A Companion to Late Antique Literature

by Scott McGill

  38.1 Gibbon’s Reading of Late Antique Literature

  In turning to the question of how Gibbon read late antique literature, it is scarcely necessary to say that his reading started out from the Classics – something he has in common with the great majority both of late antique authors and of modern scholars of late antiquity. “The Classics, as low as Tacitus, the Younger Pliny, and Juvenal, were my old and familiar companions,” he wrote in the Memoirs of his youthful reading before describing how, in order to embark on the Decline and Fall, he “insensibly plunged into the ocean of the Augustan History,” and then in “descending series” the sources for the second to fifth centuries (Gibbon 1796, vol. 1, p. 139). As John Matthews (1996, p. 30) has remarked, the metaphorical language of lowness and descent, if not to be pressed too hard, is none the less noteworthy. It is telling that the line from Horace’s epistles used in heavy‐handed depreciation of Christodorus (II.xviii.598n51, quoted above) appears without identification: Gibbon’s readers are expected to recognize Horace (or Virgil, or Racine, or Voltaire) without a citation. No author from late antiquity influences Gibbon’s style or thought to the extent that Tacitus does, the only author, he had claimed in the Essai, to have fulfilled his ideal of the “historien philosophe” (Gibbon 1761, section 56), and one to whom he persistently alludes (see Womersley 1988, pp. 80–88; Cartledge 2010).

  The corollary of this attitude is that Gibbon prized linguistic classicism, and that he was suspicious, in particular, of the florid Latin prose of late antiquity. This is hardly surprising: Such was the common literary consensus from the Renaissance onward (see Hernández Lobato 2014 on Sidonius), and the trend can be dated back as far as Petrarch – the central figure of Gibbon’s penultimate chapter. So, for example, Sidonius’s prose was “vitiated by a false and affected taste,” though “much superior to his insipid verses” (III.xxxvi.393n97). Very similarly, Augustine’s style, “though sometimes animated by the eloquence of passion, is usually clouded by false and affected rhetoric” – though Gibbon could admire his “strong, capacious, argumentative mind” (III.xxxiii.286; cf. the similarly ambivalent praise of the City of God, III.xxviii.93n79, and, on the other hand, a catalog of praise of Christian authors at III.xxvii.59n96). A “gradation from the style of freedom and simplicity, to that of form and servitude, may be traced in the Epistles of Cicero, of Pliny, and of Symmachus” (II.xvii.603 n.73). A subsequent criticism of Symmachus’s letters reinforces this sense of decline:

  In the form and disposition of his ten books of epistles, he imitated the younger Pliny, whose rich and florid style he was supposed, by his friends, to equal or excel [Gibbon cites Macrobius Sat. 5.1.7]. But the luxuriancy of Symmachus consists of barren leaves, without fruits, and even without flowers. Few facts, and few sentiments, can be extracted from his verbose correspondence. (III.xxviii.75n16)

  With other texts, Gibbon’s condemnation of their distance from classical Latin is more forceful. The Latin of the Expositio totius mundi et gentium was “barbarous,” as was that of the second part of the Anonymus Valesianus (III.xxxi.183n54, IV.xxxix.534n24). Of course, such a description is for its own time entirely conventional (the modern equivalent would be “subliterary”), and in the latter case the author is conversely praised, in terms similar to Ammianus, for exhibiting “the knowledge, without the passions of a contemporary” (cf. II.xxvi.1073, quoted below).

  Gibbon also prizes late antique literature on occasion due to its resemblance to earlier literature. Claudian can be mildly rebuked as a panegyrist, but surely it is no coincidence that, as the late antique poet whose style is hardest to distinguish from poets of the first century, he is the one whom Gibbon most admires – and admires in part because of that resemblance:

  In the decline of arts, and of empire, a native of Egypt, who had received the education of a Greek, assumed, in a mature age, the familiar use, and absolute command, of the Latin language; soared above the heads of his feeble contemporaries; and placed himself, after an interval of three hundred years, among the poets of ancient Rome. (III.xxx.163–164)

