The digressions may also be examined for what they tell us about the composition and expectations of Ammianus’ audience. His exaggerated lampooning of the senatorial aristocracy suggests that senators did not dominate his audience. Instead, we can best understand the satirical digressions as pitched toward an audience of bureaucrats and soldiers like Ammianus himself, perhaps some of those who were associated with the visit of Theodosius to Rome in 387 and who would transmit news of the history to Libanius on the return to the east (Matthews 1989: 8–9). They would have shared his difficulties with the hospitality of local aristocrats, and may have shared the Greek contempt for their hosts’ lack of learning. It is noteworthy that Ammianus in several places parodies the Romans as soldiers manqués. He jokes that the Romans who must travel a bit to reach their summer homes believe that they have thereby rivaled the conquests of Alexander the Great (28.4.18), and he says that they arrange their household slaves and staffs – eunuchs, cooks, weavers – as if they are an army on the march (14.6.17, 28.4.8). In another passage, it appears (the text is uncertain) that Ammianus presents a retired soldier who cleverly deceives his gullible Roman audience (28.4.20). These sorts of criticisms might be judged particularly amusing by an audience familiar with soldiering.
Despite Ammianus’ claim to be speaking about only “a few” of the Romans, and his obvious use of satiric exaggeration, readers of the Roman digressions have sometimes taken at full value Ammianus’ portrait of Roman life. The passages fit particularly well into interpretations of the fall of Rome which blame the collapse on the decadence of a once-great people. But this passage, like the rest of the Res Gestae, must be approached with a more sophisticated eye. Despite Ammianus’ portrait, fourth-century Rome was still a vibrant and intellectually exciting city, as numerous other sources reveal. While Ammianus has a reputation for balance and accuracy, these passages reveal his willingness to use exaggeration and outright slander to make a point. Traditional respect for Ammianus’ reliability has been eroded in certain areas by modern studies which focus on the ways in which his work is marred by tendentiousness and partisanship.
Several features of the Res Gestae encourage the reader to trust in Ammianus’ good faith and honesty. His prefaces declare his careful historical method and his devotion to the truth, although such declarations are conventional and employed by many of the historians of the period. After all, he also declares that he “will never depart intentionally from the truth” as he begins his outrageous Roman digression (14.6.2). Ammianus’ comments on the emperor Julian more effectively support his claim of an even-handed approach. The emperor is, on the one hand, clearly the hero of the work, and when Ammianus begins to describe Julian’s campaigns in Gaul he warns that, although he will always tell the truth, the account will seem almost like a panegyric (16.1.3). Julian is favorably compared with the great emperors of the past, such as Titus, Vespasian, Trajan, and Marcus Aurelius (16.1.4). Digressions describe Julian’s many outstanding qualities (e.g. 16.5) and at his death his virtues are laid out as in a formal encomium (25.4.1–15). Nevertheless, despite the open partisanship of parts of his narrative, Ammianus provides the reader with several critical comments on the emperor’s career and character. Julian was “superstitious rather than truly religious” (25.4.17), given to excessive sacrificing and foolish dependence on untrustworthy diviners. He was also too populist and too often undignified in his conduct as emperor (25.4.18), as he demonstrated when he leapt out of his seat in the senate of Constantinople to embrace the philosopher Maximinus (22.7.3), or when he dismissed every one of the attendants from the palace (22.4.1–2). Ammianus also criticizes several of Julian’s laws, such as the school law which forbade Christians to teach the pagan classics (25.4.20), and the curial laws which attempted to press more people into service in their local government (22.9.12, 25.4.21).
Ammianus shows this same willingness to provide a mix of favorable and unfavorable material in his obituary treatments of other emperors. At the death of each, he presents their virtues and vices in turn. Although his narrative accounts of the reigns of Constantius II, Valentinian, and Valens are broadly critical, in their obituaries Ammianus includes some positive judgements as well. Constantius was dignified, careful as an administrator, and temperate and abstinent in his personal life (21.16.1–7). Valentinian successfully fortified and defended the Rhine, and had military success on other western frontiers (30.7.5–11). Valens was a just and prudent administrator who restored public buildings and successfully resisted unfair attempts on the public purse (31.14.1–5). These obituary evaluations are, however, typically more negative than positive, and even the positive comments are often laced with sarcasm, as in this comment on Constantius’ artistic pretensions: “He was a diligent striver after culture, but he was dissuaded from rhetoric because of his dull mind, and when he turned to the more difficult art of writing poetry, nothing worthwhile resulted” (21.16.4). That Constantius never ate fruit during his life is also curiously brought forth as an example of his merits (21.16.7). Yet Ammianus’ willingness to provide any exculpatory information at all about his “bad” emperors can be seen as an attempt at fairness.
