Finally, thank you especially to Gardiner. You always help me hear which notes to strike.
NOTES
Source Abbreviations
I chose the translations of the works of ancient authors largely based on their literary appeal, so some texts are listed with more than one translator. Chapters and line numbers refer to modern publications or, where I am the translator, to the ancient texts. Most of the translations of Claudian, including the text of Alaric’s two monologues, are my own, since the standard English version of Claudian’s poetry remains Maurice Platnauer’s stodgy prose edition from 1922—and I suspect that an opinionated artist like Claudian, had he ever been asked, would have insisted that his audience listen to his performance in verse.
AM Ammianus Marcellinus: The Later Roman Empire (A.D. 354–378), translated by W. Hamilton (London: Penguin Books, 1986); and Ammianus Marcellinus by J. Rolfe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1935–39).
Augustine CG = The City of God Against the Pagans, translated by H. Bettenson (London: Penguin Books, 1972).
R = Sermon on the Destruction of the City of Rome, translated by M. V. O’Reilly (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1955).
S = Sermons
Claudian E = Poem Against Eutropius
F = The Farmer from Verona
G = The Gothic Attack
H3 = Poem for Emperor Honorius on Celebrating His Third Consulship, in 396
H4 = Poem for Emperor Honorius on Celebrating His Fourth Consulship, in 398
H6 = Poem for Emperor Honorius on Celebrating His Sixth Consulship, in 404
R = Poem Against Rufinus
S = In Praise of Serena
W = Wedding Poem for Maria and Honorius
All translations are by the author or have been adapted from M. Platnauer, Claudian (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1922).
Eunapius Fr. = Fragments in The Fragmentary Classicising Historians of the Later Roman Empire, edited and translated by R. Blockley, volume 2 (Liverpool: Cairns, 1983).
Lives = Lives of the Philosophers, translated by W. Wright (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1921).
EV The anonymous sixth-century “Excerpta Valesiana,” in Ammianus Marcellinus: History, vol. 3, Books 27–31 and Excerpta Valesiana, translated by J. Rolfe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939).
J Jordanes’s The Origins and Deeds of the Goths in C. Mierow, The Gothic History of Jordanes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1908).
Jerome L = Letters, found in NPNF 6, translated by W. Fremantle, G. Lewis, and W. Martley, 1890.
Ez. = Commentary on Ezekiel, translated by Thomas P. Scheck (New York: Newman Press, 2016).
M Macrobius, Saturnalia, 3 vols., edited and translated by Robert A. Kaster (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011).
Oly. Olympiodorus’s Fr. = Fragments in The Fragmentary Classicising Historians of the Later Roman Empire, edited and translated by R. Blockley, vol. 2 (Liverpool: Cairns, 1983).
Orosius Seven Books of History Against the Pagans, translated by A. T. Fear (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010); and The Seven Books of History Against the Pagans: The Apology of Paulus Orosius, translated by I. Raymond (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936).
Ovid Poems from the Black Sea, in Tristia: Ex Ponto, translated by A. Wheeler, revised by G. Goold (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1924).
Philostorgius Philostorgius: Church History, by P. Amidon (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007).
Procopius H = History of the Wars, vol. 2, Books 3–4: Vandalic War, translated by H. Dewing (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1916).
Prudentius S = Two Poems Against Senator Symmachus, in Prudentius, 2 vols., translated by H. Thompson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949 and 1953).
Saba In The Goths in the Fourth Century, by P. Heather and J. Matthews (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1991).
Socrates Socrates of Constantinople, Church History, found in NPNF 2, translated by A. Zenos, 1890.
Sozomen Church History, found in NPNF 2, translated by A. Zenos, 1890.
Synesius On Kingship, translation by A. Fitzgerald, in The Essays and Hymns of Synesius of Cyrene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1930).
Theodoret Church History, found in NPNF 3, translated by B. Jackson, 1890.
V Vegetius: Epitome of Military Science, translated by N. Milner (Liverpool: University of Liverpool, 2001); also quite literary is The Military Institutions of the Romans, translated by J. Clarke (Harrisburg: Military Service Publishing Company, 1944).
Z Zosimus: Historia Nova; The Decline of Rome, translated by J. Buchanan and H. Davis (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1967); and from the edition prepared for W. Green and T. Chaplin (London, 1814).
