BMCR 2004.10.06, Chausson/Wolff (edd.), Consuetudinis amor

Franc,ois Chausson, E/tienne Wolff (edd.), Consuetudinis amor. Fragments
d'histoire romaine (IIe-VIe sie\cles) offerts a\ Jean-Pierre Callu.
Saggi di storia antica, 19.  Roma:  "L'Erma" di Bretschneider, 2003.
Pp. 456.  ISBN 88-8265-216-5.  EUR 235.00.

Reviewed by Joerg Fuendling, 
Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitaet Bonn

Word count:  3837 words
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The scope of this impressive tribute is an apt reflection of
Jean-Pierre Callu's contributions to Imperial and Later Roman history,
as the list of his publications shows (pp.7-28). An authority on
numismatics of the Principate and Late Antiquity for nearly forty
years, Callu gradually extended the range of his work to literature and
politics of the Late Empire, best documented by his admired Bude/
edition of Symmachus' letters. He also grew into the role of
stimulating French scholarship on the Historia Augusta (= HA),
successfully enhancing its impact in a time when HA-Forschung had to
become more international than ever and significantly less esoteric to
survive. Many names linked with this development figure in the present
volume's index. The appearance of coins and artefacts between the
written sources is a matter of course. Quite a few papers are a
definite advance and nearly all of them are at least informative and
worth reading.

Franc,ois Baratte ("Lumie\re et vie: une plaque de ceinture byzantine
cruciforme a\ Korbous (Tunisie)", pp. 31-44) re-examines an elaborate
ornament found in 1908. The belt buckle in question, possibly from
Constantinople itself, is shown to stand apart from similar pieces.

Bruno Bleckmann ("Gallus, Ce/sar de l'Orient?", pp. 45-56) uses his
mastery of Quellenforschung to shed new light on the development of the
war against Magnentius and to redefine the role of Gallus as planned by
Constantius II. An allusion in Libanius, Bleckmann argues, shows
Constantius' army, poised to invade Italy, behind schedule and still
fighting for the eastern approaches to Aquileia in 351; Gallus'
departure to the Orient would be an afterthought when the Augustus
himself was unable to leave this theatre; his deputy would be called
back right after Magnentius' final defeat in 353. These well-founded
suggestions about an episode which is far from being well-documented
are most welcome. A minor accident happened in note 7 (p.46) where III
n.Ian. and III n.Iun. ought to change places.

A reconsideration of Synesius' enigmatic oration De regno is presented
by Hartwin Brandt ("Die Rede <greek>peri\ basilei/as</greek> des
Synesios von Kyrene -- ein ungewo+hnlicher Fu+rstenspiegel", pp.
57-70). The speech has repeatedly been deemed too harsh for delivery in
front of Arcadius and his court. Brandt dismisses one possible excuse,
the notion of Synesius acting as the mouthpiece of the Praetorian
Prefect Aurelianus. Instead the solution is sought in the interaction
of Synesius' uncompromising personality and the emperors' lessening
potential to inspire awe -- witness the victories of St. Ambrose over
rulers far stronger than Arcadius. Brandt surely makes an important
point, yet this does not seem to account for a number of jibes against
degenerate courtiers whose power had grown at the expense of their
emperor. Even if a Gainas or Fravitta might ignore the fashionable dose
of German-bashing, lesser dignitaries would well think of revenge. As
Synesius got away with this, he must have had some support.