Ammianus’ treatment of Christianity also has been cited as evidence of his fairness (Hunt 1985, 1993). Although Ammianus was a pagan, the Res Gestae is free from the virulent contempt for Christianity often found in the work of other fourth-century writers. Indeed, Ammianus occasionally makes references to Christianity which can be interpreted positively, such as his description of Christianity as a “simple and complete religion” (21.16.18), his praise of provincial bishops (27.3.15), and his reference to the “glorious death” of Christian martyrs (22.11.10). This moderate tone is, however, often undermined by more subtle attacks on Christianity (Barnes 1998; Elliott 1983).
Other motives have also undermined the impartiality of Ammianus’ history. Ammianus was, unsurprisingly, a partisan supporter of his patron Ursicinus, and he presents him in a favorable light (Matthews 1989: 34–47; Thompson 1947a: 42–55; Blockley 1969, 1980a). He tries to excuse Ursicinus’ participation in the trials under Gallus in 354 by claiming that Ursicinus sent secret letters to Constantius describing the corruption and begging for aid (14.9.1). These letters and the excesses of these trials may have provided the impetus for Constantius’ recall and execution of his nephew later in the year (14.11). From this point on Ammianus depicts the relationship between Constantius and Ursicinus as fueled by the emperor’s paranoia and his lamentable susceptibility to court gossip. We might be more willing to see Constantius’ behavior as evidence of the prudence required of a late Roman emperor in dealing with a popular subordinate. Ammianus suggests that the dispatch of Ursicinus to put down Silvanus was a fiendish trick of the emperor to ensure that he would rid himself of at least one of his troublesome generals (15.5.19). We receive from Ammianus a thrilling narrative of this event, which emphasizes the fear and isolation felt by Ursicinus, Ammianus, and their small party, the cynicism and corruption at the court of Constantius, and the regrettable end of the general forced into rebellion. Ammianus begins by convincing us of the innocence of Silvanus, in order that he might blacken the character of Constantius, and ends by convincing us of Silvanus’ guilt, in order that he might excuse the murder orchestrated by Ursicinus and Ammianus himself (Hunt 1999). Ammianus’ manipulations and inconsistencies make it clear that he has shaded the truth. It is, for example, impossible that Silvanus could have been in full revolt when Ursicinus’ party headed to Gaul, and yet Ursicinus could plausibly have pretended to be unaware of the usurpation upon his arrival (Drinkwater 1994). After the murder of Silvanus, Ursicinus must have remained in Gaul as Silvanus’ replacement for the next two years (Frézouls 1962), but Ammianus makes little mention of it. Perhaps Ursicinus played a discreditable role in the trials of the associates of Silvanus that followed his fall (15.6; Matthews 1989: 81–3). In addition, the historian wishes to stress the disorder in Gaul when Julian became Caesar, in order to emphasize the magnitud
e of Julian’s accomplishments, without blaming this disorder on Ursicinus.
Ammianus’ portrait of Julian contains some similarly partisan coloring. In Gaul, his Julian is a brilliant and eager young general, whose struggle against the meddling and ill will of Constantius’ advisors in Gaul culminates in a triumphant success over the Alamanni at the Battle of Strasbourg in 359 (16.2–5, 16.11–12). In fact, it appears that Julian overstepped the bounds of his command, and that Ammianus has greatly exaggerated the importance of Strasbourg, a battle which Julian seems to have needlessly provoked in pursuit of glory (Blockley 1977; Drinkwater 1997; Matthews 1989: 87–93, 299–301). Ammianus also provides the authorized version of the elevation of Julian to Augustus, describing it as completely forced by the spontaneous revolt of the soldiers (20.4), although there is reason to suspect that Julian may not have been as completely uninvolved as Ammianus claims. Julian’s invasion of Persia in 363 takes up books 23 to 25. The tone is epic and increasingly ominous, as the early success of the expedition is followed by more and more disquieting signs of looming failure. The army finds itself trapped deep within Persian territory and Julian, fatally wounded, spends his last hours in Socratic contemplation. Ammianus so obscures his account of the invasion with literary artifice that Julian’s ultimate goals remain unclear. By portraying Julian as an Achilles-like hero, doomed to die while performing glorious deeds, Ammianus is able to avoid addressing Julian’s responsibility for the tremendous military disaster. Ammianus also attempts to shift the blame for the disaster off of Julian, finding fault both in the past, by suggesting that Roman hostilities with Persia actually dated back to the greedy behavior of the emperor Constantine (25.4.23; Warmington 1981), and, in the future, by his condemnatory account of the actions of Jovian, Julian’s successor.
