Ammianus
Marcellinus (c. 4th century) was a man of Greek ancestry who was raised in
Antioch. He joined the Roman military and, although he did not distinguish
himself in battle, he gained a high rank as an officer. He eventually retired
from the military to pursue his scholarly ambitions, a drive which ultimately
led him to Rome, where he wrote a 31-book text in Latin that traced events from
the time of Emperor Nerva (r. 96-98) to his own times in the 4th century. The
resulting Res
Gestae,
also known simply as the History, then and now has been an object of
rave reviews, and Ammianus Marcellinus remains commonly known as the ‘last
great historian’ of ancient Rome.
Although
indeed a great historian who produced a history of priceless value to our
understanding of the 4th century, Ammianus Marcellinus could at times be quite
unique from his fellow Roman greats, such as Livy and Tacitus. Renowned Roman
historians, such as the two just mentioned, were not only known for their
historical research, but also for the eloquence and artistry with which they
presented their information in writing. Ammianus, too, had a knack for drama
and imagery, but unlike his successful predecessors, his text was in no way regarded
as a masterpiece of sentence composition. Instead, Ammianus had his own unique
(sometimes bordering on gaudy or simply bad) writing style and blatantly embraced
his own quirks while he wrote. As a result, his History is filled with
bizarre wording and huge digressions off into all sorts of subjects that piqued
his interest. Yet, whereas the average writer may find such attributes to be
detrimental to their work, Ammianus’ narrative skill and talent for imagery
turned his bizarre digressions into a charming and entertaining strength. Take,
for example, Ammianus’ unforgettably vivid description of the tree-on-tree
orgies that go on in date-palm groves:
“We
are told that palms themselves mate, and that the sexes may easily be
distinguished. It is said too that female trees conceive when they are smeared
with the seeds of the male, and that they take delight in mutual love, which is
shown by the fact that they lean towards each other and cannot be separated
even by a strong wind. If the female is not smeared with the seed of the male
in the usual way, she miscarries and loses her fruit before it is ripe. If it
is not known with what male tree a female is in love her trunk is smeared with
her own nectar, and nature arranges that another tree senses the sweet smell.
This is the evidence on which belief in a kind of copulation is based” (History,
24.3).
Written
by C. Keith Hansley
Picture
Attribution: (Palm tree landscape modified with the addition of a dryad painted
by Evelyn De Morgan (1855–1919) and a nymph painted by James Carroll Beckwith
(1852–1917), all [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).
Sources:
- Ammianus Marcellinus’ History, translated by Walter Hamilton as The Later Roman Empire. London: Penguin Classics, 1986, 2004.
- https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195389661/obo-9780195389661-0115.xml
- https://brill.com/view/db/amo?language=en
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ammianus-Marcellinus
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