with a quiet vidimtiSy^ once visa pleraque narrantes,X
He also saw Sparta, and took note of the effects of an
earthquake which had stranded a ship two miles inland. §
Though he does not say so himself, we know at once
from a letter Libanius wrote him, and from the vivid and
somewhat satirical pictures he draws, that he lived in
Rome, and wrote and read his history there. Seemingly
he did not like Rome, and it has been suggested that
Libanius' letter was meant to encourage him. At any
rate the great orator says that the honour Rome does
the historian, and the delight she takes in his work,
do credit to Antioch and his fellow citizens.
In 371 he had the ill luck to be back in Antioch|| at
the time when the affair of Theodorus was at its height.
The story may be told quickly — he tells -it us in full
himself. Some men, speculating as to who was to be
Emperor after Valens, tried a sort of planchette to find
out, and learning that his name began with the four
letters 0EOA, they leapt to the conclusion that it was
their friend Theodorus, a man of high rank.^f Theodorus
• They were quite equal to this as Sapor could teslify, for they beat him
off in 340, though he had got so far as to make a breach iu their wall,
t xvii. 4, 6. X xxii. 15, i. § xxvi. 10, 19. || xxix. i.
IT The man of fate was Theodosius, not Theodorus ; so after all the
prophecy came true. He was co-opted as Emperor by Gralian in 378.
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532 Ammi'anus Marcellinus.
heard of it, and perhaps was half inclined to accept a
manifest destiny — qtio fata trahunt retrahuntque sequa-
mur — but the day planchette was tried was an evil day
for him and for all concerned, and many more beside
who were innocent. Attempts had been made on
Valens' life before, and this time at least he left nothing
undone to discourage them for the future. A reigfn of
terror followed. " We all at that time crept about as
it were in Cimmerian darkness, as frightened as the
guests of Dionysius who saw the swords hanging each
by a horse hair over their heads."* There was probably
no man with as little taste for rebellion in the empire.
Writing of treason trials under Constantius he sayst :
« No sensible person condemns a vigorous inquiry into
these matters ; for we do not deny that the safety of a
legitimate Emperor, the champion and defender of good
citizens, to which others are indebted for their safety,
ought to be protected by the associated enthusiasm
of all men. To uphold this the more strongly the
Cornelian laws allow in treason cases no exemption of
rank from torture even if it cost blood." This is loyal
enough, "but unbridled exultation in suffering is not
befitting." He knew, and few better, what it meant to
the empire to have no Emperor. That lesson was
learnt in the desert and at Nisibis; and when after
some months of tarnished glory Jovian died, the Roman
soldiers were right when they forced Valentinian on his
election at once to name a colleague.
While he lived in Rome he wrote his great history.}
It consisted of thirty-one books, of which the first
thirteen are lost. His work began with the reig^ of
Nerva, 96 A.D., where Tacitus stopped ; but in book XIV
• xxix. J, 4. t xix. I J, 17.
X An English version was brought out by Philemon Holland, of the CitU
of Coventrie, in 1609, which I have not seen. Pope sets Holland's trans-
lations (many and mainly historical) in ** the library of Dulness," but Abp.
Tiench thinks very highly of them, and his is probably the more seiious
judgment.
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Ammianus Afarcelltnus. 533
we are in the year 353, and book xxxi ends with the
death of Valens at Adrianople in 378. It has been
suggested that- there was not room in thirteen books on
this scale for 250 years, and that perhaps, like Tacitus,
he wrote iwo historical works, and that the history,
eighteen books of which we still have, was that of his
own times, while another is lost. This is a large
supposition, and, I think, not very necessary.* At the
beginning of Book xv he announces that what follows
will be done limatiuSy which probably does not refer so
much to the style as to the matter, and implies greater
detail. As I believe there is no external evidence of
any kind, every one may freely form his own opinion
from that passage, and the little epilogue at the end of
book xxxi.f
We do not know anything of his death. If his
reference in book xxix to a young officer, Theodosius^
princeps postea perspeciissimus^ implies that Theodosius*
reign and life are done (as it may), then Ammianus
died in 395 or later. Otherwise we have no clue at all
beyond reference to Gratian's faiay which seems to
imply Gratian was dead. In this case Ammianus lived
as late as 383. It is I think the latest date to which an
event he mentions can be assigned. In speaking of the
Serapeum he says nothing of its destruction in 391 by a
mob (who were much strengthened in the faith by seeing
the mice run out of Serapis' broken head), but he deals
with the Serapeum in book xxii, and we have nine
books on later history, so this gives us no help. How-
ever it is quite unimportant when he died. He lived
long enough to leave mankind a legacy, for which we
cannot be too grateful.