  Gibbon thereby depreciates all other Latin poets after Juvenal, the familiar companion of his youth. Claudian’s contemporaries, Ausonius and Prudentius, do indeed fare badly in his judgment (he seemingly had only indirect knowledge of Paulinus of Nola). For all that, his fondness for quoting Latin verse in his footnotes extends to Prudentius as well as to Sidonius, whom he did not in general admire. Greek quotations are markedly rarer, and indeed Gibbon’s Greek was not at the level of his Latin. Overall the literary preferences of Gibbon are classicizing and secular. At the same time, he values truthfulness and informativeness––an unsurprising trait in a historian. This is apparent in a rejection of partiality that tends to affect Christian authors in particular (as we shall see in discussing Ammianus), but also in a dislike of panegyric. But Gibbon’s regard for the truthful and the informative also affects stylistic judgments. Notable in the passage on Symmachus quoted above is the resentment of Symmachus’s inutility as a source. We shall see that Gibbon’s annoyance with Ammianus is at its strongest when his stylistic pretensions obscure his meaning.

  Gibbon’s approach also tends to be biographical: From Claudian’s Carmina minora he reconstructs a story of the poet’s fall from grace that few will credit (III.xxx.162–163). Likewise, he is fond of making inferences about the religious adherence of authors. The idea that Ausonius was in his heart a pagan would not convince modern readers (III.xxvii.19n1, xxxi.210n123), though the case for the cryptopaganism of Procopius and Agathias (IV.xl.561n12) has recently been reargued (Kaldellis 1999, 2004).

  Many of the texts with which Gibbon was dealing had detailed commentary traditions by this stage, often variorum commentaries that could leave the text peeping out at the top of the page (cf. Gibbon 1796, vol. 2, p. 252). The means by which he had read texts is usually made clear in footnotes. So Spanheim on Julian, Sirmond on Sidonius, and hundreds of others are cited alongside the source text, praised, questioned – and sometimes quietly plagiarized. The footnotes therefore give an impression of the impressive library in Bentinck Street that Gibbon invited his adversary Davies to visit “any afternoon when I am not at home” (Vindication, in Womersley 1994, III.1154). This picture can be further clarified from the evidence of his library catalogs and of the posthumous sale of his books (see Keynes 1980). The footnotes also provide some evidence of places where he had not consulted sources directly. For ecclesiastical history in particular, Gibbon benefited from the great efflorescence of patristic scholarship of the previous century, but he notoriously used the 16 volumes of Tillemont’s Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire ecclesiastique des six premiers siècles (1693–1712) and at times had not directly used the sources collected and analyzed there. For example, in his Vindication he admits having used Tillemont in place of the works of Gregory of Nyssa that he had been unable to procure (Womersley 1994, III.1147). At one point in the Decline and Fall, he acknowledges that the only Augustine he knows directly is the Confessions and the City of God (III.xxxiii.285n28) – and while the canonicity of those particular texts will not surprise modern specialists in late antiquity, the presence of only three direct references to the former text in the whole work might. But short cuts such as use of Tillemont also matched his inclinations. He once remarked in a footnote on Priscillianism that “Tillemont has raked together all the dirt of the Fathers: an useful scavenger” (III.xxvii.38n51). (Gibbon was less careful in his use of Tillemont’s Histoire des empereurs on secular history: Glen Bowersock [1977, pp. 199–201] has shown how he commits a number of errors in the history of the fourth century by relying on ancient sources directly rather than on Tillemont’s analyses). The grateful use of Tillemont suggests, like much else, a less enthusiastic attitude to the explicitly Christian literature of late antiquity on Gibbon’s part. And arguably, it was not until relatively recently (one thinks in particular of the scholarship of Peter Brown) that much “patristic” literature was seen as worthy of historical
study or literary appreciation.

