. Rohrbacher in Marincola’s Blackwell Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography (2007, not cited). Chapter 2, ‘La securitas dell’ impero: la frontiera settentrionale’, argues against Drinkwater’s view (as expressed in articles of the 1990s, rather than in his uncited 2007 book) that the Alamanni were not a serious foe, and for the importance and efficacy of Valentinian’s frontier policy, which is placed in its historical context. Chapter 3, ‘Ammiano e Valentinano’, turns to Ammianus’ portrayal of Valentinian in the round, which embraces both damning accounts of his cruelty and admiring accounts of his military prowess, and takes on those such as Paschoud who have overplayed its negativity and denied the possibility that Valentinian might be seen as in some ways exemplary. To the suggestion that Ammianus’ starkly mixed judgement might reflect now lost sources, B. admits the possibility of influence but argues for the essential autonomy of Ammianus’ judgement. He reflects thoughtfully on how Ammianus might relate to senatorial retrospection on Valentinian at the time of writing (in his interesting discussing of engagement with Symmachus, he could also have cited Den Boeft et al. on 26.2.2 and 6, where there is unquestionably allusion to the Orationes). The conclusion, ‘Ammiano e l’impero al fine del IV secolo’, reiterates the argument that Valentinian could rightly be treated as an exemplary military emperor in the world after Adrianople (Brodka’s book, mentioned above, would have helped the argument here). The chapter on Valentinian and the thoughtful conclusion are likely to be the parts of B.’s work most valued by scholars.

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.

Ammianus’ chapter headings, again

I wrote a post a few years back about the chapter headings or capitula that are printed in texts of Ammianus’ history. These are not ancient, like some of those summaries of contents that are found in other texts of Roman antiquity, like Aulus Gellius’ Noctes Atticae or most works of Eusebius of Caesarea (by the authors themselves) or those transmitted in the manuscripts of Lucretius (the work of ancient readers); rather they are the work of the seventeenth-century editor Adrien de Valois (Hadrianus Valesius), in his 1681 revised edition of his brother Henri de Valois’ text of 1636. I published the only article that anybody has ever devoted to these chapter headings in Classical Philology 104 (2009), 233-242. Adrien did a pretty good job of summarizing the work, all told, but occasionally chapter headings report information which he had acquired from his own wider reading rather than necessarily representing what was reported in the text of Ammianus – in some cases leading scholars to think that something is found in the text when it is not, as I explained previously.

In that post I found another case where text and chapter heading are inconsistent, and now I have found a couple of further examples in books 27 and 28. Chapter 9 of book 27 actually contains a few short reports of events in different parts of the empire: north Africa, Isauria (in the mountains of southern Turkey), and Rome:

Mauricae gentes Africam populantur. Isaurorum latrocinia Valens compescit. De Praetextati urbana praefectura (‘Moorish tribes raid Africa. Valens quashes the brigandage of the Isaurians. On Praetextatus’ urban prefecture’).

The problem with this? Well, in the years that the Isaurians carried these raids, and in fact killed the Vicarius of Asiana (367-368), Valens was far away fighting the Goths on the Danube. It was in his part of the empire, to be sure, but he is never mentioned in the text and was wholly uninvolved.

In chapter 2 of book 28, after describing the western emperor Valentinian’s fortification works on the Rhine, and a Roman military defeat at Mons Pirus in Germany, he describes the Maratocupreni in Syria: a group of bandits within the Roman empire on the same lines as the Isaurians, though clearly a rather smaller group. Their most outrageous assault was to enter a city at nightfall disguised as a taxation official and his retinue, claiming that a wealthy citizen had been sentenced to death and his goods confiscated; they gained access to his house and after murders and looting left before daybreak. As has been remarked, the success of the gambit is a sobering reminder of what behaviour provincials thought was possible in imperial officials. Then the bandits are ambushed and massacred, including their children, and their village razed to the ground. The capitulum describes the events as follows:

…Maratocupreni grassatores in Syria jussu Valentis Augusti cum liberis et vico suo deleti (‘The Maratocupreni, raiders in Syria, are destroyed along with their children and their village on the orders of Valens Augustus’).

Valens is not mentioned in this case, though he is perhaps referred to indirectly: as they returned home, intercepti imperiali motu oppressi sunt (‘they were surprised by an imperial manoeuvre and subdued’, 28.2.14: my text is slightly different from that printed by Valesius or indeed by the Teubner, but it makes no difference to the point at issue). The adjective imperialis implies an action involving the participation of the Commander-in-chief, and Valens was in fact in Syria in 370, the apparent date of these events. The massacre and extirpation did, therefore, presumably take place on Valens’ orders, and his involvement is attested in a passage of Libanius (Or. 48.36) quoted in Henri de Valois’ note—from a speech unpublished when Valesius quoted it! But Ammianus nowhere explicitly mentions the fact that Valens visited Syria in the summer of 370, and indeed he does not mention his name in this passage, even though the previous sections have been dealing with the doings of his brother Valentinian in the west. Adrien’s chapter heading, by contrast, emphasizes Valens’ agency.

