A review of Doug Lee's From Rome to Byzantium

From Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2014.06.23 (12 June 2014)

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

Preview

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trevor-Roper, Ammianus, and Gibbon

I have been reading Hugh Trevor-Roper’s Wartime Journals (ed. Richard Davenport-Hines, London 2012): in fact more of an autobiographical commonplace-book or collection of pensées. Here is one entry from 1940/41 – written when he was working for the intelligence services from an office in Wormwood Scrubs (p. 39-40):

At a crisis in the history of Rome, to ease the pressure, the authorities commanded all professors to leave the beleaguered city, but kept back a large number of chorus girls. This seems like a reasonable measure to provide for the necessary refreshment of the defending troops; but since history is more often written by professors than by chorus girls, it has been most unfairly condemned.

The ultimate source of the story is clearly Ammianus Marcellinus’ first Roman digression (14.6.19):

Postremo ad id indignitatis est uentum,/ ut cum peregrini ob formidatam haut ita dudum alimentorum inopiam/ pellerentur ab urbe praecipites,/ sectatoribus disciplinarum liberalium impendio paucis/ sine respiratione ulla extrusis,/ tenerentur mimarum asseculae/ ueri, quique id simularunt ad tempus,/ et tria milia saltatricum/ ne interpellata quidem cum choris/ totidemque remanerent magistris. 

Lastly things have reached such a pitch of unseemliness that, when quite recently foreigners were driven headlong from the city on the grounds of a feared shortage of provisions, devotees of the liberal arts, who were very few in number, were bundled out with no breathing-space, but mime-artists’ attendants were kept on (both the real ones and those who pretended to be temporarily), and three thousand dancers stayed behind without even being interrupted, along with their choruses and the same number of trainers.

The situation is not wartime but a food shortage in the year 383 or 384. What prompted this garbled version of Ammianus’ anecdote? Trevor-Roper is most unlikely to have encountered Ammianus' history in the Classical syllabus that he had studied at Oxford before changing to early modern history, or in his abundant reading beyond the syllabus. The source is surely his favourite prose model, Gibbon, misremembered. Chapter 31 of the Decline and Fall contains a brilliant adaptation of Ammianus' two Roman digressions, in order to ‘produce an authentic state of Rome and its inhabitants which is more peculiarly applicable to the period of the Gothic invasions’. The passage is reworked not within Gibbon’s paraphrase of Ammianus but a page or two later:

…the vast and magnificent theatres of Rome were filled by three thousand female dancers, and by three thousand singers, with the masters of the respective choruses. Such was the popular favour which they enjoyed, that, in a time of scarcity, when all strangers were banished from the city, the merit of contributing to the public pleasures exempted them from a law which was strictly executed against the professors of the liberal arts.

It was the mildly anachronistic placement of the passage in Gibbon immediately before the sack of Rome by the Goths that spurred Trevor-Roper to adapt the passage to his own situation: a cynical young Oxford don, full of contempt for professors (who are not of course the same as Ammianus’ sectatores of the liberal arts); in an imperial capital in a desperate state of siege by a Germanic foe; when all the London universities had in fact been evacuated – and chorus girls had not. 

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.

A review of Brodka's book on Ammianus

This is an English version of a review published in Historische Zeitschrift 294 (2012), 757-59. The German version is available here.

Darius Brodka, Ammianus Marcellinus: Studien zum Geschichtsdenken im vierten Jahrhundert n. Chr. (Electrum vol. 17) (Jagiellonian University Press, Kraków, 2009 [2010])

Much has been written on the great historian of the fourth century in recent years, as source, as historiographical practitioner, and as literary artist. Brodka’s main interest in this book is a theme which he claims is comparatively neglected in the recent boom: his focus is on causation in Ammianus’ Res gestae, with a particular focus on non-human aspects of causation such as fatum, Fortuna, and god or the gods. Various scholars have looked at providentialist aspects of the Res gestae, but it is certainly true that modern readers are likely to view causation as a human level as much more important in Ammianus’ text, and to view his abundant references to Fortuna etc. as literary flourishes.

