The Historians of Late Antiquity

by David Rohrbacher

  Even the portion of the work that remains is quite unbalanced in the density of its coverage. Books 15 to 19 treat about six years of events in the careers of Constantius and Julian, dedicating approximately the same amount of space to each ruler at a rate of only slightly more than a year per book. The treatment of Julian as sole ruler in books 20 to 25 covers about four years in six books, at a rate of only two-thirds of a year per book. The last six books, however, cover fifteen years, at a rate of two and a half years per book. The figure of Julian is central to Ammianus’ project, and his coverage of even the near-contemporary reigns of Valens and Valentinian is sketchy compared to the space allotted to the Apostate. It is not difficult to imagine, then, that Ammianus could have covered earlier centuries only in outline form. Just as his treatment of Constantius, Jovian, Valentinian, and Valens is largely intended to make Julian shine brighter by contrast, so the lost books may have served largely to provide models and themes of past heroism that would recur in the Julian narrative.

  Barnes has recently suggested that the manuscript numeration of the Res Gestae is incorrect, and that the original work contained thirty-six, not thirty-one, books (1998: 28–31). He points out that thirty-one is an unusual and unwieldy number of books, that some ancient historians, such as Tacitus, arranged their material in hexads, and that the eighteen surviving books of Ammianus do in fact divide fairly well into groups of six. He postulates the following book division: 1–6, Nerva to Diocletian (96–305); 7–12, Constantine (306–37); 13–18, Constantius’ rise to sole power (337–53). He further argues, less convincingly, that this increase in books would remove a “very real difficulty,” that “Ammianus cannot have compressed his history of the Roman empire from 96 to 353 into a mere thirteen books” (1998: 28). Under Barnes’ more elegant arrangement of books, however, the first six still cover Roman history at the rapid rate of thirty-five years per book. The part of the Res Gestae which Ammianus wrote without the benefit of living sources must have been superficial under any arrangement. A parallel may perhaps be seen in the extremely rapid survey of three centuries of history which begins the New History of the Greek historian Zosimus (Blockley 1975: 12).

  Although we regrettably lack the preface to the entire work, Ammianus has provided us with two prefaces to smaller sections of his work, at the beginning of the fifteenth and the twenty-sixth books. The first of these serves to introduce the ten books of the history in which Julian plays a part (15.1.1). In it, Ammianus describes his historical method: he has put the events in order, and has related what he himself witnessed and what he learned from careful questioning of those who were involved in the events. This method will not change, but his presentation will. He promises to write both more carefully and more expansively, and dismisses in advance the complaints of those who might claim that he is being long-winded or tedious.

  The preface to book 26 (26.1.1–2) is also concerned with presentation rather than method. Whereas previously Ammianus had defended his decision to include more detail than the audience might want, as he turns away from Julian and toward more recent history, he defends his omission of information for which his audience might clamor (Fornara 1990). His explanation for limiting detail in the last six books is twofold. First is a glancing reference to avoiding “the dangers which often touch upon the truth,” perhaps invoking the political or social dangers which accurate reporting about the near past could stimulate. Ammianus expresses more concern, however, about the danger of inviting the grievances of contemporaries who complain of neglect if even the most trivial details are omitted. He lists the emperor’s dinner conversation, the punishment of some common soldiers, the names of some minor forts, and the names of those who greeted the urban praetor, as examples of the kind of trivial matters whose omission draws complaints, and claims that Cicero (in a letter no longer extant) suggested that these sorts of complaints explain why many historians have not published accounts of their own day.

  The last three sentences of the work (31.16.9) form an epilogue, beginning with this important sentence: “I, a soldier once, and a Greek, have presented these events, from the principate of Nerva up to the death of Valens, so far as I was able, never knowingly having dared to corrupt a work professing the truth by omission or by falsehood.” Ammianus then encourages younger and more learned men to pick up where his history has concluded, suggesting that, if they should do so, they should write in “higher style,” a reference perhaps to panegyric and perhaps simply to his own classicizing style of history, in contrast to breviaria, biographies, and chronicles (Blockley 1998).