An old problem of Roman social history, the lack of acknowledged
criteria for poverty, is the subject of Jean-Michel Carrie/ (" Nihil
habens praeter quod ipso die vestiebatur. Comment de/finir le seuil de
pauvrete/ a\ Rome?", pp. 71-102). His introductory collection of
indicators for various grades of destitution is as helpful as the
review of the manifold legal terms that might relate to poverty but are
in fact only intended to define low social standing. While
demonstrating this apparent blindness of Roman law Carrie/ still does
not embrace Max Weber's notion of the poor as a Christian invention. He
suggests that we should rather interpret Christian caritas, a novelty
indeed, as being superimposed on traditional Roman forms of clientela
and reaching groups hitherto not thought to be worthy of assistance.
This leads him on to his second issue: given that there were tax
exemptions and limited forms of public aid for miseri in the Late
Empire, one should expect some guideline for fiscal authorities to work
with. Carrie/ risks a guess by pointing to the minimum capital for
potential accusers, 50 solidi, and even supposes that this amount was
the equivalent of a sum fixed during the Principate. He is well aware
of the ample space below that mark, defining a pauper but by no means
an egens, and goes on to calculate the minimum subsistence level for a
family in Egypt, obtaining 4-5 solidi per year -- significantly less
than former estimates. Final outlooks raise the problems of how
frequent extreme poverty was during the Empire and to what extent it
was a structural, long-term phenomenon.

The substantial contribution of Franc,ois Chausson ("Regards sur la
famille de l'Empereur Lucius Ve/rus", pp. 103-161) is another link in
the chain of Chausson's successive efforts in Roman prosopography of
the second to fourth centuries A.D. Fundamental to all of these is that
he considers the prosopographical value of the HA, even where it cannot
be controlled, to be far higher than used to be the case. Sundry of the
persons Chausson (Ch.) employs as missing links in the histories of
important gentes will be found as "bogus names" or at least dubious
cases in the writings of Sir Ronald Syme. Ch.'s optimistic approach,
assisted by profound knowledge, and his resulting view of a stupendous
genealogical continuity across two centuries of turmoil will doubtless
be challenged but is perfectly legitimate. The stemmata thereby gained
will and must, of course, be pitched against the 'known unknown' (to
quote Donald Rumsfeld) which is the desperate effort of numerous
Diocletianic and Constantinian upstarts to acquire some noble ancestry,
be it by marriage, fraud, or bold assertion. Ch. himself mentions
Constantine, the self-styled Flavian and none-too-certain descendant of
Claudius II Gothicus; there must have been many more. Even where the
HA, treacherous at the best of times, did not invent some extra person
it might fall victim to former fabrications. It looks as if the
question of continuity or sham might in most cases remain a moot point.
Nor should much confidence be based on Marius Maximus, at present
considered by most scholars to be the main source of the HA's primary
vitae from Hadrian to Elagabalus. Ch. ventures to make Maximus even a
source of Cassius Dio -- no safe assumption, given their political
rivalry and the uncertainty about who published which part of his work
first. Worse, we have recently been reminded by Paschoud how tenuous
the reliable evidence on "the consular biographer" is.[[1]]

Readers will be grateful for Ch.'s step-by-step procedure that presents
a stemma of Lucius Verus' ancestors for each individual source before
working with modern hypotheses and advancing new interpretations. The
result is a truly impressive survey. Ch. maps the intricate network of
great families around Verus with an accuracy never before reached. That
alone would be a major advance. There are stimulating thoughts and
smaller treasure troves everywhere, such as the closing view on the
Plautii Silvani or the intriguing fact that the HA missed a Caesar. One
striking point is Ch.'s marked opposition to the "ballet matrimonial"
of Verus' grandmother-cum-grandaunt Plautia, three times married, as
established by Syme. The alternative Ch. offers (paralleling, as it
seems, a suggestion of Chastagnol's 1994 HA translation) is to make the
enigmatic Commodus magister of HA Marc. 2,7 an elder brother of Aelius
Caesar (pp. 120f. and 145f.). But he feels that this person would have
tremendously complicated Hadrian's adoption of 136, so he is tempted to
kill off Commodus the Elder just in time (p. 122). What is more, a
newly introduced Fabia Barbara inherits two of the three marriages Ch.
finds improbable with Plautia (pp. 132f., 155). This cannot seriously
be called more elegant than Syme's hypothesis of a Fabia as Plautia's
mother.[[2]] Better leave Plautia alone and remember the suggestion of
Hohl's Teubner edition that "Commodus magister" is an invention to make
Aelius Caesar himself a teacher of philosophy.