The first chapter is a conventional discussion of Ammianus’ life, followed by a laborious trawl through the most important programmatic passages (e.g. 15.1.1, 26.1.1, 31.16.9). In the second (and also the third) he bravely attempts to define the role of phenomena such as fatum, fortuna, and numen in Ammianus’ history; these definitions are then developed in the rest of the work. I must admit that even after reading Brodka’s book, and despite some undoubted successes in his argument, I have some scepticism about attempts to infer a consistent philosophical or theological system from Ammianus’ references to "metaphysische Kräfte"; after all, one can also read references to fate or fortune in narratological terms, given that they often occur at transitions or at points when future events are anticipated. Indeed Brodka shows that there are many inconsistencies in Ammianus’ presentation: he identifies two contradictory senses of Fortuna, for example. 

The third to the seventh chapters illustrate Brodka’s views about causation with examples from the work: on the fall of Gallus, Julian’s victory at Strasbourg, his elevation to Augustus, his disastrous Persian campaign, and Valens’ defeat at Adrianople. The chapters on Julian contain some excellent and fascinating arguments; these chapters and the chapter on Adrianople seemed to me much the most successful part of the work, because they engage with the historical situation and with Ammianus’ broader narrative. His portrayal of Julian’s death as a devotio is intriguing, that of Valens at Adrianople as an anti-Julian is thoroughly convincing. The book ends with two further chapters with a more general outlook (‘Kontingenzerfahrung und Kontingenzbewältigung’, ‘Kaiser und Fatum’) and a useful summary.

The book is not without flaws. While commendably comprehensive on Ammianus scholarship, he can be out of date on other subjects: for example, the very first page gives the Breviarist Festus the name Rufus, repeats the exploded idea that the Symmachi “edited” Livy, and proposes a dating of Eunapius’ history which will convince nobody. Ammianus is abundantly quoted, but the text is rarely engaged with at a close linguistic level: for example, Brodka does not consider that the last words spoken to Julian by the Genius at 20.5.10, which are important for his argument, can be interpreted very differently in the context. The Latin is printed with very little punctuation to help readers, and has many typographical errors. There are quite a few German typos too, and some repetitions: the book has not been well edited. But Brodka’s ideas are important, and deserve to be widely discussed, above all his discussion of Ammianus’ Julian.

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]

Eduard Norden on Rutilius Namatianus

From E. Norden, Die römische Literatur, mit Anhang: Die lateinische Literatur im Übergang vom Altertum zum Mittelalter (sixth edition, 1961), 113-114.

