Roman History Books and More

the romans described by ammianus in gibbon

My previous post on the dormouse was sparked off by Gibbon's description of life in Rome, which he places just before Alaric's sack of the city. As Gibbon himself makes explicit (scroll up to the end of the preceding paragraph), this is based on two celebrated passages in Ammianus Marcellinus:

I shall produce an authentic state of Rome and its inhabitants which is more peculiarly applicable to the period of the Gothic invasion. Ammianus Marcellinus, who prudently chose the capital of the empire as the residence the best adapted to the historian of his own times, has mixed with the narrative of public events a lively representation of the scenes with which he was familiarly conversant. The judicious reader will not always approve the asperity of censure, the choice of circumstances, or the style of expression; he will perhaps detect the latent prejudices and personal resentments which soured the temper of Ammianus himself; but he will surely observe, with philosophic curiosity, the interesting and original picture of the manners of Rome.(34)

a dormouse record

In Gibbon's chapter XXXI, I was surprised to read this sentence and the accompanying footnote:

At the Roman tables the birds, the squirrels, (45) or the fish, which appear of an uncommon size are contemplated with curious attention; a pair of scales is accurately applied to ascertain their real weight and, while the more rational guests are disgusted by the vain and tedious repetition, notaries are summoned to attest by an authentic record the truth of such a marvellous event.

book review: ancient rome on five denarii a day

“All roads, they say, lead to Rome.  But choose carefully which road to take, and just as importantly, when to take it.  Go too early, and you will struggle against the winter storms.  Go too late, and all the festivals and spectacles will have finished, and everyone who can will have fled the summer heat to the seaside resort of Baiae, or to the cool of the Tuscan hills.  Really late arrivals will be just in time for the first damp of autumn – the unhealthiest time of year in an eternally unhealthy city.

In short, the journey must be carefully planned.”

Thus begins the delightful travel guide for time-travelers to the Ancient Rome of about 200 A.D., Ancient Rome on Five Denarii a Day by Philip Matyszak, Thames & Hudson, 144 pages.

apelles of kos, greek painter, fourth century b.c.

In his delightful travel guide for time-travelers to Ancient Rome, Ancient Rome on Five Denarii a Day, Philip Matyszak writes (describing Caesar’s Temple):  “… And among the numerous statues and works of art are two paintings by Apelles, one of the greatest artists of  antiquity.”

This painting, a mural from Pompeii, is believed to be based on Apelles’ Venus Anadyomene, brought to Rome by Augustus.

book chat July 11: next installment of gibbon, chapters 27 through 31

In our intermittent read of Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, also: Abridged Print Version, this time Chapters XXII through XXXV, our second of three chats will be on July 11.  This is postponed from the usual first Wednesday because of the July 4 Independence Day in the U.S.

We will discuss Chapters XXVII to XXXI (online text)

Chapter XXVII spans from the Character and Conduct of the Emperor Gratian (379) to the Loss of Britain to the  Empire (499).  Chapter XXVIII deals with Final Destruction of  Paganism, Introduction of the Worship of Saints and Relics among the Christians, etc., and Chapter XXIX discusses the Final Division of the Empire.  Chapters XXX and XXXI deal with various events from 395 to 408 and 408 to 418 respectively.

Scope notes (second columns) will be helpful.

honorius and his favourites

This passage from the end of Gibbon's chapter 29 and the accompanying footnote sparked off a memory.

His subjects, who attentively studied the character of their young sovereign, discovered that Honorius was without passions, and consequently without talents; and that his feeble and languid disposition was alike incapable of discharging the duties of his rank, or of enjoying the pleasures of his age. In his early youth he made some progress in the exercises of riding and drawing the bow; but he soon relinquished these fatiguing occupations, and the amusement of feeding poultry became the serious and daily care of the monarch of the West, (61) who resigned the reins of empire to the firm and skilful hand of his guardian Stilicho.

late antiquity, spätantike: when did it happen?

As a member of the "educated public" (see below), I have been struggling lately with this question:  What is Late Antiquity/Spätantike, and how is it framed?  There are so many different views out there.