What Adrien de Valois was seeking to do in these two cases was to clarify his author’s narrative: he liked to make clear details such as the precise rank held by officials, and in these two forays from accounts of western events into eastern affairs, he introduces to his capitula the name of the eastern emperor. But in the first case the eastern emperor had nothing to do with events, and in the second, the mention of him, though clarifying the text, is out of sympathy with the author’s intentions.

The difference also points out what Ammianus is doing in his account of with Valens. Narratives of western military affairs in the later books are full of Valentinian’s involvement and planning alongside the successes and failures of individual generals; Ammianus takes the western emperor’s military achievements seriously, as modern scholars don’t always, and admires him for them. By contrast, the account of Valens’ first Gothic war (27.5) is a derisively brief account of uneventful and pointless campaigns; when serious military action happens in the east during Valens’ reign it almost always involves his generals. The emperor himself is only ever tangentially involved—and when he does get seriously involved, at the battle of Adrianople in 378, calamity ensues. The absence of Valens’ name in the account of the Maratocupreni in 28.2 – when he seems to have taken brutal and effective action – is not an oversight, but an intentional omission.  

The Dutch Ammianus Commentary, Books 27 and 28

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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’ 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.

The Dutch Commentary on Ammianus

A review of mine in the new Journal of Roman Studies (vol. 99 (2009), pp. 294-296). The commentators are not only remarkably good but also remarkably fast at their job. The commentary on Book 27 is due to be published on 31 December, less than two years after the last. (The bad news is that, with the collapse of the pound, it will be £110!)

J. den Boeft, J.W. Drijvers, D. den Hengst, H.C. Teitler, Philological and Historical Commentary on Ammianus Marcellinus XXV, Leiden: Brill, 2005. Pp. xxvi + 415. ISBN 978-9-00414-214-2. €119.

J. den Boeft, J.W. Drijvers, D. den Hengst, H.C. Teitler, Philological and Historical Commentary on Ammianus Marcellinus XXVI, Leiden: Brill, 2008. Pp. xxx + 356. ISBN 978-904016-212-9. €109.

The Dutch commentary on Ammianus is a remarkable achievement. The first six surviving books, 14-19, were covered single-handedly by Pieter de Jonge between 1935 and 1982. The tempo accelerated in 1987 when the baton passed to Den Boeft, Den Hengst, and Teitler; joined subsequently by Drijvers, they have now taken us as far as Book 26. De Jonge’s work focuses more on language than history and will in due course need replacing, but the current quadriga’s commentaries are unimpeachably multi-disciplinary, immensely thoughtful and learned, and likely to be used and admired for generations.

Books 25 and 26 are highlights in Ammianus’ history, with the death of the hero, Julian, and his replacement by inadequate successors, the short-lived Jovian, the brothers Valentinian and Valens, and the usurper Procopius. The commentators show due appreciation of the best passages, like Julian’s last speech (25.3.15-20) and the tsunami (26.10.15-19), while allowing themselves to be impatient of the confused pseudo-learning of the digression on the calendar (26.1.8-14). They cover almost every question raised by the text in luxuriant detail, and the bibliography is comprehensive. They march in step like the tetrarchs: this collaboration has none of the open disagreements of Woodman and Martin on Tacitus or Nisbet and Rudd on Horace, which is perhaps a pity.