In the year 408 the emperor Honorius permitted the execution of his First Minister and General, Stilicho, to whom he owed everything. Then the Visigoths, who no longer needed to tremble before this great military leader, broke into Italy and plundered Rome (410). The threatened catastrophe was deferred by Alaric’s death. Honorius gave Alaric’s successor Athaulf southern Gaul and northern Spain as a prize in order to save Italy. The Goths retreated pillaging to the land that had been delivered to them. The successor of Athaulf (died 415), Wallia, became the real founder of the Gothic state, based around Toulouse and in Spain, and joined in a loose federal relationship with the Roman empire. During these events there lived in Rome an aristocrat, Rutilius Namatianus, who deserves to be made known to a wider audience. He was from southern Gaul, but lived in Rome, where he held the highest offices of state; whether he was of the old belief or a Christian cannot be said with certainty, but his sentiments were notably patriotic. In autumn 416 he left Rome to look after his Gallic possessions, which were endangered by the aforementioned plundering of the Goths. When he had returned home, he described his journey in a long poem in elegiac metre. The fact that it has only survived incomplete must be considered a great loss, as it is an extremely important piece of writing in terms of cultural history, and also a notable achievement poetically. The language and metre are of a purity which even his contemporary Claudian did not reach, to say nothing of the Gallic poets of that time. Apart from the poet’s decided aptitude for portraying landscape and people vividly, what attracts us is his amiable, strongly personal manner. He lives and moves in the mighty memories of Rome. In his beautiful song in praise of the city, with which he opens his poem, he has the skill to enrich the rhetorical schema lyrically through personal touches, and thus transfers the warmth of his feeling to the reader; he promises the Regina mundi eternal life, even though she has been desecrated by the Goths. He shortens the wait at Ostia, from where he wanted to begin his northwards coastal journey, by gazing towards the distant city: Odysseus had yearned to recognize his home from rising smoke; he recognizes Rome from the brightness that hangs over the seven hills, since in Rome the sun had shined on him and there the day was clearer than elsewhere; with eyes not dry he bids farewell. The romantic tones of the modern traveller to Rome are heard in his verses, a brightness mixed with melancholy which contrasts refreshingly with the delusive belief with which the medieval pilgrim shyly wandered through the holy places following by a fantasy guide to Rome, the so-called book of mirabilia. Of high religious-historical interest are the attacks on Jews and monks, with whom he came into contact on his journey. The Jewish leaseholder of a villa (on the coast opposite Elba) where they had had to land, raised a huge complaint for the downtrodden grass in the park and begrudged them drinking water; so they then bombard him with curses; it is one of the most unrestrained expressions of anti-Semitism in antiquity since Juvenal, whom Roman aristocrats greatly enjoyed reading. The journey past a monastery (on a little island between Corsica and Elba) gives the poet occasion for an invective against the monks, the men who fled the light, who found joy in filth and misanthropy; that Christians too could thus abuse monasticism is elsewhere attest. There follows besides a second assault full of bitterness when he sails past another monastery. Through such passages the poet is able to draw in the reader and to raise his poem above the coincidental and personal. Earnest and full of feeling, this last poem stands on the grave of ancient culture.

Ammianus and the difference between chapter headings and text

Texts of Ammianus' history are usually printed divided into chapters - between six and sixteen per book of 30 or so pages- each of which has a heading. Editors never tell you the status of these chapters -- but the divisions were made and the headings written in 1681 by Adrien de Valois (Hadrianus Valesius) for his revised version of his brother Henri de Valois' edition of 1636. Adrien intended them as epitomes at the beginning of each book, though more often than not they are printed at the start of each chapter. A couple of years back I published an article on these headings (Classical Philology 104 (2009), 233-242). One effect of them is to make Ammianus look more late antique and less classical, more like Eusebius and less like Tacitus, because many late antique texts have chapter headings, whether authentic or editorial, and classical texts don't. Another issue, since the texts were written by a learned scholar with a deep knowledge of the period, is that sometimes the headings reflect Adrien's reading or inference rather than Ammianus' text.

To give two examples of many: (1) the chapter heading at 30.10 says that the emperor Valentinian II was acclaimed at the town of Brigetio (Szöny in Hungary): this is an inference from Ammianus, who is unspecific, but in fact a contemporary text states that he was acclaimed emperor in Aquincum (Budapest). Plenty of scholars wrongly place Valentinian's elevation in Brigetio, following Adrien's chapter heading. (2) Or take the heading of 25.7, which calls the peace treaty of 363 by which the emperor Jovian ceded the city of Nisibis to Persia "very shameful but necessary." Adrien took his wording from another historian, Eutropius; but it is misleading since Ammianus thought the treaty shameful and unnecessary.