Therefore, it was comforting to read yesterday in A Greek Roman Empire: Power and Belief under Theodosius II, 405-450 (Sather Classical Lectures),  Table of Content, University of California Press 2006, by Fergus Millar:

It is a matter of pure choice, convention, or convenience to what periods we apply the terms "Late Empire," "Byzantium," or "Late Antiquity."   We can, for instance, quite reasonably choose to use "Byzantine" only for the period after the loss of Syria, Egypt, and Libya to Islam.  But we could also choose to see the long and stable reign of Theodosius II as the beginning of "Byzantium:"  the first extended reign by an Emperor born in Constantinople;  the first regime conducted from there (allowing for occasional mi­nor excursions) continuously for four decades;  the reign most emphatically marked by Christian piety;  and the one for which our evidence allows us to see, far more fully and clearly than any other, the intimate relations between the Emperor and the Greek-speaking Church.  (emphasis mine)

boudicca podcast

Not only does the Oxford DNB put up regular biographies and articles for a week or a month at a time, but it also has audio files of biographies being read out loud which you can download and listen to. They seem to stay on the site for much longer. The latest one is their biography of Queen Boudicca. Scroll down to the list of biographies at the bottom of the page: they are in broadcast order, with the most recent at the top.

pope damasus I

Gibbon quotes Ammianus Marcellinus on the rioting that ensued after the death of Pope Liberius. At the time bishops were chosen by popular election, and two more or less simultaneous elections for bishop of Rome were held by different factions, one supporting Liberius' deacon Ursinus, and the other supporting Damasus. As a pagan, Ammianus is naturally uninterested in any theological differences that may have been at stake, and criticises the two candidates for ambition to enjoy the luxurious lifestyle of the bishop of Rome, in contrast to the frugal lifestyles of provincial bishops.

book reviews: three new mysteries, by david wishart, lindsey davis, and rosemary rowe

There are three new mysteries by U.K. authors on the market, two ‘political’ ones and one of greed.

In at the Death by David Wishart (Hodder Headline, 304 pages) takes this paragraph from Tacitus,

“About the same time Sextus Papinius, who belonged to a family of consular rank, chose a sudden and shocking death, by throwing himself from a height.  The cause was ascribed to his mother who, having been repeatedly repulsed in her overtures, had at last by her arts and seductions driven him to an extremity from which he could find no escape but death.  She was accordingly put on her trial before the Senate, and, although she grovelled at the knees of the senators and long urged a parent's grief, the greater weakness of a woman's mind under such an affliction and other sad and pitiful pleas of the same painful kind, she was after all banished from Rome for ten years, till her younger son would have passed the frail period of youth.” [Annals, 6.49]

and runs with it.  Largely ignoring the remaining text of this paragraph, Mr. Wishart uses Tacitus’ first sentence to construct  “…my usual mixture, in the ‘political’ books, of fact and fiction.” 

shapur II

Shapur II was actually born already king, as he was the posthumous child of the previous king Hormizd II and was crowned while still in the womb. I can't help but wonder what would have happened if the child had been born a girl. There isn't actually all that much about him on the internet, mainly brief mentions in general histories of Sassanid Persia.

Wikipedia (usual caveats apply) has  an article. Rozaneh magazine has two extracts from Kaveh Farrokh's Shadows In The Desert: Ancient Persia At War, the second of which covers Shapur II's reign and Julian the Apostate's invasion of the Sassanid empire. Otherwise, there is a portrait on a silver dish, now in the British Museum, and some coins.

Jona Lendering does have an article on Ctesiphon, including a link to a satellite photo of the remains there.

book review: roma – the novel of ancient rome

His father raised the leather strap over his head, then solemnly placed it around Potitius’s neck. He smiled and ran his hand over his son’s silky blond hair, a gesture of affection to seal the last moment of his boyhood.   “You are a man now, my son. I pass the amulet of Fascinus to you.”