  38.2 A Case Study: Ammianus Marcellinus

  It is not without the most sincere regret, that I must now take leave of an accurate and faithful guide, who has composed the history of his own times, without indulging the prejudices and passions, which usually affect the mind of a contemporary. Ammianus Marcellinus, who terminates his useful work with the defeat and death of Valens, recommends the more glorious subject of the ensuing reign to the youthful vigor and eloquence of the rising generation. The rising generation was not disposed to accept his advice, or to imitate his example; and, in the study of the reign of Theodosius, we are reduced to illustrate the partial narrative of Zosimus, by the obscure hints of fragments and chronicles, by the figurative style of poetry or panegyric, and by the precarious assistance of the ecclesiastical writers, who, in the heat of religious faction, are apt to despise the profane virtues of sincerity and moderation. (II.xxvi.1073–1074)

  Let us now take a closer look at Gibbon’s reception of one late antique author, Ammianus Marcellinus. Ammianus, the surviving books of whose history cover the years 353–378, is a fine case study. The object of occasional references in volume 1 of the Decline and Fall, he is highlighted in Gibbon’s Vindication of 1779 as one of the very few historians “since the origins of Theological Factions” who have avoided bias (Appendix III of Womersley 1994, III.1171; see also Barnes 1998, pp. 2–6), and the high praise given here foreshadows the dominant role he would play in volume 2, where he is the principal source of half the volume, chapters xix and xxii–xxvi. Near the end of chapter xxvi and the volume, after the catastrophic battle of Adrianople and the acclamation of Theodosius, Gibbon bids Ammianus the memorable farewell quoted at the head of this section. In the third volume, citations are only very occasional, with the exception of a brilliant paraphrase of the two digressions on the senate and people of Rome (14.6, 28.4 ≈ III.xxxi.175–181).

  The attitude toward Ammianus is two‐sided. On the one hand, he is praised in the formal farewell for accuracy, fidelity, completeness, and lack of bias. The bias of which he is free is conceived of as primarily religious, as implied by the contrast to the polemical pagan Zosimus and the equally partisan church historians on the Christian side, as well as by the reference in the Vindication. This praise runs deep and is often implied in discussion of detail. On the other hand, typical, albeit heavily tempered, criticism can be found in a shorter passage marking the end of Gibbon’s use of Ammianus 10 pages before:

  We might censure the vices of his style, the disorder and perplexity of his narrative: but we must now take leave of this impartial historian; and reproach is silenced by our regret for such an irreparable loss. (III.xxvi.1063n91)

  On many previous occasions, however, reproach had not been silenced. Occasionally criticism is historical, as with the “loose and obscure” chronology of the account of Firmus’s revolt (II.xxv.1004n122, cf. 1006n123). Mostly, however, Gibbon inserts asides on matters of style: Ammianus’s “inflated eloquence” (II.xix.715n74); “so eloquent, that he writes nonsense” on the death of Valentinian (II.xxv.1021n154); of the great tsunami at the end of Ammianus’s 26th book, “Such is the bad taste of Ammianus…that it is not easy to distinguish his facts from his metaphors” (II.xxvi.1023n1); later in the same chapter, uncertain as to the correct interpretation of statim ut incensi malleoli (31.7.7), “I almost suspect, that it is only one of those turgid metaphors, those false ornaments, that perpetually disfigure the style of Ammianus” (II.xxvi.1056n81). There is absolutely no doubt that Ammianus’s style is profoundly and ostentatiously metaphorical. Resistance to florid late antique Kunstprosa had, as remarked above, been a dominant trend since the Renaissance, though since the mid‐twentieth century scholarly views have been more positive in the case of Ammianus.

  This twofold approach of admiration for content and depreciation of style has arguably set the tone for modern scholarship on Ammianus, which has tended to see him as an honest reporter rather than as a partisan literary artist (for this characterization see Kelly 2008, pp. 2–4). We should not doubt the sincerity of Gibbon’s reaction to Ammianus’s style. And yet characterizing Ammianus as an incompetent stylist was also helpful, in that it displayed Gibbon’s own judiciousness, specifically in that it could be used as a guarantee of Ammianus’s veracity. In describing the Persian expedition of Julian in chapter xxiv, Gibbon provides versions of two of the emperor’s speeches, one given after the sack of Pirisabora and the other on his deathbed (24.3.4–7 = II.xxvi.930–931, 25.3.15–20 = 944–945). These speeches are considered in modern scholarship as almost certainly being authorial creations typical of classical historiography, but Gibbon remarked in a note on the first, “I give this speech as original and genuine. Ammianus might hear, could transcribe, and was incapable of inventing, it” (931n63); of the second, he wonders whether Julian might even have prepared for death by composing in advance “the elaborate oration, which Ammianus heard, and has transcribed” (944n95). Ammianus’s reliability is guaranteed by being a spectator (and the calumnies of Christian authors can thus be disregarded, 945n99), but also by his being incapable of inventing such speeches. Literary incompetence guarantees historical honesty.