I have now found another case which I missed in my article, thanks to discussion with Dr Kyle Smith. When Nisibis (Nusaybin, on the modern Turkish/Syrian border) was surrendered to the Persians, the inhabitants were allowed to leave under the treaty. The heading of chapter 25. 9 includes the following: oppidani inviti patria excedere et Amidam migrare compulsi, "the townsfolk were compelled against their will to leave the homeland and move to Amida." But though Ammianus describes compulsion, the townsmen are not described as moving to Amida, (modern Diyarbakır) (25.9.6): exin variae complentur viae qua quisque poterat dilabentium, "then the various roads were filled with people slipping away wherever each was able to." It would make sense for people to move to Amida, which had been sacked by the Persians in 359 but which became a much more important centre in the following centuries; and Zosimus, whose account is close to Ammianus and who is presumably Adrien's source, tells us (3.34.1) that "most, indeed nearly all emigrated to Amida, a few settled in other cities."

Adrien's chapter heading here is not badly misleading; but if I had been asked I would have said that the citizens of Nisibis were resettled in Amida, and a closer look shows that the situation was not as simple or as orderly as that. Ammianus reinforces his pathetic picture of the refugees by not naming their destinations - indeed implying (see above) that they are going on various roads in different directions.

So men were appointed to drive them out, who threatened death if anyone postponed departure, and the walls were filled with wailing and laments, and through all parts of the city there was a single sound of everyone groaning, since the matron tore her hair on being driven out an exile from the home in which she had been born and brought up, and the mother bereft of her children or widowed from her husband was driven far from their graves, and a tearful throng embraced the doorposts of their houses or the thresholds and wept (25.9.5).

Rutilius' Return: Edward Gibbon's Journal

19 December 1763

I read Claudii Rutilii Numantiani Iter, lib. i. v. 1-644; lib. ii. v. 1-68. This is all that remains of a work that contained two complete books. I read it in Burmann's Edition of the Poetae Latini Minores. Leyden, 1731; one of those Dutch editions, cum notis Variorum, in which the text only peeps out amidst a heavy mass of commentary. The 700 verses of Rutilius are spread over 200 quarto pages, crowded with the remarks of Simler, Castalio, Pithoeus, Sitzmanus, and Barthius. Yet Rutilius is not a difficult author; once or twice only I should have been glad of an explanatory note; I looked for it in vain, but knew commentators too well to be surprised at the disappointment. The author of this little poem lived under the Emperor Honorius, by whom he had been raised to the first employments. He was Consul, Praefectus Praetorii, or Governor of Rome [a misinterpretation arising from the first edition. GK]: being a Gaul by birth, he embarked at Ostia the 9th of October 416, A. U. C. 1169; [Cl. Rutilii Iter. lib. i. 183. 205.] to return to his native country. The account which he has left us of his voyage along the coasts of Etruria and Liguria is imperfect, concluding at the town of Luna. His work may be considered in relation, 1. to its subject; 2. Its style and poetry; 3. the personal character of its author.

