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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2015
In Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography, John Marincola downplays the importance of an historian's choice to use first-, rather than third-, person verbs to represent his actions as an historical protagonist within his narrative. Marincola's justification for this rests on the incongruous groupings that arise if one divides first-person narrators from third: among the former we find Velleius, Eutropius and Ammianus representing Latin historians of the Empire. However, as part of a wider study which examines Ammianus' nuanced use of allusion to earlier Latin authors, Gavin Kelly has recently argued for a series of close intertextual relationships between Eutropius and Ammianus. I argue here that Ammianus' relationship with Eutropius also extends to their personal roles within their narratives, and that Ammianus' use of the first person singular makes a bold statement about his historiographical programme.
1 Marincola, J., Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography (Cambridge, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 179.
2 Marincola (n. 1), 79 and 179. Such over-simple categorization can be problematic: Chris Pelling's recent analysis of Caesar's narrative demonstrates that, in texts where the author appears as a character, the use of the third person does not exclude some of the aspects, particularly focalization, more commonly associated with first-person narration. Pelling, C.B.R., ‘Xenophon's and Caesar's third-person narratives – or are they?’, in Marmodoro, A. and Hill, J. (edd.), The Author's Voice in Classical and Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2013), 39–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 Kelly, G., Ammianus Marcellinus: The Allusive Historian (Cambridge, 2008), 240–53.Google Scholar
4 For the episode see Drinkwater, J.F., ‘Silvanus, Ursicinus and Ammianus Marcellinus: fact or fiction?’, in Deroux, C. (ed.), Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History VII (Brussels, 1994), 568–76Google Scholar and Hunt, D., ‘The outsider inside: Ammianus on the rebellion of Silvanus’, in Hunt, D. and Drijvers, J.W. (edd.), The Late Roman World and its Historian (London, 1999), 51–63Google Scholar. For Ammianus' first-person narrative here and elsewhere, see Kelly (n. 3), 38–41.
5 It seems to be a feature of Ammianus' style to split inter from esse, especially in relative clauses, e.g. 14.11.2, 14.11.14, 15.5.4, 16.12.7, 21.14.4, 23.6.69, 25.4.20, 30.1.2. He only once uses interesse in the sense of ‘to be among’, and this does not occur in a relative clause: ne feruentibus proeliis interesset (31.7.5). It may be the case that *intereram was not an available option on stylistic grounds, even though it would have further aided the identification of the allusion.
6 Ammianus has used the first person to refer to his presence with Ursicinus in Antioch in Book 14. However, there he only uses the first person plural (14.11.5). Ammianus was a junior protector domesticus (a mid-ranking staff officer) in 357 (16.10.21). It seems unlikely that he played a major part in any event in the lattermost of the lost books, which narrated the years leading up to 353. Ammianus had already avoided the first person singular in Book 14, and so it seems likely that 15.5.22 is the first use of the first person singular in the whole work.
7 For autopsy as a means of constructing authority, see Woodman, A.J. and Martin, R.H., The Annals of Tacitus, Book 3 (Cambridge, 1996), 168–70Google Scholar and Marincola (n. 1), 79.
8 Velleius' presence in his narrative has prompted criticism of his lack of objectivity as an historian: see Woodman, A.J., Velleius Paterculus: The Tiberian Narrative (Cambridge, 1977), 43–5Google Scholar and Marincola (n. 1), 198.
9 Kelly (n. 3), 252.
10 All the passages of Eutropius that Kelly identifies as sources for allusion in Ammianus also appear in the final chapters of the Breviarium, e.g. Amm. Marc. 25.10.12 ~ Eutr. 10.17.3, Amm. Marc. 25.9.9 ~ Eutr. 10.17.1. Kelly (n. 3), 240–50. The allusion at Amm. Marc. 15.5.22 also follows and corroborates the pattern.
11 Sabbah, G., ‘Ammianus Marcellinus’, in Marasco, G. (ed.), Greek and Roman Historiography in Late Antiquity (Leiden, 2003), 43–84, at 62CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Kelly (n. 3), 240.
12 See Pinkster, H., Latin Syntax and Semantics, trans. Mulder, H. (London, 1990), 237–9Google Scholar for ‘foreground’ and ‘background’ tenses. In their survey of the use of ‘narrative’ tenses in Books 22 and 23 of the Res Gestae, Kroon and Rose confirm that Ammianus' use of the perfect, imperfect and historic present follows the practice of Classical Latin narrative: Kroon, C. and Rose, P., ‘Atrociter corruptus? The use of “narrative” tenses in Ammianus Marcellinus' Res Gestae’, in Risselada, R. and de Jong, J.R. (edd.), On Latin: Linguistic and Literary Studies in Honour of Harm Pinkster (Amsterdam, 1996), 71–89.Google Scholar
13 Comrie, B., Aspect (Cambridge, 1976)Google Scholar, esp. 13, 71 and 83 for references to Latin, pace Pinkster, H., ‘Tempus, aspect and Aktionsart in Latin (recent trends 1961–1981)’, ANRW 2.29.1 (1983), 270–319.Google Scholar
14 Eutropius favours the perfect throughout his chapter on Julian's Persian expedition and death (10.16), reflecting the nature of breviary history which demands a compressed series of successive events, without the ‘backgrounding’ created by the imperfect. Ammianus uses a combination of imperfect verbs and historic presents during the narration of his mission (15.5.22–31). The historic present essentially functions as an alternative for the perfect within historical narrative, albeit with a heightened emotional intensity: see Pinkster (n. 12), 239–40, Kroon and Rose (n. 12), 76. It is a curious phenomenon, and one whose investigation is beyond the scope of this note, that the densest pockets of the historic present in Ammianus, according to Ehrismann's list, cluster around the sections of extensive first-person narrative in Books 15, 18 and 25: see Ehrismann, H., De temporum et modorum usu Ammianeo (Strasbourg, 1886)Google Scholar, 9.
15 Pace Matthews, J., The Roman Empire of Ammianus (London, 1989)Google Scholar, 162, who suggests that ‘Eutropius’ book will have held scant interest for Ammianus'. Ammianus viewed it as both a precedent and a rival.
16 I would like to thank Rhiannon Ash, Gavin Kelly and Chris Pelling for reading and commenting on earlier versions of this note, and especially Chris for sending me a pre-publication copy of Pelling (n. 2).