Ammianus’ account of the reign of Jovian is much more detailed than our other accounts, and unique in several regards (25.5–10; Lenski 2000; Heather 1999a; Barnes 1998: 138–42). While other sources claim that Jovian was well respected and the unanimous choice of the army after the death of Julian, Ammianus suggests that Jovian was little known. Ammianus omits discussion of the probable role played by Jovian’s pious Christianity in making him a viable candidate for the throne. He subtly attempts to portray Jovian as an illegitimate emperor by emphasizing the poor fit of his purple imperial robes (25.10.14) and the ill-omened crying of his son during the emperor’s consular ceremony (25.10.11). The reader is everywhere encouraged to share the reaction of the Roman soldiers who, Ammianus claims, at first cheered wildly when they misheard the name “Julian” when Jovian’s name was announced, and then burst into tears when they realized that Julian was indeed dead and Jovian had replaced him (25.5.6). The historian unfairly saddles Jovian with the responsibility for the defeat, although he was compelled to surrender Nisibis to Shapur in return for safe passage of the army out of Persia. Ammianus improbably claims that, prior to Jovian’s shameful capitulation, Shapur was frightened, the omens predicted a Roman victory, and the army could easily have made it home safely. It also seems that Ammianus deliberately neglects to mention Jovian’s policy of religious tolerance in order to avoid having anything praiseworthy to say about the emperor (Heather 1999a: 112–14).
Ammianus is also unfavorable toward the emperors Valentinian and his brother Valens. He provides less detail about their reigns in comparison with his treatment of Constantius and Julian, and his treatment suffers from his lack of personal involvement in most of the events. Valentinian’s various campaigns against the Alamanni make up a large part of Ammianus’ account of his reign, and scholarly dispute over the nature and success of these campaigns has influenced scholarly evaluation of Ammianus’ treatment of the emperor. Ammianus has been condemned for his insufficient appreciation of the emperor’s successes, presumably downgrading Valentinian in order to better vaunt the military success of Julian (Paschoud 1992), but he has also been criticized for his excessive approbation of the emperor’s military successes, presumably exaggerating Valentinian’s conquests in order to inflate the threat posed by Germans in the west and thus emphasize the successes of Julian in the 350s (Drinkwater 1999). In either case, Ammianus uses language carefully to contrast the skillful handling of military affairs by Julian with the rash mistakes of Valentinian (Seager 1996). Valentinian is also repeatedly portrayed as a particularly cruel and savage emperor with a quick temper (27.7.4–9, 29.3, 30.8.1–7). He frequently put officials to death for minor offenses, as when he had a page beaten to death for losing control of a hunting dog, or when he executed the maker of a breastplate because of an error in the weight. Ammianus also claims that he kept two man-eating bears in cages near his bedroom with the charming names of Innocence and Goldflake. Valens is portrayed as ineffectual and a mere tool of his brother (Tritle 1994). He was “unskilled in liberal or military arts” (31.14.5). His faults led to his death and the loss of his army at Adrianople, which Ammianus blames on his decision, inspired by envy, to attack the Goths at Adrianople prematurely to prevent his nephew Gratian from bringing aid and receiving the credit for the victory.
Ammianus holds the administrations of both Valens and Valentinian responsible for the magic and treason trials that he describes in great detail (28.1, 29.1–2; Matthews 1989: 209–26; Zawadski 1989; Elliott 1983: 148–58; Blockley 1975: 104–22; Funke 1967). At Rome, imperial agents, in particular the acting prefect Maximinus, directed a wave of prosecutions against aristocrats. Senators were tried and on some occasions executed for magic, adultery, and poisoning. Ammianus’ account relies heavily on atmospherics, emphasizing the dread that all nobles felt (“all were stunned by the atrocities,” 28.1.14) and the ruthlessness of the prosecutors (“Maximinus poured out the ferocity naturally fixed in his cruel heart, like beasts in the amphitheater do,” 28.1.10). Ammianus does not, however, claim that the convicted nobles were innocent, and in several cases he admits their guilt. Nevertheless, the prosecutions at Rome seem not to have targeted a connected conspiracy, unlike those at Antioch under the reign of Valens. Ammianus himself was probably present for this wave of trials. In this case, some of those prosecuted appeared to have been participating in magical rites which were judged by imperial law to be treason. In one case, a magical tripod was used to determine who would succeed Valens as emperor. When the device marked out the letters theta, epsilon, omicron, and delta, the conspirators began to plot with a certain imperial official named Theodorus, whom they assumed would become the next emperor. The reader of the Res Gestae recognizes, of course, that the tripod had successfully predicted the succession of the emperor Theodosius. Theodorus and his co-conspirators were put to death, and while Ammianus approves of the prosecution of those truly responsible for plots against the legitimate emperor, he deplores the prosecutorial excesses that followed, in which innocents were convicted for benevolent uses of magic, such as healing charms and family horoscopes. The ghosts of those put to death in this purge, Ammianus tells us, terrified many in the east by shrieking funeral laments at night, an omen of the coming death of Valens at Adrianople (31.1.3).