As all we know of him is gathered from his history,
we may consider his work and himself together. He
* Zosimus, in his history of Rome's decline and fall, devotes one book»
his Gist, to the first three hundred years of the empire, and gradually gives
more space to events as he approaches his subject proper.
f It is also believed by some that one book is missing before book zxxL
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534 Ammianus Marcellinus.
was a man of very wide culture, as his constant refer-
ences shew. They are so many in fact that it has been
surmised he did his learning late in life. He is evidently
proud of it, and the value he put upon it may be read
in his apology for Valens, who had *' a countrified
intelligence, unpolished by any acquaintance with
antiquity."* Valens again showed "a very unbridled
exultation in various tortures (of supposed criminals),
being unaware of that saying of Tully's^ which teaches
that they are unhappy men who think everything
permitted them."t It is quite surprising how many
Imperial and other crimes are sins of ignorance. Some-
times it is that the Emperor forgot or had not read
his Aristotle. But we hear most of Tully, for whom
Ammianus had a zeal equal to Mrs Blimber's, though
more according to knowledge. He is rarely at a loss
for a historical parallel in the annals of Rome or
Greece.
When he sums up the character of a good Emperor,
he first of all tells us his faults — and quite freely too —
and then sets forth his good points that they may leave
the stronger impression, while with a bad Emperor he
reverses the process. Let us follow his example and
pay him the compliment implied by first giving an
account of his foibles.
Critics almost without exception abuse his style, some
even finding fault with him for trying to write in Latin
at all,} and certainly his style is curious and peculiar
to him. It reminds one somehow of Apuleius, though
it is less successful. His vocabulary is good in itself,
* XXX. 4. 2 Suhagreste ingenium nullis vetustatis lectionibtis expolilum,
t xxvi. 10 12 Sententiae illius Tullianae ignarus.
X It is remarkable in view of the fact that the Greeks bad always been
studiously ignorant of Latin (e. g. Plutarch), and that a century later than
this we Bnd but few in the East who knew it all, that the two great men of
letters of this age» Ammianus and Claudian, a Greek and a Greek-speaking
Egyptian, should write in Latin. The Emperor Julian seems guiltless of the
most rudimentary acquaintance with Latin literature. Latin was still, how-
ever, the official language.
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Ammianus Marcellinm, 535
but his composition and grouping have a very odd
eflFect. Partly it may be, as is suggested, the disturbing
influence of Greek. Partly it is because he aims a
little too much at rhetoric. The manner is more suited
to the novel than to the history. In fact his style is
rather more modern* than classical, so modern as to be
nearly journalistic at times. It abounds in metaphor —
" The trumpets of internal disaster were sounding ";t
"the horrifying gang of furies lit on the necks of
all Asia"; J "he left the provinces waltzing ";§ "the
destiny of the East blared on the dread shawms of
peril, mingling her plans with the shades of Tartarus."!!
He does not, in describing the situation of a town, care
to say North, South, East and West simply, but " facing
the arctoan stars" "whence the dawning sunbeam
rises."1I (Of course these phrases are more unnatural
when translated). Once or twice he breaks out in a
declamatory apostrophe, which comes oddly enough in
a history. In fact we may borrow a phrase of his own
used of Phrynichus to illustrate and describe his own
style — cum cothurnatius stilus procederef^*. Cothurnus
is strictly the buskin worn by the tragic actor to give
dignity to his stature, and is commonly enough used
in Latin as equivalent to Tragedy itself, just as soccus
represents Comedy. Cothurnatus is "wearing the
* e. g. in the purely pictaresque use of the adjective, ziv. 3, 4. Abortuque
amnis kerbidas ripaSy balancing solUudines,
f zziz. I, 14. inUrnarum eladium liiuisonabanL
X xxix. 2, 21. coetus furiarum horrificus, .cenn'ctbus Aside totitis insediU
This rather curious phraseology is not unlike Apuleius, e,g, Metam, v. 12.
sed jam pestes illae taeUrrimae furiae anhelantes vipereum virus et festi'-
nantes impia ceUritate nccuigabant — the description of Psyche's two sisters.
f xxviii. 3, 9. tripudianUs relinquens provincias.