Michel Christol ("Entre la cite/ et l'empereur: Ulpien, Tyr et les
empereurs de la dynastie se/ve/rienne", pp.163-188) presents a close
reading of Digest 50,15,1, a remnant of Ulpian's De censibus preserved
in unusual length thanks to the compilers' piety. Christol manages to
pair Ulpian's praise of Tyre with the standard agenda of encomiastic
speeches, giving on this occasion a welcome overview of similar cases.
Based on a chronology of grants and punitive status reductions
concerning Syrian cities, he then advances his theory that Ulpian
rewrote an actual speech held in 201 before Septimius Severus and
Caracalla at the very moment when they, at his insistence, granted the
ius Italicum to his patria Tyre.

The rise in social standing of professional medicine is the topic of
Lellia Cracco Ruggini ("Iatrosofia pagana, 'filosofia' cristiana e
medicina (IV-VI secolo)", pp. 189-216). Her paper stresses the
importance of the new latitudinarian view of artes that no longer
dismissed medicine or architecture as inferior; philosophical claims of
pagan doctors as well as the highly popular Christian healers who left
their reward to God contributed to that tendency. One does not quite
understand why, apart from limited space, this process is shown only in
its second half. Cracco Ruggini herself hints several times at earlier
imperial privileges for doctors or Galen's public lectures, which all
tend to suggest that the breakthrough happened in the early Principate,
including medical knowledge as a fashion among senators (witness
Fronto's letters). Medicine as a fashion can thus scarcely be called a
new development of the Later Empire. Still Cracco Ruggini's unrivalled
grasp of Late Roman culture provides us with impressive documentation
on both professional and amateur doctors; likewise fascinating is the
custom to consult handbooks and to acquire a modicum of medical skills
that continues down to Gregory the Great and Cassiodorus.

Roland Delmaire, who is preparing a new edition of the letters of John
Chrysostom, is able to present a sketch of Rome's trouble with the
restless Isaurians which profits from the inevitable rearrangement of
the letters in chronological order ("Jean Chrysostome et les brigands
isauriens", pp. 217-230). It is amazing how regularly John chronicled
the raids of those worrying neighbours even when no longer an exile in
the specially endangered region of Armenian Cucusa; Delmaire's evidence
amounts to something of an "Isaurian trauma" and may make it easier for
future users of his edition to part with the traditional, haphazard
sequence of John's letters.

This is followed by the annotated first edition of a sermon conserved
at Vendo^me, France (Franc,ois Dolbeau, "Un sermon anonyme pour
l'Ascension, refle/tant la Pastorale anti-donatiste d'Augustin", pp.
231-250). As an introduction Dolbeau describes the difficulties of
identifying and collecting sermons under the influence of Augustine.
The specimen presented is noteworthy for its vehement attacks against
schismatics, using Augustinian vocabulary, and might arguably date
before 411.

A short study by R. P. Duncan-Jones ("Weight Loss and Circulation
Patterns in Late Roman Gold Hoards", pp. 251-262) sheds light on the
effects of coin wear by circulation on gold solidi. As a rule,
Duncan-Jones estimates, a solidus would lose one milligram per year,
sometimes more due to larger travelling distances. This is considerably
less than the rate of wear for aurei under the Principate, which in its
turn proves that gold coin circulation in general decreased during the
Late Empire.

Quite like Delmaire, Michel Festy, the future editor of the Anonymus
Valesianus, gleans information on his source's feelings about the
religious and political developments of the 5th and 6th centuries
("Histoire et historiographie byzantines dans l'Anonymus Valesianus 2",
pp. 263-284). Festy's results imply a strictly Italian point of view:
satisfaction with Zeno's way to deal with Odovacar, disinterest in
Basiliscus' pro-Monophysite measures instead of indignation, virtual
neglect of the religious riot in 512. On the other hand, the odd
passage on Theodoric's alleged illiteracy and an error concerning the
genealogy of the Amals hardly fit the use of an Italian author. Festy
suggests a Greek source, possibly independent from Procopius, and
proposes that Valesianus 2 additionally used the Historia Romana of the
younger Symmachus for anecdotal material like dreams and rumours.