Other Abbreviations
CIL The collection of Latin inscriptions published as Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1973–).
NPNF The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, edited by P. Schaff and H. Wace. 2nd ser., 14 vols. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994–).
ThC The Theodosian Code and Novels and the Sirmondian Constitutions, translation with commentary by Clyde Pharr with Theresa Sherrer Davidson and Mary Brown Pharr (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1952).
PLRE The lives of the people of the later Roman Empire, published as The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, vol. 1 (A.D. 260–395), edited by A.H.M. Jones, J. Martindale, and J. Morris; vol. 2 (A.D. 395–527), edited by J. Martindale (Cambridge University Press, 1971–1980).
SoR The Sack of Rome in 410 ad: The Event, Its Context and Its Impact, edited by J. Lipps, C. Machado, and P. von Rummel (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2013).
Chapter One: Seventy-Two Hours
1 “Whoever attacks one city”: Libanius, Selected Orations, vol. 2 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1977), 20.49, my translation.
1 the forty-second man: Based on the count by Orosius 7.35.
1 Marcella’s library: The details of Marcella’s life have been collected in PLRE, vol. 1, 542–43. From Jerome we learn that she was an avid reader and how she “often quoted with approval Plato’s saying that philosophy consists in meditating on death” (Jerome L 127.6), an idea that is discussed at length in Plato’s Phaedo along with the ideas of goodness and justice.
2 “one thousand one hundred and sixty-four years . . .”: Orosius 7.40.1, translation by Fear, slightly modified.
3 grabbed her from her bedroom: Jerome L 127; “the most celebrated figures” is at 127.1.
3 church outside the city walls: The basilica dedicated to Saint Paul, built outside the Ostian Gate (Jerome L 127.13).
4 “savage barbarians”: Augustine CG 1.1, my translation.
4 “The city that once captured”: Jerome L 127.12.
4 preachers like Timothy Aelurus: Edward Watts, “Interpreting Catastrophe: Disasters in the Works of Pseudo-Joshua the Stylite, Socrates Scholasticus, Philostorgius, and Timothy Aelurus,” Journal of Late Antiquity 2 (2009): 92–96.
4 “in the farthest parts of the earth”: Augustine CG 1.33, along with “days of public grief” and the flight to second homes, at 1.32.
4 “Choosing a night when there was a faint glimmer”: Livy, The History of Rome from the Founding of the City 5.47, translated by Canon Roberts (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1912).
5 “sanctuary for refugees”: Plutarch, Romulus 9.3, translated by Bernadotte Perrin in Lives, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914), adapted.
5 the virtues of being a “cosmopolitan”: Ralph Mathisen, “Peregrini, Barbari, and Cives Romani: Concepts of Citizenship and the Legal Identity of Barbarians in the Later Roman Empire,” American Historical Review 111 (2006): 1011–40, at p. 1012.
5 Superstitious beliefs about geography: Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos 2.2, in Rebecca Kennedy, C. Sydnor Roy, and Max Goldman, Race and Ethnicity in the Classical World: An Anthology of Primary Sources in Translation (Indi
anapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2013), 49–51.
6 “Here merchant vessels arrive”: Aelius Aristides, Oration 26, translated by James Oliver in The Ruling Power (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1953), 896–97.
6 “What one does not see here, does not exist”: Aelius Aristides, Oration 26, translation adapted from C. Behr, The Complete Works of P. Aelius Aristides, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1981–86).
7–8 “gowns of lustrous, imported silk”: Jerome L 127.3.
8 frittered away their fortunes: Oly. Fr. 41.2.
8 a medium-sized city: Oly. Fr. 41.1.
8 “No other city”: Claudian, H6, lines 39–40, translated by Platnauer.
8 recipe for a popular herbed cheese spread: M 3.18.12.
9 “Everyone insults the immigrant”: Claudian H6, lines 199–200, translated by Platnauer.
9 dinner companions who sparred: M 1.4.5.
9 “I am a citizen of Bordeaux”: Ausonius, “The Order of Famous Cities,” in Ausonius, vol. 1, Books 1–17 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1919), 285, my translation.
10 “always been dependent on the help of these same foreigners”: AM 28.4.32, translated by Hamilton.
10 short, sometimes alliterative lists: “On Peoples’ Qualities,” discussed and translated by Andrew Gillett, “The Mirror of Jordanes: Concepts of the Barbarian, Then and Now,” in A Companion to Late Antiquity, edited by P. Rousseau (Malden, MA: Wiley, 2009), 393–94.