II xviii. 4, I. Orientis foriuna periculorum Urribiles tubas inflahat, •
eonsilia tartareis manibus miscens,
^ zxvii. 4, 6. arctois obnoxiam stellis. 7. C/ftde eoum jubar exsurgit.
♦* xxviii. I, 4. So Mr Bury describes the style of Cassiodorus, «• each
epistle posing as it were in tragic cothurni and trailing a sweeping train."
Later Roman Empire, ii. p. 187.
VOL. XX. ZZZ
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53^ Ammianus Marcellinus.
buskin " and may be employed of a man in a "tragic"
humour. To turn this into an adverb, and use it to
describe the march of a style is a somewhat unusual
manner of writing, but characteristic of Ammianus. It
also hits him off admirably, for there is very often
*'a hint of the buskin in the strut of his style." At
the same time a good deal too much may be made of
this, and has been made, for, as I hope the extract abeve
translated will shew, he can write straightforwardly and
simply when he pleases. When his diction and his
rather obtrusive learning are forgiven, I think we have
exhausted the list of his sins, which must be admitted
not to be very great.
When we come to his virtues, we find that his severe
truthfulness and his dispassionate impartiality might
set him in the very front rank of historians. But a
man may be fair and truthful without having the other
necessary qualities of a historian, and these Ammianus
has in a strongly marked degree. He realizes the
perspective of the picture he sees, as few if any ancient
historians have done, save of course Thucydides, and
he selects and groups his matter with the eye of a
master. A modern author has this advantage over an
ancient, that he can by grace of the printing press pack
his digressions into footnotes and appendices, while as
long as manuscripts held the field everything had to
go into the text. But for this the light reader would
have a higher opinion of Ammianus. Setting apart his
geographical excursuses which really recall Herodotus,
and those on scientific subjects such as earthquakes,
the rainbow, comets, and so forth, which naturally fall
short of nineteenth century accuracy — all of which
would today be relegated from the main body of the
work, we may say that he knows the use of light and
shade, and shifts his scene so skilfully that the various
parts of his work set off and relieve one another. No
part of the Roman world is left out, and he gives us a
vivid panorama of what that world was in the fourth
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A mmianus Marcellinus, 537
Century. Even the digressions into Geography serve
this end and have their value. Huns, Goths, Egyptians
and Persians are all surveyed, and though we may be
surprised at an omission or a slip here and there, such
as his neglect to notice the change from the Arsacid to
the Sassanid dynasty in Persia,* which from other
sources we find meant much to Rome and her Eastern
provinces, we really learn a great deal.
Then he has a keen eye for colour, and in a touch,
a hint, an incidental phrase, lets us have glimpses that
make the life of his time real and living to us today.
So much of his story is so told, that we lose the text-
book as it were in the novel. For instance, we learn thus
that the Germans dyed their hair. Jovinusf " hidden in
a valley dark through the thickness of the trees"
surprises them, " some washing, some of them staining
their hair red after their custom, and drinking some of
them." In the same way we mingle with the Roman
soldiers (too many of them barbarians), and see the
way they do things. They are anxious to fight, and
they let their commander know it by banging their
spears on their shields. j: To wish him good luck they
make a din with the shields on their knees.§ Here is
a man who cuts off his thumb to shirk service. || Julian
makes a speech, and in delight the troops stand waving
their shields in the air,1f or in anger they brandish** their
spears at him. In the troops of Constantiusff are soldiers
ivho lie on featherbeds and have a pretty taste in gems.
* The Arsacids yielded place to Artaxerzes in 226 A.D., and the new
dynasty which was supposed to derive from the Achaemenids (the family of
Cyrus and Darius) lasted till 651 A.D. They restored the religion of 2^roaster
and the authority of the Magi, persecuting Christians and Manichees alike.
The long wearisome wars between them and the Romans (to be read
of in the vivid if very unadorned history of Joshua the Stylite) left both an
easy pre/ to the nascent enthusiasm of Islam, which deluged a weakened
East for ever. We have a hint or two of the Arabs already in Ammianos.
t xxvii. 2, a. X xvi, 12, 13. { xv. 8, 15. || xv. 12, 3.
U xxiii. 5, 24. ♦♦ xxi. 13, 16. ft «ii. 4, 6.
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538 Ammianus Marcellinus.
