Ammianus and the Written Past PDF

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Sources et modèles des historiens anciens Olivier Devillers est professeur de Langue et Littérature latines à l’université Bordeaux Montaigne Breno Battistin Sebastiani est professeur de Langue et Littérature grecques à l’université de São Paulo Illustration de couverture : Victoire de Samothrace, d...

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Sources et modèles des historiens anciens

Olivier Devillers est professeur de Langue et Littérature latines à l’université Bordeaux Montaigne Breno Battistin Sebastiani est professeur de Langue et Littérature grecques à l’université de São Paulo

Illustration de couverture : Victoire de Samothrace, dessin Ausonius.

Ausonius Éditions

— Scripta Antiqua 109 —

Sources et modèles des historiens anciens Textes réunis et édités par Olivier Devillers & Breno Battistin Sebastiani

— Bordeaux 2018 —

Notice catalographique : Devillers, O. et Sebastiani, B. B., dir. (2018) : Sources et modèles des historiens anciens, Ausonius Scripta Antiqua 109, Bordeaux. Mots-clés :

écriture de l’histoire, historiographie, intertextualité, Quellenforschung, histoire grecque, guerre du Péloponnèse, histoire romaine, littérature grecque, Hérodote, Thucydide, littérature latine, Salluste, Tite-Live, Tacite AUSONIUS Maison de l’Archéologie F - 33607 Pessac cedex http://ausonius.u-bordeaux-montaigne.fr/EditionsAusonius

Directeur des publications : Olivier Devillers Secrétaire des publications : Valentin Verardo et Nathalie Tran Graphisme de couverture : Stéphanie Vincent Perez

Tous droits réservés pour tous pays. La loi du 11 mars 1957 sur la propriété littéraire et intellectuelle interdit les copies ou reproductions destinées à une utilisation collective. Toute représentation ou reproduction intégrale ou partielle faite par quelque procédé que ce soit sans le consentement de l’éditeur ou de ses ayants droit, est illicite et constitue une contrefaçon sanctionnée par les articles 425 et suivants du Code pénal. © AUSONIUS 2018 ISSN : 1298-1990 EAN : 9782356132109 Achevé d’imprimer sur les presses de Gráficas Calima Avenida Candina, s/n E - 39011 Santander février 2018

Sommaire

Olivier Devillers et Breno Battistin Sebastiani, Avant-propos

11

Olivier Devillers et Breno Battistin Sebastiani, Modalités et fonctions du recours aux historiens précédents. Remarques préliminaires

13

Alan Sheppard, From Autopsy to Anthology: Inscribed Epigram and Epigraphic Evidence in Classical Historiography

23

Christophe Pébarthe, Comment lire un collègue ? De la lecture de Thucydide

37

Breno Battistin Sebastiani, L’ironie de Thucydide : le cas de Nicias

53

Gabriela Ottone, Teopompo hyperephanos. Incidenza dei modelli nei (pre)giudizi antichi sul progetto stotiografico teopompeo

65

Antonis Tsakmakis, Chance and Casuality in the Oxyrhyncus Historian and His Predecessors: A Holistic Approach of a Linguistic Phenomenon (τυγχάνω + Participle)

81

John Thornton, Un’intertestualità complessa: paralleli tucididei (e non solo) alla giustificazione dell’intervento romano in Sicilia (Pol. 1.10.5-9)

99

Andrew Worley, A Percennian Problem: The Development of Vocalization within the Mutiny Narrative in Roman Historiography

111

Pedro Paulo Abreu Funari et Renata S. Garraffoni, Sallust: Between Present and Past

125

Georgios Vassiliades, Le Catilina de Salluste : un projet historiographique d’aemulatio ?

139

Gianpaolo Urso, Catilina ‘avant Salluste’. Remarques sur deux fragments de Diodore de Sicile

153

Francisco Edi de Oliveira Sousa, Tite-Live, Virgile et Bacchus : la figure du dieu entre historiographie et poésie

167

Dennis Pausch, Umkämpfte Erinnerungsorte. Auf der Suche nach Vorbildern für Livius ‘Schlacht auf dem Forum’ (1.11-13)

181

Eleonora Tola, La tempête de César ou la poétique de l’Histoire chez Lucain (5.476-721)

197

Fábio Duarte Joly, Tacitus’Milichus and Livy’s Vindicius: fides between domus and res publica

211

Thomas Strunk, Deconstructing the Monuments: Tacitus on the Mausoleum and Res gestae of Augustus