1. If Rutilius had lopped off the first 180 verses of his poem, the reader would not have been a loser. After briefly mentioning the object of his voyage, and his sorrow at leaving Rome, his adopted country, and the scene of his honours, he expatiates on the glory of the capital, that eternal city, to whose empire Jupiter had not assigned any limits, and which was destined to reign over all nations, and during all ages. Such a subject required a truly poetical genius; and Rutilius is only a cold declaimer, who strains his faculties to string common-place thoughts, without finding in nature and himself colours fitted to adorn his theme. This theme indeed would not have been chosen by a judicious writer; for the reign of Honorius was not a proper period for describing the greatness of Rome; a greatness long since fallen to decay. A veneration, and even terror for her name, had been supported by her antiquity and extent of empire. But the illusion was now over. The barbarians gradually knew, despised, and destroyed her. Great Britain separated from the empire; the Goths, Vandals, and Suevi overflowed the finest provinces of Spain and Gaul; and when Rutilius wrote, Alaric had already been for six years master of Rome [wrong! GK]. I acknowledge that our poet, who was sensible of these calamities, endeavours ingeniously to dissemble their disgrace; comparing them with the defeats of Allia and Cannae, to show that Rome never suffered a reverse of fortune without rising more vigorous from the shock. But the comparison is feeble and false. Since the Punic wars, circumstances were totally changed. In the time of Rutilius the springs of government were worn out; the national character, religion, laws, military discipline, even the seat of the empire, and the language itself, had been altered or destroyed, under the impression of time and accident. It would have been difficult to revive the empire; but even could that have been effected, it would have been the empire of Constantinople or Ravenna, rather than that of Rome. Rutilius might have felt how destitute his panegyric was of truth or probability, from the false and confused ideas excited by his personification of Rome. In the time of Virgil, this figure would have been natural. Rome, regarded as a goddess, and invoked in temples, had an existence in the opinion of the multitude as well as in the fancy of poets. As the mother of the citizens, and the mistress of the provinces, her name recalled the image of her empire; but when this empire consisted in the assemblage of nations, subject to the same prince, Rome was no longer its sovereign; and this city, reduced to an idea merely physical, represented nothing more but walls, temples, and houses, built on seven hills and on the banks of the Tyber. The remainder of Rutilius’ voyage is stamped with a higher value. The objects which he describes have not only more simplicity, but also more reality; and as they were observed with attention, they are painted with those colours of truth and nature, which always distinguish the result of experience from the fruit of study and invention. By a distinct and easy road he conducts us along the coast of Etruria, which was become almost a desert; he points out the ruins of cities, the beauties of the landscape, and all those places which were distinguished either by art or nature. Our traveller forgets not the neighbouring isles; and his curiosity leads him more than once into the interior of the country. The dryness of a didactic poem is occasionally enlivened by digressions either immediately, or not too remotely connected with the subject; [I except his invective against Stilicho, lib. ii. v. 41] such as the character of the Lepidi, the discovery of the use of iron, the Jewish religion, and the Christian monks. He is worthy of commendation for not giving to his narrative, serious as it is, too much of the marvellous; which never becomes a poem, where the author is his own hero. The marvellous is pleasing to our fancy, but is rejected by our reason. When we consider that conditional faith and imperfect delusion with which we are affected in works of fiction, it should seem as if there was a conflict of two hostile powers, by which the mind is kept in a state of suspense, that can only be maintained by distance and obscurity, and an air of mystery hanging over either the actor or the author. When the poet unites both characters in his own person, we are disposed to examine his narrative by the maxims of experience; and our voluntary delusion cannot, without the greatest difficulty, be supported.

2. Rutilius's voyage is read with pleasure: it is interesting and useful; but why was it written in verse ? Poetry seems equally to misbecome the subject and the genius of the author. The narrative of a voyage comes very properly from a philosopher, a man of parts, or a fine writer, but has no connexion with verse. When we attempt to adorn with numbers a subject plain and simple, it is scarcely possible that our style should not be either unpoetical or improper. The subject requires ease, perspicuity, precision, and some ornaments introduced seasonably, and with a sparing hand. Rut the poet, in order to affect his reader with enthusiasm, must first feel it himself; he must aim at energy of expression and harmony of numbers; and be willing to sacrifice to them all beauties of an inferior order. The language of poetry suits only those strong passions of the soul by which it aas originally produced; and he who attempts to employ this language on topics which leave the mind in tranquillity, will find himself between two rocks, on one of which he must shipwreck; the brilliancy of his expression will either misbecome the simplicity of his thoughts, or the tameness of his words and phrases will disgrace the dignity of verse. All these reflections are applicable to Rutilius's voyage. His thoughts are ingenious, artfully arranged, and expressed with clearness, precision, and taste. But his poetry is mean and creeping, destitute of strength, and devoid of harmony. We see that he distrusts his natural rigour, and has recourse to contrivances of art; contrivances weak and common, scarcely pardonable in great authors, and for which they seldom stand in need of pardon. 1. Rutilius seems to have thought that swelling words, which best filled the mouth, were also most pleasing to the ear. But I wish such words were resigned to Oriental poets, of whom only they are not unworthy. I doubt whether Bellerophonteis solicitudinibus [Rut. Iter. lib. i. 450] be ever quoted, except on account of the singularity that two words should compose a pentameter verse. 2. He is bold even to licentiousness in forming new words, or giving new combinations to the old. What can be more forced than using connubium for concilium? [Idem. lib. i. 18. – a mistake of the editio princeps GK]. I am pleased however with this epithet legiferi, applied to the Roman triumphs. [Idem. lib. i. 39, 107, &c.] Laws, order, and civility were produced by those triumphs, and were their ordinary fruits. 3. I thought that I had discovered some rhymes, but they are too few to enable us to determine whether they ought to be ascribed to negligence, or were the effect of that bad taste, which the corruption of language and connexion with the barbarians, who were fond of rhyme, gradually introduced among the Romans.