  “A soldier once, and a Greek,” are words which have lent themselves to many interpretations (Barnes 1998: 65–78; Matthews 1989: 452–72; Classen 1972; Tränkle 1972; Heyen 1968; Stoian 1967). Ammianus’ reference to himself as a soldier has been taken apologetically, as a “mere” soldier who dared to create such a rhetorically elaborate and learned history. But it is probably best understood as a proud statement, which underscores his first-hand knowledge of events and places him firmly in the tradition of the great Roman historians for whom participation in political life and public affairs was a necessary source of their authority as writers. Despite his military experience, however, Ammianus’ descriptions of battles and warfare owe more to rhetorical tradition than to specialized knowledge, even if military historians judging in the context of the rhetorical tradition have usually been favorable to Ammianus’ presentation (Austin 1979; Crump 1975). A recent study of Ammianus’ digression on siege engines, for example, finds that the historian has relied on written sources rather than firsthand information (23.4; den Hengst 1999).

  Ammianus’ use of the term “Graecus” is even more controversial. If “soldier” is understood as apologetic, a mere soldier, then “Greek” might be understood in the same way, as a mere Greek having ventured upon a major work in Latin. Yet it is preferable to concentrate upon the almost paradoxical contrast between the words soldier and Greek, words which reveal the two distinctive qualities Ammianus brings to the writing of history: on the one hand, the soldier, the man of action and involvement, and on the other, the Greek, the learned scholar and master of literature. This sense of “Greek” comes out clearly in Ammianus’ reference to the historian Timagenes, whom he describes as a Greek “in diligence and language” (15.9.2). Clearly the term has a cultural as well as a linguistic significance in Ammianus’ epilogue as well. “Graecus” may also have a religious meaning, if we understand Ammianus to be translating the Greek “Hellene,” which often means “pagan.”

  Ammianus’ blending of Greek and Latin culture throughout his work is one of the most intriguing features of the Res Gestae. For a Greek to choose to write in Latin is surprising in itself, despite the fact that Latin was in many ways the language of Ammianus’ own world and the world of the army and the court portrayed in the Res Gestae. Ammianus reinforces his connections to Latin historiography in several ways. The choice of 96 as the starting point for a history that primarily covers fourth-century events must be understood as an attempt to link his own work to the work of Tacitus, which concludes in that year. Indeed, given that Tacitus’ Annals and Histories were read as a single work in thirty books in late antiquity (according to Jerome in comm. ad Zach. 3.14), perhaps Ammianus’ choice of thirty-one books represents a conscious attempt to supersede his predecessor. Ammianus’ work alludes to other Roman historians, especially Sallust, in numerous places, and also demonstrates particular fondness for Cicero (Fornara 1992b: 427–38). In contrast, Ammianus shows a surprisingly poor knowledge of Athenian oratory in his comments on the subject, and his claim of direct knowledge of Herodotus and Thucydides may be doubted (Fornara 1992b: 421–7). Ammianus shows great interest in the city of Rome and the narrative returns regularly to events there, although the city no longer played an important role in the fourth-century empire. This anachronistic attention to the city perhaps served to emphasize his links to early Latin historiography where the city played a central part. Ammianus sh
ows his reverence toward the city in his account of the visit of the emperor Constantius to Rome in 357 (16.10; Matthews 1989: 231–5; Classen 1988; Duval 1970; Klein 1979). The city is the “home of empire and all the virtues,” and its temples, stadiums, and forums are portrayed as divine and exalted (16.10.3; Harrison 1999).