219

Kelly E. Shannon, Livy and Tacitus on Floods: Intertextuality, Prodigies, and Cultural Memory

233

Pauline Duchêne, Sources et composition narrative dans les récits de la mort d’Othon

247

Christopher Baron, The Great King and his Limits: Allusions to Herodotus in Book 7 of Arrian’s Anabasis

259

Chiara Carsana, Asinio Pollione e Seneca padre nel libro 2 delle Guerre Civili di Appiano

269

Luis Ballesteros Pastor, Salustio, Casio Dión y la tercera guerra mitridática

281

Moisés Antiqueira, Festus the Epitomator? The ‘Historical Monograph’ of Festus

295

Adam M. Kemezis, The Fictions of Tradition in the Later Lives of the Historia Augusta

307

Alan Ross, Ammianus and the Written Past

319

Gilvan Ventura da Silva, Memoria, storia e agiografia nella Tarda Antichità: alcuni commenti sull’Epitaphios Logos di Giovanni Crisostomo

335

Luise Marion Frenkel, Mustering Sources and Vindication: Theodoret of Cyrrhus’ Sources and the Models of Greek Ecclesiastical Historiography

349

Christopher T. Mallan, The Historian John Zonaras: Some Observations on his Sources and Methods 359 Guillaume Flamerie de Lachapelle Florus comme modèle et source de trois abrégés du xviie s. : Florus Francicus, Florus Gallicus et Florus sanctus

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Bibliographie générale

391

Index des passages cités

429

Index des noms

451

Ammianus and the Written Past Alan J. Ross

Introduction – the lonely historian? Despite now being a cliché of Ammianean scholarship, the sobriquet the “lonely historian” may still seem appropriate for Ammianus within the context of this volume 1. As a Greek writing a grand history of Rome in the late 380s, and (more importantly) in Latin, Ammianus appears to have few contemporaries who undertook a similar task. Although Greek historiography had continued to flourish throughout the third century in the hands of Dio and Dexippus, we know of no Latin author between Florus and Ammianus who engaged in a project of similar scope. Ammianus’ Res Gestae is the last example of “grand” Latin historiography from Antiquity: he is not just “lonely” but also the “last”. That is not to say historical works were not being written in Latin during the fourth century: we have the examples of Aurelius Victor, Eutropius, and Festus, who each wrote condensed, brief overviews of Roman history, in Eutropius’ case, covering history ab urbe condita to 364 AD in a mere seventy pages of the modern edition 2. The absence of parallel, classicising historiographical accounts of the period that forms the extant portion of Ammianus’ Res Gestae (the years 353-378 in eighteen books) renders the two themes of this volume particularly complicated. Which earlier historians could have been Ammianus’ sources, and which his models? The sorts of historical text such as Aurelius Victor and Eutropius that provided parallel accounts for Ammianus (and thus might be thought of as potential “sources”) were clearly not those he chose as models. The very scale and ambition of Ammianus’ work places him a longer tradition of historiography that stretches back through Tacitus, Livy, and Sallust ultimately to Herodotus. In the forty years since A. Momigliano first attached the concept of loneliness to Ammianus, scholarship has rehabilitated the historian from his imagined position of social and intellectual isolation as a historiographical outlier in the fourth century, and has emphasised particularly his connectivity with a Latin literary tradition. C. Fornara argued that Ammianus alluded to those earlier Latin historians, Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus,

1 2

The term was applied to Ammianus by Momigliano in an article of 1974. For the text of Eutropius, see Santini’s Teubner edition of 1992. For “breviary” history in general see Rohrbacher 2002, 42-63. To this list could also be added the lost historical work of Nicomachus Flavianus, the scope of which was no greater than that of the other “breviarists“ of the period; Cameron 2011, 627-690. A. J. Ross, in : Sources et modèles des historiens anciens, p.319-334