10 “no end in space or time”: Translation adapted from The Aeneid, translated by Robert Fagles (New York: Penguin, 2006), 56.
12 the prospect of “terror”: Claudian H6, lines 133–46.
Chapter Two: The Trailblazer
13 “Be bold, so that someone of future generations”: Eunapius Fr. 34.
15 “metamorphosed”: Ovid 1.1, with “barbarian land” at 5.2; “Privacy and ease” and “pine planks” at 1.4; and a “state of mourning” at 5.1.
16 knives “fastened to their sides”: Ovid 5.7 for this and other quotations in the paragraph.
16 “Peace there is at times”: Ovid 5.2.
18 workers in the city of Roșia-Montană: Teodor Sambrian, “La mancipatio nei trittici della Transilvania,” Diritto e storia 4 (2005), published online at http://www.dirittoestoria.it/4/Tradizione-Romana/Sambrian-Mancipatio-trittici-Transilvania.htm.
19 “Maximus son of Bato”: Dated 17 March 139, in Inscripțiile Daciei romane, edited by D. Pippidi and I. Russu (Bucharest: Editura Academiei Române, 1975), wax tablet number 6, 212–17, my translation. On the sale, see Elizabeth Mayer, Legitimacy and Law in the Roman World: Tabulae in Roman Belief and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 56–57.
19 “There was hardly a region”: The Writers of the Augustan History, “Life of Claudius the Second” 9.5, translated by David Magie (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1932), 169, slightly modified.
19 “the price [for slaves] is right”: Symmachus, Letters 2.78, discussed in Kyle Harper, “Slave Prices in Late Antiquity (and in the Very Long Term),” Historia 59 (2010): 223–24.
19 “for sale in all parts, without distinction of status”: AM 22.7.7, translated by Hamilton.
19 Every Roman home in Alaric’s day: Synesius 15.2.
20 purchased homes: Inscripțiile Daciei romane, edited by D. Pippidi and I. Russu (Bucharest: Editura Academiei Române, 1975), 226–31, with some English translations in History of Rome Through the Fifth Century: The Empire, edited by A.H.M. Jones (Boston: Palgrave Macmillan, 1970), 261.
20 business partnerships: CIL 3, 934–35, 950–51.
20 spelling was frequently poor: L’année épigraphique 1972, 523; 1972, 524 (husbands); 2004, 1271 (parents).
22 “Italian rights”: Adrian Sherwin-White, The Roman Citizenship, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), although it is virtually unreadable to a layman, with extensive passages of untranslated Latin and Greek and often opaque English.
22 five largest towns of Dacia: Ulpian Digest 50.15.1.8–9. The status also exempted them from paying property taxes to the governor.
23 “Recently we have been settled by veteran soldiers”: Apuleius, Apology, translated in R. Kennedy, C. Roy, and M. Goldman, Race and Ethnicity in the Classical World: An Anthology of Primary Sources in Translation (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2013), 49.
23 “Let someone see whether he can follow”: CIL 3.3676, translated by Jo-Ann Shelton in As the Romans Did, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 266–67.
24 Max’s parents: J 15 for this detail and other quotations from Maximinus’s life.
25 Sexual assault: Quintilian, The Lesser Declamations, vol. 1, edited and translated by D. Shackleton Bailey (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), nos. 245, 247, and 270.
26 “Cyclops!”: Jason Moralee, “Maximinus Thrax and the Politics of Race in Late Antiquity,” Greece & Rome 55 (2008): 55–82.
26 “by luck” rather than talent: Herodian 7.1.2, translated by Edward Echols in Herodian of Antioch’s History of the Roman Empire from the Death of Marcus Aurelius to the Accession of Gordian III (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961), slightly modified.
26 “lowly origin”: Herodian 7.1.2, translated by Echols, slightly modified.
27 the drinking habits of their emperors: Galerius’s staff regularly ignored the emperor’s afternoon dictations because everyone in the palace knew he imbibed too much at lunch (EV 4.11).
27 his favorite bird, named Rome: Procopius H 3.2
27 “formidable chin and jaw”: The quote is from C. Sutherland, “What Is Meant by ‘Style’ in Coinage? American Numismatic Society: Museum Notes 4–5 (1950): 6.