  Ammianus’ Greek background is also constantly on display. His identification with the Greek language is evident in the numerous passages where he glosses Greek terms with the first person plural, such as his discussion of “nighttime visions, which we call ‘phantasies’” (14.11.18; den Boeft 1992: 12). Certain linguistic peculiarities of the Res Gestae can best be explained with the understanding that the author is “thinking in Greek.” Den Boeft explores the high frequency of participial use in Ammianus, a phenomenon associated with Greek, and the absence of the historical infinitive, a construction peculiar to Latin that might have been particularly difficult for a Greek-speaker to use comfortably (den Boeft 1992). Ammianus’ choices of accentual clausulae, the rhythmic endings to phrases and sentences, are especially striking. Stephen Oberhelman studied 104 prose works written between AD 200 and 450 and found that Ammianus’ use of clausulae was a unique blend of a Greek rhythmical system refined by the appropriation of certain features common to republican historians like Sallust and Livy (Oberhelman 1987). Other “Grecisms” in Ammianus’ style are discussed by Barnes (1998: 65–71).

  One aspect of the Res Gestae that seems more in keeping with the Greek historiographical tradition than the Latin is Ammianus’ extensive use of formal digressions. Ammianus is unmatched by any historian, save Herodotus, in the percentage of his work that is digressive, and in the sheer variety of the subject matter in his digressions (the exact number of digressions is variously enumerated by Cichocka 1975; Emmett 1981; Barnes 1998: 222–4). Ammianus provides a wide sweep of geographical, ethnographical, scientific, philosophical, and religious information. Many of Ammianus’ digressions appear in the section of the work dedicated to Julian, where their presence serves a narrative function, both in enlarging the proportion of the history in which Julian is the central character and, in the case of digressions like those on Gaul and Persia, in emphasizing the vastness and importance of the lands he set out to conquer.

  In his geographic digressions, Ammianus provides information derived both from written sources and from personal observation, as the digression on Gaul indicates. In a discussion of the origin of the Gauls, Ammianus credits Timagenes (15.9.2) for his information, and he also cites Sallust as a source for Caesar’s campaigns in Gaul (15.12.6) as well as alluding to Caesar’s Bellum Gallicum in a reference to the original “tripartite” division of Gaul (15.11.1). Yet he also mentions that Aventicum was an important city at one time “as its partially destroyed buildings even now demonstrate” (15.11.12), and his references to the character of the Gauls have sometimes been thought to rely upon personal observation. “A group of foreigners will be unable to contain one of them in a fight if he calls his wife in, as she is much stronger than him,” he claims, adding that Gallic women will kick and punch like a catapult (15.12.1). In addition to Gaul and Persia, Ammianus provides extensive geographic information on Thrace, Oriens, the Black Sea, and Egypt.

  Ammianus is the only ancient historian to offer extensive digressions on scientific matters (den Hengst 1992). These digressions include information on earthquakes, tidal waves, plagues, eclipses, the rainbow, meteors, comets, and the bissextile day. Den Hengst is surely correct in including in the scientific category the “religious” digressions, such as those on divination and on the genius, as these are also explanations of the natural world as Ammianus understood it. Scientific digressions, like geographic digressions, often serve a narrative purpose. Ammianus describes ominous natural phenomena, such as eclipses and comets, which occur at significant points in the action, and his digressions force the reader to stop and to reflect upon these turning points. An egregious example is the digression on eclipses, inspired by an eclipse which Ammianus suggests foreshadowed the elevation of Julian to the rank of Augustus. The historian uses the digression to put the celestial mark of approval upon Julian’s elevation, an approval so desperately desired that, it appears, Ammianus simply invented an eclipse which did not really take place (20.3; Barnes 1998: 102–6).