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throughout his work and in meaningful ways; indeed Fornara suggests that numerous elusive allusions allowed Ammianus to engage in a “subterranean dialogue” with these predecessors and to emphasise the continuity of his work within a tradition 3. More recently G. Kelly has demonstrated Ammianus’ extensive allusive engagement with Latin authors of multiple genres, ranging from epic to comedy to oratory, in the process revealing Ammianus’ extensive knowledge of earlier Latin literature and his sophisticated engagement with those texts 4. Ammianus, then, was placing his Res Gestae within a much wider literary tradition than just that of historiography. Fornara’s image of a “subterranean dialogue” is apt for the sort of literary engagements that have been studied in Latin poetry by the like of R. Thomas and have been more fully explored, in the case of Ammianus, by Kelly 5. Allusion could be regarded as a hidden game, the solution to which adds a new layer of meaning to the “surface” meaning of the text. To be effective, this game must also involve the reader, who needs to be in a position first to identify the allusion to an earlier text (in other words, to be as well-read as the author) and then to grasp the implications of the allusion. I offer one example involving Livy: in his description of the handover of the Roman fortress of Nisibis in Mesopotamia to the Persians in 363, Ammianus alludes to Livy’s description of the forced evacuation of Alba Longa in Book 1 of his history, specifically in the pitiable depiction of the civilian inhabitants forced to leave their homes 6: – Liv. 1.29.4: cum larem ac penates tectaque, in quibus natus quisque educatusque esset, relinquentes exirent, iam continens agmen migrantium inpleuerat uias. “Then forth they went, abandoning their lares and penates, and the houses where they had been born and reared. And now the roads were filled with an unbroken procession of emigrants”. – Amm. 25.9.5-6: cum laceraret crines matrona, exsul fuganda laribus, in quibus nata erat et educata […] exin uariae complentur uiae, qua quisque poterat dilabentium. “The matron tore her hair, since she was to be sent into exile from her home in which she had been born and reared [...] Then the various roads were filled with people going wherever each could find refuge”.

There is no obvious cue or marker to alert the reader that Ammianus draws on Livy here. Yet, the allusion, if recognised by the reader, forces a comparison with an earlier and seminal capture of a city (Alba Longa), whose defeat saw the expansion of the power of Rome under Tullus Hostilius. That comparison emphasises the reversal in Roman fortunes between the remote past of the early Republic and a far more recent event only a quarter century before Ammianus wrote 7. The allusion, and the comparison it calls to mind, makes all the more

3 4 5 6

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Fornara 1992 (quotation from p. 438). Kelly 2008, 161-221. For intertextuality and Latin literature see the seminal studies by Hinds 1998 and Thomas 1999. Identified by Wirz 1877, 637-638. See also Tränkle 1962, 24 n. 8a; Fornara 1992, 435. The Dutch commentators exercise undue caution over endorsing this allusion: the context of similar scenes corroborate the allusion; den Boeft et al. 2005, 293. For a recent reaffirmation of the arguments for Ammianus’ likely date of composition as 390 see Cameron 2012.

Ammianus and the Written Past

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poignant Ammianus’ explicit interpretation that the surrender of Nisibis to the Persians is unprecedented in Roman history, by stating that “For never (I think) since the founding of our city can it be found after turning over the annals that any part of our territory has been yielded to an enemy by an emperor or a consul” (Amm. 25.9.9) 8. As important as the analysis of Ammianus’ allusions is to our understanding of his relationships with earlier historians, I do not propose to extend the study of this “subterranean dialogue” in this chapter, not least because recent studies of Ammianus’ intertextuality have firmly rehabilitated his skills as a sophisticated Latin author who was in firm command of Latin classics, and not just historiography. Here I intend to study the related and no less important dialogue that Ammianus constructs with his past in the form of explicit authorial references to history, to other historical authors, and indeed to authors in the past whom he explicitly calls upon and uses within his text. In other words, my question is: what attitude does the primary narrator take to his past, both in written form and as past events? Of course, there is an intertextual aspect to my study (particularly when a specific work can be identified as Ammianus’ “source” at a moment when he openly refers to an earlier text or author), but my main approach is narratological. In so doing, I observe a distinction between Ammianus as the historical figure and author of the Res Gestae, and Ammianus as the primary narrator of the text, who may make explicit comments to his primary narratee (who in turn should be considered as distinct from the actual readers) 9. How does Ammianus’ narrator refer to past events, especially those that lie outside the chronological span of his history; how are they presented to the narratee; which characters are aware of the past within the text, or are even aware of the works of earlier historians? By asking such questions, we may discover how Ammianus intended his narrative to offer a discourse on its place within a literary tradition of historiography, and indeed how he may have wished his text to have been received by his readers. If Fornara was engaged in studying Ammianus’ “subterranean dialogue” with the historiographical tradition, then here I study his explicit, “surface” dialogue. Ultimately, the comparison of these two dialogues may sharpen our understanding of Ammianus’ attitude to his tradition. Throughout this chapter, I also bear in mind those two competing forces that J. Marincola has identified as vital aspects of the ancient historiographer’s claim to authority and his position within an historiographical tradition, namely imitatio and aemulatio: the imitation of the generic topoi or narratorial poses that predecessors had deployed and which together provide a definition of historiography as a genre; and also the competition (aemulatio) that a historian must engage in with specific predecessors (and especially those who have covered the same period or events) via which he may claim he that improves the accounts of earlier historians 10. Writing in Late Antiquity, Ammianus had so many more predecessors than most of those predecessors themselves, and, as we have seen, he was not quite free of parallel historical accounts of the period about which he wrote. I also, then, seek to ask how these