Alas! for Julian's heathen revival!* his soldiers had
too many sacrificial feasts, too much to eat and too
much to drink, and rode home through the streets of
Antioch to their quarters, mounted on the necks of
passers-by. Now they all but mutinyt because Julian
has only a donation for them of a hundred pieces of
silver a man. Again we find them marching into battle,
while they raise the barrituSyX " so-called in their native
tongue, a martial note that began low and swelled
louder." Mr Keary^ very reasonably finds the origin
of this in the German forests, where the wind sweeping
over and through leagues of trees roars like the sea,
and hence through barbarian recruits, of whom we hear
a good deal, it came into the Roman army.
All these are small points, perhaps, but they add
variety to the work ; and though a history may be great
-without them, or dull with them, they are in their right
place in Ammianus, and brighten his canvas without
lessening the effect of the great outlines of his picture.
Ammianus was a soldier, but he saw that the army
-was not the state, and ever and again we find him
intent on the provinces and the troubles of the tax-
payer. He recognizes the merit of Constantius, whom
he did not like, in keeping the army in its proper
place,|| "never exalting the horns of the military;*'
and he tells us with a proud satisfaction in his hero
that Julian reduced the land tax in Gaul from twenty-
five to seven aurei per caputs and in his financial
arrangements would not countenance one particular
practice because it was merely a relief to the rich
without helping the poor at all. It is not the picture
of Julian we are generally shewn, and we must bear
in mind that the man the ecclesiastics abuse for
"pillaging" them was a careful financier with the
interests of the empire at heart. A burning question of
♦ xxii. 12, 6. t Joiv. 3, 3. J xxxi. 7, x I,
§ Vikings and Western Christendom^ P: 43* "*• '^> '• ^ ^* 5> '4
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Ammtanus Mafcellinus. 539
the time was the shirking of ** curial " duties by men
who tried to evade paying their share of the heavy
taxes exacted from the curia of each town as a body.
It is clear that every evasion made the burden heavier
for the rest of the body, but Julian is severely criticized
by Ammianus for being too sharp with men whom the
curiae accused of this kind of thing. The system was
vicious, and in fact was one of the main elements in
the decay of the empire.*
Another such element was officialdom. Here is a
picture he draws us : Julian is quartered at last in the
palace of Constantinople, and sends for a barber.
There enters a gorgeous official. " I sent for a barber,
not a secretary," and the functionary bows. He was
the court barber, and, as such, had a splendid income.
Julian at once made a grand clearance of barbers and
cooks and eunuchs, and till Valens became Emperor
their rSgime was at an end. Other official nuisances
were less easy to get rid of, and again and again we
find Ammianus telling of tumult and war and disaster
brought on by the cruelty and insolence of civil and
military authorities. Valentinian, he complains, did
nothing to check the irregularities of his officers, while
he was very severe on the private soldiers. Finally,
the terrible Gothic war, which culminated in the defeat
and death of Valens at Adrianople, and was the first
great shock that foretold the end, was occasioned, if
* Frisctts in his account of his interesting journey among the Huns in
448 A.D. (p. 59, B., in the Bonn Corpus of Byzantine Histoxy, a translation of
which is to be found in Mr. Bury's Later Roman Empire^ i. 213-223) tells us
of a renegade Greek he met who had turned Hun and pled that he was better
off; * * for the condition of the subjects [of the empire] in time of peace is far more
grievous than the evils of war, for the exaction of the taxes is very severe, and
unprincipled men inflict injuries on others because the laws are practically
not valid against all classes/' and so forth. Friscus upheld the empire, and
** my interlocutor shed tears and confessed tliat the laws and constitution of
the Romans were fair, but deplored that the governors, not possessing the
spirit of former generations, were ruining the State." It might be difficult to
identify those <' former generations," but the whole story is very significant.
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540 Ammianus Marcellintts.
not caused, by the rapacity and cruelty of a magistrate
charged with the transport of the Goths over the
Danube.