  Digressions in Ammianus may also have a moralizing purpose. There are many ethnographic digressions, including passages on the Gauls (15.12.1–4), Persians (23.6.75–84; Teitler 1999), Saracens (14.4.1–7), Huns, and Alans (31.2.1–25; King 1987), to which one might add the scattered comments on eunuchs (especially 14.6.17, 16.7.8–10, 18.4.5; Tougher 1999), who are treated as a race apart. Ammianus’ treatment of non-Romans in his digressions is very much in keeping with traditions of ancient historiography. The bizarre and primitive habits of the barbarian (for example, the Huns do not cook meat, but merely heat it by a day’s ride under a saddle) are contrasted with the civilized behavior of the Romans. On the other hand, the barbarian often possesses some traits, such as loyalty and fighting ability, which the effete Roman has lost. This use of ethnographic digressions as an opportunity for the historian to comment upon contemporary mores is not uncommon in ancient historiography.

  Ammianus’ satirical and moralizing “Roman digressions” are, by contrast, a striking innovation (14.6 and 28.4; Rees 1999; Salemme 1987; Kohns 1975; Pack 1953). In the course of a discussion of Orfitus’ prefecture of Rome, Ammianus describes how the city was wracked by riots inspired by wine shortages (14.6.1). The digression which follows is introduced as an explanation for why Ammianus’ descriptions of events at Rome concern nothing but “riots, taverns, and worthless things” (14.6.2). The historian attributes Rome’s success to a partnership between Virtue and Fortune, a union which enabled the Romans to expand from a single city to a worldwide empire. Rome, the personified city, has now retired, passing on its power and responsibility to the emperors, who serve as its heirs. And although the ancient assemblies no longer rule the city, Rome is revered and admired throughout the world (14.6.3–6; Matthews 1986).

  This idyllic picture of Rome is marred, however, by the fickleness and licentiousness of a few inhabitants who do not respect the magnificence of their native city. Ammianus’ criticism of these Romans centers upon traditional satiric concerns: they prance in overly luxurious clothes (14.6.9), they boast of their wealth (14.6.10), and they offer hospitality to gamblers and gossips but not to the learned (14.6.14), for they prefer music and dance to serious scholarship (14.6.18). He has words of criticism for the Roman plebeians as well, who are obsessed with gambling, and are normally to be found either gaping at the chariot races or snorting unpleasantly over a dice game (14.6.25–6). Ammianus’ account of the city prefecture of Ampelius in 371–2 (28.4.3–5) provides further opportunity for the historian to digress in a satirical vein. Again the nobles are reproached for directing their hospitality toward charioteers and parasites (28.4.10–12) and for hating learning like poison (28.4.14). They are also legacy-hunters (28.4.22), arrogant (28.4.23), and superstitious (28.4.24). Commoners are again scorned for their obsession with races and shows (28.4.29–32) and for stuffing themselves with loathsome food (28.4.34).

  Various attempts have been made to interpret these unprecedented derisive digressions. Ammianus’ criticisms have often been linked to particular bad experiences he himself may have undergone at Rome. Both digressions do place great emphasis on the abysmal hospitality offered by the city elite (14.6.12–15, 28.4.10–13, 17). The hosts prefer gamblers, musicians, and loudmouths to learned men because of their ignorance. Libraries have been shut up like tombs (14.6.18), and the only reading that these men do is of the satirist Juvenal and the scandalous biographer Marius Maximus (28.4.14). Ammianus is also critical of the attitude of the Romans toward foreigners. While in the old days, noble Romans kindly welcomed foreign travelers of high birth, now they only have time for the childless and unmarried (14.6.22), and the common people are now wont to chant in the theater that visitors
ought to be driven from the city (28.4.32). These complaints come together in Ammianus’ account of the expulsion of foreigners from the cities during a time of food shortages (14.6.19–20). Ammianus says that “not so long ago” foreigners who were students of the liberal arts were driven from the city, while scandalously unmarried dancing girls and their attendants remained behind. This expulsion is usually dated to 383 (Symm. ep. 2.7). Since Ammianus may well have been affected by this expulsion, and since we would certainly expect him to have experienced Roman hospitality and to include himself among the learned foreign visitors to the city, it may be that we see in these digressions a reflection of Ammianus’ personal pique.