8 9 10

Ammianus exaggerates, not least because Nisibis had been in Roman hands for only sixty-five years; den Boeft et al. 2005, 287. I draw upon the terminology set out in de Jong 2004. Marincola 1997, passim and especially chapter 5 for the use of polemic.

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themes of imitatio and aemulatio play out between Ammianus’ “surface” and “subterranean” dialogues with his predecessors.

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How to write history However Ammianus, the historical figure and author of the Res Gestae, actually went about composing his history, his primary narrator presents a clear depiction of how he wants the reader to imagine part of the process (Amm. 16.7.8): cui spadonum ueterum hunc [scil. Eutherium] comparare debeam, antiquitates replicando complures inuenire non potui. “In unrolling many records of the past, to see which of the eunuchs of old I ought to compare him [Eutherius], I could find none”.

Throughout the Res Gestae eunuchs are consistently presented as court intriguers, who exert malign force upon emperors 11. The one remarkable exception, according to Ammianus here, is the emperor Julian’s chamberlain (praepositus sacri cubiculi) Eutherius who defends Julian, the hero of the text, from the attacks of Constantius and his courtiers. Clearly Ammianus admires Eutherius and his reference to the past is part of his praise of this contemporary figure: Eutherius exceeds the normal pattern of behaviour for eunuchs throughout antiquity. Furthermore, the way in which he is praised elsewhere at 16.7, as G.  Kelly has remarked, perhaps speaks of his value as a historical source for the author of the Res Gestae: in the previous paragraph Ammianus says he possesses trustworthiness (fides) and a capable memory (immensum quantum memoria uigens), admirable qualities for any historian 12. Indeed as both G. Kelly and T. D. Barnes before him have suggested, Ammianus may have known Eutherius in Rome and had relied on him for details of the slandering of Julian at Constantius’ court 13. Of additional interest to us, however, is the way that the narrator shows his historiographical practice at work: for him the past is a repository of comparanda ready and waiting to be used in order to critique more recent figures or events which fall within the purview of his narrative. The job of the historian is to sort through (replicare) evidence of the past, select appropriate comparanda, and arrive at a moralizing judgement via that comparison. In this case, the process fails to find a suitable comparandum, hence stressing the uniqueness of Eutherius (and perhaps reinforcing Ammianus’ more stereotypical, negative depiction of eunuchs elsewhere in the narrative). Ammianus presents us with a persona of a historian who is scrupulous, investigative, and moralising. Yet what exactly does Ammianus mean by antiquitates, the material of his research? As the object of replicare, they must be physical and tangible objects. Thus, as the source of exempla and comparanda, then, they do not just vaguely refer to the past but specifically to the written past. The point is confirmed a few sentences later (16.7.9):

11 12 13

None more so than Eusebius in the court of Constantius, 14.6.17; Barnes 1998, 127-128. Kelly 2008, 145. Barnes 1998, 128; Kelly 2008, 146. See also Sabbah 1978, 228-230.

Ammianus and the Written Past

uerum si forte scrupulosus quidam lector antiquitatum Menophilum, Mithridatis Pontici regis eunuchum, nobis opponat, hoc monitu recordetur nihil super eo relatum praeter id solum, quod in supremo discrimine gloriose monstrauit.

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“If by chance a careful reader of antiquitates should set against me Menophilus, the eunuch of king Mithridates of Pontus, let this be a reminder to him that nothing was recorded on Menophilus save this one fact, that in the supreme crisis he made a glorious showing”.

The rest of the paragraph details how Menophilus saved Mithridates’ daughter from being captured and humiliated by the Romans in 66 BC by slaying her then killing himself (perhaps not the most gloriosus action by modern standards, but one that evidently was admired by Republican Romans). Nonetheless, it is not the detail but the presentation that should concern us here: Ammianus makes clear that antiquitates are specifically written records of the past, and ones that a contemporary reader may reasonably be ...