Another close reading, this time of Letter 1,64 of Symmachus (the
Elder), illustrates both the legal procedures involving petitions to
the emperor and the working of local aristocracies (Claude Lepelley,
"Un te/moignage sur la proce/dure par libelle et rescrit dans une
lettre de Symmaque a\ son fre\re Celsinus Titianus", pp. 285-297).
Symmachus wrote ep. 1,64 to support Bishop Clement of Caesarea, who had
obtained an imperial rescript that ordered the fiscus to waive monetary
claims against the city -- but subject to final judgment by the vicar
of Africa. Apart from explaining the legal machinery Lepelley
demonstrates how exceedingly well the pagan patron of Caesarea and its
Christian bishop were able to cooperate if circumstances demanded.

Elio Lo Cascio ("Una possibile testimonianza sul valore dell'
antoninianus negli anni di Decio?", pp. 299-309) discusses a series of
unspecified sums of money in St. Cyprian's letter 13,7. In his opinion
these would be most consistent with silver Antoniniani, used as a mere
unit of computation, and not with sestertii given their shrunken
intrinsic value. Unfortunately Lo Cascio makes overconfident use of HA
Probus 4,5 to state that one Antoninianus equalled five sestertii
during the reign of Valerian and to match his reading of Cyprian's
lists to that value. This will not do. The HA passage in question
belongs to one of the many imperial letters paraded by the anonymous
author, all of them utterly fictitious and seasoned with details of
deceptive accuracy. Their independent value as a source for the 3rd
century is non-existent.[[3]]

The brief sketch of Arnaldo Marcone ("Il destino dell'impero e la
fortuna di Costantino", pp. 311-321) deals with the afterlife of
Constantine in antiquity but mainly with the precautions taken by the
emperor and his followers to guarantee the right sort of fama: the
concept of Constantine's rule as a providential pledge of Heaven that
the Empire would continue, additionally protected against possible
attacks by the saintly character traits ascribed to the ruler.

Valerio Neri ("Il tema della senectus nella storiografia pagana della
tarda antichita\ (IV-VI secolo)", pp.323-355) freely admits to have put
himself a difficult question: old emperors later than the Principate
are scarce and so is the interest of contemporary historiography in
this phenomenon. Even when dealing with earlier centuries the authors
diverge widely: while Ammianus could never call old age beautiful, the
HA may do just this and will use senex even as a compliment for the
mental qualities of a young, vigorous general well-trained in war. In
Christian literature the fear of courtiers overriding an aged emperor
clearly dominates. A look at Orosius is the end of Neri's survey, the
coherence of which is, alas, not always obvious.

In honour of his fellow HA editor Callu Franc,ois Paschoud once again
employs his trenchant erudition and playful contrariness for a good
cause ("L'auteur de l'Histoire Auguste est-il un apostat?", pp.
357-369). This time he turns to an old battlefield of HA-Forschung
where opponents used to be slightly less than (self-) ironic, the
controversy how much anti-Christian "Tendenz" there may be behind the
HA's flights of fantasy. Today's consensus is that the author
deliberately turned his back on things Christian for most of the time.
All the more striking, then, is the HA's detailed knowledge of the
Bible Paschoud calls to mind, not to speak of the use of Jerome he
claims with Johannes Straub against sceptics in the tradition of
Momigliano. But there is something more, namely the author's faulty
expertise in the very Pagan rituals he admired so much. Paschoud's
demonstrations how the "rogue scholar" mixed up the Libri Sibyllini and
the ludi saeculares or made a mess of the best beloved Roman rites in
his Vita Aureliani are an eye-opener and, thanks to the Voltairean
touch of style, a joy to read. Also quite spectacular is the conclusion
that the author of the HA may have been a Christian who turned back to
the old religion -- just what T.D. Barnes recently proposed for
Ammianus Marcellinus. If so, the supposed grammaticus did not read up
on his adopted faith before writing the HA. Perhaps not unthinkable for
one of his profession, this would still make him a misfit in the
obsessively antiquarian entourage of the Symmachi-Nicomachi where most
scholars tend to place him nowadays. Even more, it would be downright
impossible to ascribe the HA to the junior Nicomachus Flavianus himself
as many did and do. Reactions to this stimulating paper should be
interesting to observe.