  Ammianus’s impartiality (the epithet is applied to him or his testimony an extraordinary 14 times in Gibbon’s work: Kelly 2009a, 355n29) is often carefully contrasted to other sources. For example, it distinguishes Ammianus from two less reliable Christian writers and confirms the bad character of Bishop George of Alexandria: “The invectives of the two saints [Gregory Nazianzen and Epiphanius] might not deserve much credit, unless they were confirmed by the testimony of the cool and impartial infidel” (II.xxiii.901n119). So, too, in discussing Julian’s judicial activity (II.xxii.861n83), Gibbon places Ammianus’s impartiality midway between the uncritical praise and condemnation of the pagan Libanius and the Christian Gregory. This form of triangulation helps Gibbon lay claim to (especially religious) impartiality himself.

  Gibbon’s use of Ammianus, I have argued elsewhere (Kelly 2009a), needs to be seen in the light of the controversy that blew up after the publication of the first volume. The two chapters on Christianity, xv and xvi, had led to an outpouring of pamphlets by defenders of the Christian faith. Although Gibbon had responded authoritatively in his Vindication to these “Watchmen of the Holy City,” he was still careful to entrench his position (see Womersley 2002, pp. 13–42). He elevated Ammianus as an impartial historian in volume 2 (1781) as a surrogate for himself, using him in particular to preempt potential criticism of his coverage of Julian. The last pagan emperor was a hero for earlier Enlightenment thinkers such as Montesquieu and Voltaire (Womersley 1988, 156–168); Gibbon dealt with the expectation that he would heroize Julian blindly by adopting what was essentially Ammianus’s approach – that is, of tempering a highly positive portrayal with serious criticism of his excessive religious zeal – and exalted Ammianus’s fairness. It should be said, however, that virtually no modern scholar would consider Ammianus’s treatment of Julian impartial, and that much, though not all, modern scholarship takes the view that Ammianus was very far from religiously neutral and that he was firmly but discreetly hostile to Christianity (see Rike 1987; Barnes 1998, esp. pp. 79–94; Kelly 2009a, pp. 357–360). A nice example of how Gibbon adopted Ammianus’s ostensible fairness can be found at several points in the Julian narrative. Julian, according to Ammianus, gave different Christian sects freedom of worship because he knew that lack of restraint would increase their disagreements (dissensiones augente licentia), and that no wild beasts are as savage to mankind as most of the Christians are to each other (22.5.4). Animal metaphors are more common in the thought of Ammianus than of Julian, and it is tempting to see this thought as primarily the historian’s rather than the character’s. Gibbon borrows this thought twice immediately before and during the Julianic narrative. The first time, he attributes it to Ammianus himself:

  The simple narrative of the intestine divisions, which distract
ed the peace, and dishonoured the triumph, of the church, will confirm the remark of a pagan historian…. The experience of Ammianus had convinced him, that the enmity of the Christians towards each other, surpassed the fury of wild beasts against men. (II.xxi.823–824; emphasis mine)

  The second occasion comes at the proper point in the narrative:

  The impartial Ammianus has ascribed [Julian’s] affected clemency to the desire of fomenting the intestine divisions of the church; and the insidious design of undermining the foundations of Christianity, was inseparably connected with the zeal, which Julian professed, to restore the ancient religion of the empire. (I.xxiii.877)

  Quite how ideally this particular analysis appealed to Gibbon’s own worldview can be seen in his apparently borrowing Ammianus’s or Julian’s characterization of the Christians (unacknowledged) at the end of his 16th chapter and first volume, five years before in 1776:

  We shall conclude this chapter by a melancholy truth, which obtrudes itself on the reluctant mind; that even admitting, without hesitation or enquiry, all that history has recorded, or devotion has feigned, on the subject of martyrdoms, it must still be acknowledged, that the Christians, in the course of their intestine dissentions, have inflicted far greater severities on each other, than they had experienced from the zeal of infidels. (I.xvi.580)