Here it may be remarked that while Ammianus has
no political or economical views to set forth, and accepts
the fact of the empire as part of the world's fabric, as
everybody else then did, without criticism, he does
permit himself to criticize and complain of the adminis-
tration, which is a very different thing from falling foul
of the constitution in the manner of Tacitus. He has
no regrets for the republic, no sorrow for the Senate of
Rome in its glorious effacement, none of the narrow
Roman feeling of. the city-state days. Three hundred
years had brought a good many changes, and all the
world was Roman now together, apart from Germans,
Goths, and Persians beyond the pale. The Greek of
Antioch is as much a Roman as any one. The result
is a striking difference of tone in the historian — a
change for the better. We are rid of the jingoism of
Livy, and the impracticable discontent of Tacitus.*
Ammianus himself is tenderer and has larger sym-
pathies than the historians of old. He can value
human life even if it is not a Roman life, and pity the
child though a Syrian who begins his experience by
being taken captive. The Roman in Ammianus poses
no more. He is far more frankly human. As a result
we feel more with him. In fighting German and
Persian he is battling for light and civilization, and
Christianity itself; and if in the last great fight in
book XXXI we incline to the Gothic side in some
degree, it is the fault of a criminal ofiicial, and not
because our historian alienates our sympathy by a
narrow and offensive little patriotism. Things are more
fairly and squarely judged on their merits now when
the cramping caste distinction of civitas is gone. Even
* Mr. Bury {L.R,E,, ii. 179) characterises Tacitus very justly as " out of
touch with his own age/'
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Ammtanus Matcellinus. 541
the line between Roman and barbarian was growing
faint, when the Frank Nevitta was made consul by
Julian, bitter as he was against Constantine for his
barbarian consuls.
But I have said nothing so far of one great change
that had come over the world in the triumph of the
Church. We hear of it of course from Ammianus, but
less than we might have expected. This is easily
accounted for. Our own chief interest in the fourth
century is the Arian controversy, and Ammianus was
a heathen. A heathen of the latter-day type, that is, a
rather confused, because so very open-minded a
heathen. We hear little about the gods and a great
deal about the vaguely-named caeUste numetiy which
shews its interest in mankind again and again.
Auguries and auspices are still to the fore, not that the
mere birds can tell the future, but a kindly numen^
guides their flight to allow us by it to see what is
coming. Omens are very real things — an idea mankind
still cherishes in a confused and half ashamed way.
Prodigies still occur, but " nobody heeds them now."
Ammianus has great respect for the philosophers and
the theologi of old, though he draws a curious picture of
Julian's camp with its Etruscan soothsayers and Greek
philosophers.f Some sort of portent occurred on
Julian's march into Persia, and the soothsayers declared
that it meant disaster if the advance were continued.
But they were pooh-poohed by the philosophers " who
had much respect just then, though they do make
mistakes now and then, and are stubborn enough in
things they know nothing about." This time the event
justified the soothsayers, we know.
But a historian of the fourth century, whatever his
* xxi. I, 9. Amat enint benignitas numtm's, seu quod mereniur homines^
sen quod tangitur eorum adfeciione, his quoqut artibus prodert quae inpen-
dunt. Surely there is something pathetic in this, if only in the quoque,
t xxiii. 5, 8-1 1.
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542 Ammianus Marcellinus.
creedy has to deal with Christians. Ammianus is quite
free from bias ; Christian or heathen is much the same
to him — Tros Tyrtusqtie miki nullo discrimine ageiur.
He has no animus whatever, and is so far unique among
his contemporaries. He finds grave fault with Julian
for forbidding Christian professors to teach ancient
literature, stigmatising the degree as one obruendum
perennt silentto* "to be overwhelmed in eternal
silence " — strong words to use of a man he loved and
honoured, and speaking volumes for the fairness of the
writer. As an outsider, however, who will have other
outsiders among his readers, he will often half apologize
for a technical term — ^**a deacon as it is called,"
"synods as they call them." A bishop is Chrisiianae
legts antisteSy though he slips into episcopus now and
then. A church is Christtant riius sacrarium^ or Chris-
Hani riius conventiculum^ or frankly eulesia. These
roundabout phrases are largely due to his environment;
for the traditions of literature and good society ignored
the new religion. f But Ammianus was no pedant, and
can speak in terms of admiration of the men} " who, to
hold their faith inviolate, faced a glorious death and
are now called martyrs." In another passage, speaking
of the sufiferings inflicted on the followers of the
pretender Procopius — ^which were very much those
undergone by the martyrs of Palestine according to
Eusebius — he says§ he had rather die in battle ten
times over than face them. Side by side with this
stand his startling words on the warring of the
♦ xxii. lo, 7.
t This should of itself, I think, dispose of Giitschmid*s ingenious attempt
to correct a corrupt passage in ziii. 16, 22. Ammianus is enomeraling the