3. Authors describe themselves in their works: a maxim as true as it is ancient. We may add that the shades which appear in the picture certainly were to be found in the original. The character of Rutilius appears to me to have been amiable. I perceive a love for his country, especially in its adversity; a heart susceptible of friendship, and a tender and respectful regard for the memory of his father. Are so many good qualities to suffer a total eclipse from a little too much vanity? Rutilius reviews the stages of his greatness with complacence ; his country, his friends, his father, are endeared to him by their connexion with his own honours. His vanity is contemptible. Cicero boasted not of being consul, but of saving the republic in his consulship. Men may be more easily pardoned for being proud of their actions and talents, than for valuing themselves on their employments and titles, the vain and frivolous distinctions of society. Rutilius detested the Jews, and despised the monks. Was this in him a crime? I could wish indeed that his feelings had been expressed with more philosophical moderation, and rested on a better principle. But he was a Pagan, who beheld his religion sinking under the weight of years, and involving the empire in its fall. The Christians insulted the decline of his sect, which they endeavoured to hasten by persecution. A little bad humour was excusable. Nothing can be more animated than his description of the monks in the isle of Capraria, or more judicious than the reflections with which it is accompanied. The folly of these monks is extreme, in thinking that God took pleasure in the sufferings of his creatures ; but their conduct was conformable with their principles. Had Rutilius lived in the twelfth century, what would he have said of their successors, who availed themselves of their voluntary poverty and humility, to acquire the esteem of the multitude, and of that esteem, to appropriate to themselves temporal power, and half the riches of Europe.

Rutilius' Return 3: at Portus (1.165-204)

His hymn in praise of Rome ended, and still in tears, Rutilius leaves for Portus. His friend Rufius (Antonius Agrypnius) Volusianus accompanies him longer than any other before himself returning to Rome. Once at Portus, he waits for the weather to calm, while looking back at the serene skies above the eternal city.

The basin of Trajan's harbour at Portus, over half a kilometre wide.

After these words, we begin our journey. Friends accompany us. Eyes without tears cannot say “farewell.” And now, as the others go back to Rome, Rufius sticks to me as I leave, the living glory of Albinus his father. He derives his name from the ancient line of Volusus, and recalls the Rutulian kings, as witnessed by Vergil. To his eloquent tongue the palace was entrusted: in the flush of youth he had the honour of speaking in the emperor’s name. Previously as a lad he had ruled the Punic people as proconsul: he was an object equally of fear and of love to the Tyrians. Energy and dedication have promised him the highest rods of office: if it is right to trust in merit, he will be consul. At last I sadly compelled him unwillingly to walk back: divided in body, one mind still holds us. [1.178]