From the fog of pre-history to Augustan times, the amulet is handed down from generation to generation. Two families, the Potitii an the Pinarii, consecutive possessors of the amulet, are witnesses and participants in the founding of Rome and its expansions in this new and sweeping novel by Steven Saylor. They claim to be descendents of the god Fascinus and the demigod Hercules.

neoplatonism and julian the apostate

The religion that Julian was trying to promote as a rival to Christianity was more than the rituals of the traditional Greek and Roman worship of the gods, it was highly influenced by the Neoplatonic philosophies proposed by Plotinus, Porphyry and Iamblichus. Neoplatonism is a modern name for the schools of thought based on Plotinus' interpretation of Plato's writings and his attempt to synthesise them with other, later, philosophical schools.

Very basically, the idea was that the Divine was so caught up contemplating its creation that some parts got trapped inside the creation and now have to find their way back through the study of philosophy. How exactly this was to be done differed from writer to writer. Iamblichus invoked the aid of the gods, who were supposed to be parts of the Divine who were less trapped than humans, using a technique called theurgy.

julian the apostate

Gibbon starts off chapter XXIII as follows:

The character of Apostate has injured the reputation of Julian; and the enthusiasm which clouded his virtues has exaggerated the real and apparent magnitude of his faults. Our partial ignorance may represent him as a philosophic monarch, who studied to protect, with an equal hand, the religious factions of the empire, and to allay the theological fever which had inflamed the minds of the people from the edicts of Diocletian to the exile of Athanasius. A more accurate view of the character and conduct of Julian will remove this favourable prepossession for a prince who did not escape the general contagion of the times.

Despite this disclaimer, I suspect most people who read Gibbon's account of Julian in chapters XIX and XXII to XXIV do come away with a "favourable prepossession for" Julian.

for german speakers: plekos – online periodical on late antiquity

In my search on information on the terminology/dating of  Late Antiquity I stumbled over the German online periodical plekos:

plekos
Periodicum OnLine zur Erforschung
der KOmmunikationsstrukturen in der Spätantike

(Online Periodical for the Research of
Communications Structures in Late Antiquity)

For full articles through 2006, you have to click on the HTML links, beginning 2007, everything is in PDF format.

upcoming book chat: gibbon’s “fall and decline of the roman empire,” chapters 22 through 26

On June 20 and July 11 & 18, we continue with Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapters XXII through XXXV.  (Abridged Version) 

On June 20, we have Chapters XXII through XXVI, from Julian being declared emperor in Gaul (361) down to Theodosius' defeat of the Goths (382).  As Bingley has pointed out:  Chapters XXII through XXIV, the section on Julian, are mainly a summary of Ammianus, whom we read, through the Julian novel, quite recently, so some people might want to do some judicious skipping here.

book recommendation: caesar’s legacy – civil war and the emergence of the roman empire

Caesar's Legacy: Civil War and the Emergence of the Roman Empire by Josiah Osgood (Cambridge University Press 2006, 453 pages – with footnotes, not endnotes!) provides an excellent background for readers interested in how the proscription and the civil wars following Caesar’s assassination affected the people of Rome, Italy, and the provinces. 

Reviews by T.P. Wiseman (TLS) and Bryn Mawr Classical Review give useful information about the book.  Google Books has extended excerpts.

I am making my way through the book now and find it very readable.

Josiah Osgood is Associate Professor of Classics at Georgetown University.  This is his first book.

book review: augustus, the life of rome’s first emperor

Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor by Anthony Everitt (Random House 2006) is a workman-like treatment of the subject of Augustus, intended for a general audience.

[Augustus] himself is a shadowy figure.  Many books have been written about his achievements, but they have tended to focus on the Augustan age, rather than on the man as he was. My hope is to make Augustus come alive.  As well as narrating his own doings, I place his story in his times and describe the events and personalities that affected him.  Shipwrecks, human sacrifice, hairbreadth escapes, unbridled sex, battles on land and at sea, ambushes, family scandals, and above all the unforgiving pursuit of absolute power  Augustus lived out an extraordinary and often terrifying drama. The stage is crowded with larger-than-life personalities…

So writes the author in his Preface.  After my second read-through of the book, I'm still not enthusiastic about it.  In fact, rather than breathlessly following an ‘often terrifying drama,’ I got bored at times, and more often than not, Augustus did not ‘come alive,’ at least not to me.