The commentary is at its best on matters of philology (the province of Den Boeft and Den Hengst). They marry the grammatical expertise characteristic of their nation to an alertness to the nuances of late Latin. They comment usefully on the successes and failures of the major published translations, and in numerous places explain Ammianus’ often difficult usages (the palm goes to the explanation of why convenerat at 26.1.1 should be an irrealis). But they are notably bold – more, I think, than in previous volumes – about challenging Seyfarth’s conservative Teubner text, which they use for the lemmata. Particularly outstanding and significant textual notes come at 25.3.6 (Julian’s fatal wounding, where they propose the very meritorious in certamine), 25.7.13 (where the names of the Roman hostages guaranteeing the peace now include a senior general, Nevitta), but most of the rest are equally authoritative (see e.g. 26.10.5 paucos post dies, 26.10.16 revolutis [NB bold here substitutes for caret signs, not recognised by blogger]. They very occasionally defend the readings of the principal ms, the Fuldensis, against conjectures printed by Seyfarth (25.1.3, 26.5.1, 26.7.3), but much oftener argue forcefully for readings from Gelenius’ 1533 edition, which may well go back to the lost Hersfeldensis (fourteen times), the conjectures of earlier scholars, especially Valesius (over twenty times), and conjectures of their own (about ten times). About fifty divergences in two books prompts one to wonder whether it is not time for a new edition. Personally I would have changed the text in another ten places (e.g. they are right at 25.8.15 to commend Petschenig’s medimnus, but it should go in the text, not just the apparatus). My only criticism on textual matters is that the commentators do not always take enough account of Ammianus’ exceptionally regular prose rhythm. It is striking how often odd grammar and asyndeton coincides with poor cursus: at 26.6.17 the active detestabant is previously unattested and produces a poor clausula, and restoring the deponent regularises the cursus; at 25.3.17 an ugly asyndeton is also unrhythmical (read ínferens vel repéllens with Heraeus). At 25.4.19 the commentators should add rhythm to the arguments for their emendation cum háec ita éssent. Rhythm should have excluded E’s excogitata from consideration at 26.5.13, and also calls into question their acceptance of Sabinus’ circulo at 26.3.2 and G’s praeterlaberetur over Valesius’ praeterlambere at 25.10.5. Finally, while it is possible and plausible that Ammianus used venire for evenire, one of the three transmitted cases (neque secus venit, 26.9.4) gives a poor clausula (evenit would be fine), and in the other two (26.1.5, 29.1.26) the initial e could have been lost by haplography.

Questions of allusion – and Ammianus is very allusive – are comprehensively covered. One might pick out the use of Seneca to restore the text at 25.4.27, or a network of allusions to Lucan at 25.1.19 (apparently not previously observed). They equally expand our understanding of Ammianus’ engagement with contemporary texts (e.g. 26.2.2 on Symmachus, Or. 1 and 26.10 (introduction) on Libanius Or. 24; on Eutropius in the latter half of book 25 add my Ammianus (2008), 240-53). They are understandably cautious on questions of source criticism. In just a few places allusive engagement could be better handled. At 25.3.15 (the opening of Julian’s deathbed speech) they note the fact, but not the extent, of the similarity to one of Julian’s first speeches, at the battle of Strasbourg (16.12.30). At 25.10.13, after the emperor Jovian’s mysterious death in the night, Ammianus adduces an example: ‘although a similar departure from life befell him as Scipio Aemilianus, we find that a investigation was pursued into the death of neither.’ Earlier commentators compared Cicero, Mil. 16. Unfortunately, Den Boeft et al. quote the wrong part of the Cicero passage, relating to the death of M. Livius Drusus. The passage on Scipio’s death is much closer to Ammianus’ Latin, and attributes the death to nocturna vis. The case that Ammianus is hinting that Jovian was murdered is therefore much stronger than suggested here (‘not a good idea’).

If the historical aspects are not quite as authoritatively covered as the philological ones, they are still very good—and it is much less obvious what the responsibilities of a historical commentary are. Chronology is well covered in the introductions to each volume and passim; geography comes to the fore in the retreat from Persia; the two together in dealing with the rather tangled account of Procopius’ usurpation. They are judicious on prosopographical questions. On Ammianus’ general reliability they can be defensive. In particular they are reluctant fully to accept the case recently made by Barnes and Lenski, inter alios, for his tendentiousness about Jovian, though they occasionally offer evidence in support themselves (25.8.18). Other reviewers have commented on this (e.g. Kulikowski at BMCR 2006.04.31), so I will only add that at 25.5.9, they play down the significant echo of 21.16.21, which suggests that it was Ammianus’ own view that Jovian’s rule was shadow-like; at 25.9.11 they do not observe what was clear to Gibbon, that the exemplum of the Roman surrender of their disgraced general Mancinus to the Numantines in 137 BC hinted that Jovian deserved to be handed over to the Persians (and John of Antioch in fact tells us that people in Antioch thought the same). The authors are generally hostile to Barnes’ case that Ammianus was a militant pagan. They score a few minor hits at 25.4.3, 25.5.3 (though could this be a ‘formal’ second person plural?) and 25.5.8; but the absence of reference to Jovian’s Christianity until his obituary (Book 25, p. xiii) is not conclusive evidence against anti-Christian bias. On the contrary, it shows that something very odd is going on.

There is nothing so controversial in the coverage of Valentinian and Valens, though they do not really engage with a view conveyed both in D. S. Potter’s The Roman Empire at Bay (2004) and R. M. Errington’s Roman Imperial Policy from Julian to Theodosius (2006). The selection of emperors after the dominant Constantius and Julian passed into the hands of the military high command and they chose those whom they control. Valentinian is a much weaker ruler than his ostentatious terribilità implies, and we should reconsider the implications of anecdotes like that retailed by Ammianus about the magister equitum Dagalaifus (he told Valentinian that he could elevate his brother if he loved his family, somebody else if he loved the republic, 26.3.1).