Then at last I stroll to the ships, where with two-horned brow divided Tiber cuts to the right. The channel on the left is avoided for its inaccessible sands: only the glory of receiving Aeneas remains. And now Phoebus had lengthened the span of the nighttime hours in the paler sky of the Scorpion’s Claws. We hesitate to try the salt sea and sit in port, and there is no shame enduring leisure when delays are thrust on us, while the westering Pleiades rage on the faithless gulf and while the anger of the gusty season falls. It gives pleasure to look back often at the nearby city and follow its mountains with diminishing sight, where our guiding eyes enjoy the pleasing region, while they think that they can see what they desire. And it’s not from telltale smoke that I recognize the place that holds the ruling citadel and the capital of the world – although Homer commends the signs of light smoke, whenever it rises to the stars from the beloved earth – but a brighter tract of sky and a serene zone signals the bright peaks of the seven hills. There are perpetual suns, and the very day that Rome makes for itself seems to be clearer. Often my astonished ears resound with the circus games; enthusiastic applause announces dull theatres. Familiar voices return from the resounding air – either because they come or because invented by love. [1.204]

A beautiful emendation

In the second section of his Hymn to Rome, Rutilius speaks of Rome’s ancestry (1.67-72):

Auctores generis Venerem Martemque fatemur
Aeneadum matrem Romulidumque patrem.
mitigat armatas victrix clementia vires.
convenit in mores nomen utrumque tuos.
hinc tibi certandi bona parcendique voluptas:
quos timuit superat, quos superavit amat

As begetters of our race we acknowledge Venus and Mars, the mother of the sons of Aeneas and the father of the sons of Romulus. Victorious clemency softens armed strength: both names are appropriate for your character. Hence your noble pleasure in combat and in mercy: it overcomes those it feared, which loves those it overcame.

There are obvious echoes of the hymn to Venus that opens Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura: both of the opening words, and of the famous image of Mars infatuated by Venus. The idea of Rome fighting and sparing in the third couplet alludes to a passage also alluded to in the previous lines, Anchises’ description to Aeneas of the Roman mission in Aeneid 6, parcere subiectis et debellare superbos, “to spare the conquered and war down the proud”. After the introduction of Venus and Mars in the first line of the passage, the following lines blend together the two gods and concepts associated with them, for Venus victorious clemency, sparing, love, for Mars armed strength, combat and overcoming. The arrangement is chiastic, with the Venus concepts at the start in the first couplet and at the end in the last couplet, and mingled with Martial ones in the middle couplet.

In line 71, the word bona stands out. To translate ‘noble pleasure’ smoothes over the banality. Admittedly bonus is not as banal a word as the English good, but it looks like a metrical filler: the question would be whether it was Rutilius’ filler or an editor’s. And a glance at the apparatus criticus took me to the suggestion of Emil Baehrens (1848-88):

hinc tibi certandi par parcendique voluptas.

Hence your equal pleasure in combat and in mercy.

This seems to me so obviously right that I cannot understand why it is not printed by all editors. One reason that this brilliant conjecture may not have got so far was that it was made by Baehrens, who churned out so many frivolous conjectures that all of them tended to be ignored. If the name Housman were attached to it, or that of Baehrens’ old Professor, Lucian Müller, it would have done better. Secondly, there is a manuscript reading which makes sense – if poor sense. But it would be an odd thing if the only corruptions in texts only changed them so that they made no sense. And here it is easy to see how the corruption arose, through the omission of par before parcendi by haplography, and then the conjecture of bona to fill the gap in the metre. It is generally accepted that all our manuscripts of Rutilius derive from a copy made by Giorgio Galbiate in 1493/4from an eighth-century Bobbio manuscript. And while the best ms and the first printed edition, which has the independent value, have many mutual disagreements and corruptions, it is vanishingly rare for these not to scan acceptably – in other words, there is every likelihood that metrical emendation was applied to the text at an early stage of the transmission, probably by Galbiate.

Final thought: it is the aesthetic appeal of this emendation which draws me to it. This seems to me right, proper, and inevitable -- but also something to create unease. Clever is not the same as true: was Baehrens just improving the author? And my aesthetic judgment comes into play again, in favour of Rutilius' talent.