27 “exposed to the birds and dogs”: Herodian 8.5.9, translated by Echols.
28 fallen to a lethal arrow: J 18.103.
28 “that the province could be retained”: From the “Life of Aurelian,” in Historia Augusta, vol. 3, 39.7, translated by David Magie (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1932).
Chapter Three: Stolen Childhoods
30 “It is slow speech that brings the greatest wisdom”: Euripides’s The Phoenician Women, line 453, translated by Elizabeth Wyckoff in Euripides IV: The Complete Greek Tragedies, 3rd ed., edited by D. Grene, R. Lattimore, M. Griffith, and G. Most (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013).
30 Gothiscandza: J 17; “five kings,” the mooing cows, and the bridge are at J 4.
31 the Balthi, or the “Bolds”: J 29.
31 “quaking bogs”: J 4.
31 Rugged outcroppings at the river’s mouth: Andrew Poulter, “The Transition to Late Antiquity,” in The Transition to Late Antiquity on the Danube and Beyond, edited by A. Poulter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 30.
32 “Communities” of plants: M. Petrescu, V. Cuzic, V. Panait, M. Cuzic, A. M. Rădulescu, and C. Dinu, eds., Danube Delta 5: Studies and Research of Natural Sciences and Museology (Tulcea: Gavrilă Simion Eco-Museum Research Institute, 2014).
33 “suitable homes and pleasant places”: J 4.
33 Pine Tree Island: G. Romanescu, O. Bounegru, C. Stoleriu, A. Mihu-Pintilie, C. Ionut Nicu, A. Enea, and C. Oana Stan, “The Ancient Legendary Island of Peuce: Myth or Reality?,” Journal of Archaeological Science 53 (2105): 521–35.
34 women labored at the hearth: Saba 5.3.
34 freewheeling, tattooed adventuresses: Adrienne Mayor, The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 95–116, with the quotation from Pliny at p. 104.
34 “swamps and forests”: J 5.
34 pioneering but now-nameless ancestors: J 11.
34 “sweet and fit to drink”: J 5 for this and other quotations.
35 wingspan of a vulture: C. Johnstone, “A Short Report on the Preliminary Results from the Study of the Mammal and Bird Bone Assemblages from Dichin,” in The Transition to Late Antiquity on the Danube and Beyond, edited by A. Poulter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 288–89.
35 “a great rushing sound”: J 55.
36 Charietto: Z 3.7, from which the quotations are taken, and AM 17.10.
36 strumming of a cithara: J 4–5.
36 excavated tombs across central and eastern Romania: Kulikowski 2007, 67–68.
37 the despondent Gothic chief: AM 31.4.
37 a refugee, a profugus: Servius’s Commentary on The Aeneid of Virgil, line 2, edited by G. Thilo and H. Hagan (Leipzig: Tuebner, 1881).
38 “life’s necessities”: AM 31.5.1, translated by Hamilton.
38 sold second-rate dog meat: J 26.
38 wild animals who had escaped from their cages: AM 31.8, Eunapius Fr. 42.
38 Dinner invitations were extended: Lenski 2003, 328, with pp. 178–81 for Pap. Quotations are from the Armenian Epic Histories Attributed to P’awstos Buzand, translated by N. Garsoïan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 5.2.
39 “better to lose liberty than life”: J 26.
39 “Even if they were the judges of their own case”: AM 31.4, translated by Rolfe.
39 handouts of food: AM 31.4.
39 for his “compassion”: Socrates 4.34.
39 pledging “faithfulness”: Z 4.26 for this and “insurrection.”
40 “who were too young for war”: Eunapius Fr. 42, which also has the detail of “a fair and pretty boy” and discussion of “hostages.”
40 suitable holding pens for the children: AM 31.16.
41 One version of the incident: AM knew both (31.13), as did Socrates 4.38. See the discussion in Lenski 2003, 338–41.
41 to exonerate his people: J 26.
41 Julius: Z 4.26 for quotations in this paragraph.
42 buried this episode in a brief aside: Michael Speidel, “The Slaughter of Gothic Hostages After Adrianople,” Hermes 126 (1998): 503–06.
42 praised Julius’s “wise plan”: AM 31.16.
43 guilty of embellishment: François Paschoud, Zosime: Histoire nouvelle, vol. 2, part 2 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1979), 390.
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