A major controversy about these books concerns dating, and here the commentators are again helpful but not quite as helpful as they could be. In his Pauly article of 1894, Otto Seeck proposed that Ammianus had originally stopped writing at the end of Book 25 at the end of the 380s and that the last six books, 26-31, were added later. This view, which is neither unsupported nor compelling, has been taken as established by most scholars since, but in the last generation some heavyweights have argued for earlier publication of the final books (Straub, Cameron, Matthews, Barnes, and Lizzi Testa among them). The commentators have thought about these problems, but point in completely different directions. At the end of Book 25, the case is made that the final anecdote would not have been an inappropriate ending for a first edition; in the introduction to Book 26 it is argued that the last six books belong after 390 (cf. 26.5.14), and probably after the death of Valentinian II in A.D. 392 (presumably because of Ammianus’ frankness about his father, though that argument would be more convincing if Valentinian II had not been a cipher). But in the commentary at 26.1.1, the most significant single prop for Seeck’s dating (the interpretation of convenerat as referring to an earlier stopping point) is kicked away. It was a pity not to deal with the whole problem in the introduction to book 26.

However, any minor criticisms and supplements which I offer here should not detract from our appreciation for this magnificent – and thankfully ongoing – scholarly monument.

Symmachus to Ausonius (2)

So what is Symmachus letter 1.13 all about (incidentally, I decided to add the Latin text to the previous post)? Perhaps I should have read more widely, but I have yet to see the context of this letter properly explained. Here is my take.

Symmachus was a prominent and aristocratic young member of the Roman senate in January 376. But he was not yet what he was to become: a Prefect of the City (in 384-5) or a consul (in 391). Indeed, his father L. Aurelius Avianus Symmachus had on the very same day returned to Rome from unofficial exile, after after an unwise alleged remark prompted the plebs to burn down his townhouse. But Symmachus did have one advantage over his peers: most of them had never been to court – indeed, the senate had a notoriously bad relationship with the emperor Valentinian – but Symmachus had, on an embassy at the turn of the 360s/370s. At Trier he had given panegyrics of the emperor Valentianian and of his young son Gratian and been promoted to Count, third class; he had also met Gratian’s tutor, Ausonius. And Ausonius, like his imperial masters, had never been to Rome. They maintained a correspondence thereafter (occasionally, as the opening lines of this letter suggest).

On 17 November 375, a month and a half before the events described in this letter, the emperor Valentinian died of a stroke, in Brigetio, near modern Budapest. The heir to the western empire was Gratian, who had held the title of Augustus since 367, but who was many hundreds of miles away in Trier. The civil and military high command on the ground, aided by Valentinian’s widow, decided on the quite unconstitutional promotion to Augustus of Gratian’s half-brother, Valentinian II, in Aquincum (Budapest) on 23 November.

Imagine the position of the teenage Gratian, hearing, perhaps in late November, that his father is dead and that he is the sole western ruler, and then a week later, that the army in Illyricum, many hundreds of miles away, has proclaimed his four year old half-brother as an emperor. He can’t disown his brother, but neither can he allow the civil and military authorities in Illyricum, abetted by his stepmother, to establish a puppet emperor (it is vitally important, I think, that Gratian is in a separate Prefecture, that of Gaul, which also covered Britain and Spain, from that of Illyricum, which also covers Italy and north Africa).

Gratian needs to exercise his control over the whole of the Roman west, the Gallic and Illyrican prefectures, and particularly over Rome itself; he needs to make sure that Valentinian II is not a threat to him. So he needs to win over the senate, who have suffered under his father from investigations on charges of magic and treason. Torture and executions have occurred. A message of conciliation needs to be got to them – by New Year’s day they have spent weeks wondering how Gratian will react to Valentinian II. If you consider that Gratian in Trier may not have heard of his father’s death and the threat from his younger brother till well into December 375, it is not incredible that his messenger to the senate may only have arrived in Rome on the night of the New Year, the day when the new consuls were announced. The messenger’s breathless haste may not be a commonplace! He may really have been in a desperate rush.

To whom had Gratian turned to compose his message to the senate, asserting conciliation and control? Roman emperors had on official who drafted laws and speeches, the quaestor sacri palatii – and Gratian’s quaestor was Ausonius. This is why Symmachus represents Ausonius as so keen to know how the message went down (though preserving the established fiction that the speech is Gratian’s own). In a different sense, the fact that Ausonius was Gratian’s quaestor, and that Symmachus is one of the only senators who has actually met him, is why Symmachus is so keen to exploit the connection. Gratian’s and Ausonius’ concessions to the senate obviously helped to establish their control over the whole of the west. And, as I shall show in future posts, Symmachus’ sycophancy worked in making him a leading spokesman of the Roman senate and in reestablishing his and his father’s credentials.