The whole of the last book is devoted to events surrounding the Battle of Adrianople in Thrace in 378. Vicious behavior by Roman officials turned the crowd of Gothic refugees into a hostile army which overcame Valens and his men. The victorious Goths failed in an attempt to lay siege to Adrianople and joined with Huns and Alans in an unsuccessful attempt on Constantinople. Ammianus digresses to describe similarly calamitous events in Roman history, such as the invasion of the Cimbri in the fourth century BC, the German wars in the time of Marcus Aurelius, and the wave of invasions of the third century AD (31.5.10–17). This disaster, he pessimistically suggests, is worse than those, since in those days the higher moral character of the Romans allowed them to recover, whereas contemporary Romans are weakened by licentiousness and decay. But the last action of the history presents a more optimistic tone, as the general Julius cleverly entices the Goths in the east to gather and has them massacred. This “prudent” plan
, Ammianus says, saved the east from serious dangers (31.16.8).
Ammianus writes with a striking and unusual style (Fontaine 1992; Blockley 1998; Roberts 1988). Some of the oddness of his speech can perhaps be attributed to Latin being his second language. Ammianus’ language, however, is mostly the result of a purposeful attempt to create an elevated style which mixes Ciceronian Latin with the disjointed syntax of earlier historians like Sallust and Tacitus, the arresting visual imagery of contemporary Roman art and theater, and the technical vocabulary found in contemporary panegyric and government documents.
Rather than providing a smooth, flowing, plot-based narrative, Ammianus often leaves the reader with startling and memorable images, such as the confrontation between the city prefect Leontius and the huge redhead Peter Valvomeres (15.7), famously explored by Erich Auerbach (Auerbach 1957 [1946]: 43–67; cf. Matthews 1987; Barnes 1998: 11–16), or the triumphal entrance of Constantius II into Rome (16.10; MacMullen 1964; Klein 1979; Classen 1988). In his picture of Constantius, he carefully describes the gleam of the armor and the snapping of the colorful banners of the emperor’s attendants, and he focuses on Constantius himself, who demonstrates his regal nature by remaining completely motionless as the shouts of the crowds echo around him.
Ammianus’ extensive use of historical exempla is especially noteworthy (Blockley 1975: 157–67, 191–5). There are more than a hundred instances in the Res Gestae where Ammianus uses quotations or examples drawn primarily from ancient Greek or Roman history to underscore his point, often a moral one. While the surviving fragments of Eunapius show frequent use of exempla, no extant historian of antiquity uses this device nearly as often as Ammianus. Constantius supposedly plotted to have Ursicinus killed, just as corrupt Nero had his loyal general Domitius Corbulo assassinated (15.2.5). The general Barbatio would certainly not have slandered Julian so often to Constantius had he been aware of the advice Aristotle gave to Callisthenes on his way to meet Alexander the Great (18.3.7). Worthless, untrained lawyers chatter ignorantly in court like Homer’s Thersites (30.4.15). Valentinian dramatically increased the number of executions, which “is the last remedy sought by the pious soul in difficult times, as the outstanding Isocrates says” (30.8.6). Ammianus uses Roman exempla more than Greek (Blockley 1975 calculates a ratio of seven to three), and he uses republican exempla more than imperial ones. Ammianus presents a vision of history which is continuous and cumulative through his use of these exempla, constantly weighing the actors in his history against those of the past. Gallus, roaming through the taverns of Antioch at night, is emulating the loathsome act which Gallienus is said to have performed at Rome (14.1.9), Constantius persecuted his subjects based on the most slender of evidence, falling woefully short of standards set by Marcus Aurelius (21.16.11), but Julian surpassed even Alexander the Great in his ability to go without sleep (16.5.4–5). The effect is to elevate the tone of the work by situating every contemporary event in the long and glorious history of the past. Julian is thus not only great, but is comparable to the greatest rulers of all time, and other figures are not only tyrannical, but comparable to the greatest tyrants of history.
The Historians of Late Antiquity Page 5