The Christian past of Ammianus supposed by Barnes has also inspired
E/ric Rebillard ("Note sur les morts de philosophes dans les Histoires
d'Ammien Marcellin", pp. 371-378), who detects types of Christian
martyrdom beyond the well-known figure of the dauntless philosopher
facing tyrants and torture. The notion of impending divine vengeance,
for example, is a novelty in this genre, and so is Emperor Julian
eagerly hastening towards his death in joyful expectation. As in
several other papers of this volume, it is most instructive to see
Pagans and Christians influence each other.

The contribution of Rene/ Rebuffat ("Populi Romani fides. Adhe/sion et
exclusion en Afrique", pp.379-408) is anything but linear in its
disposition, except for the chronological order of the testimonies
presented. Based on a recapitulation of formulae in recorded oaths by
which the parties curse themselves in case of oath-breaking, Rebuffat
goes on to claim that the Romans' idea of their special fides in
keeping oaths and treaties provoked a backlash on the barbarians' side
to take them at their word -- but he does not follow up this line of
argument before the end of the paper. Worse is to come. The next major
statement is that a traitor or breaker of sworn peace committed himself
ipso facto to destruction by the gods and that at the same time Roman
power was inevitably bound by religion to annihilate the sinner. But
while anyone doing this of course exposed himself to the risk of
extermination, it is grotesque to make this risk an inescapable
certainty. Rebuffat himself notes that there was a new peace treaty
with the Marcomanni, in Roman eyes guilty of perfidy without a shadow
of a doubt, in A.D. 180 (p.401) -- how does this match his theory of
holy war to the bitter end? Few peoples beyond the Roman frontiers
would have survived hostilities had there been no choice of reactions
for emperors and governors, not to think of the people in the armies
and provinces "choosing" the wrong side in times of civil war.
Technically they were all traitors -- where is the evidence that they
were slain or sold into slavery to a man? Rebuffat's notion is, to say
the least, dependent on a highly selective way of taking note of
sources. He would have done better to concentrate fully on his
remarkable dossier of eleven treaties from Mauretanian Volubilis, on
which he comments with all due erudition, and to make full use of his
undoubted competence on Roman Africa. But he is regularly tempted to
detect general phenomena everywhere, quoting (at best) Strabo and
Pomponius Mela where one would expect Roman jurists, parallel events in
other parts of the empire and modern works on Imperial foreign policy.
What does it really prove that one "terrible" oath or another is always
sworn except that harmless oaths were not deemed appropriate? Nor does
the mere fact that oaths were sworn well into the time of the Islamic
conquest contribute much to understanding the relationships of Romans
and foreign gentes in general, as Rebuffat claims; it just tends to
show that an appeal to the respective deities was obligatory throughout
the ages.

Robert Turcan ("Note sur les dieux 'portables'", pp. 409-417) uses an
attack of Ammianus on an oddly idolatrous Cynic to remind us of a
sorely neglected aspect in the history of ancient religions, the
myriads of statuettes and amulets carried around to have ready access
to special protection even if the bearer was far from home and his
household gods. It was apparently normal to have some such travelling
companion, be they recommended by personal experience (as Nero's) or by
tradition (the portable statuette of Victory that followed the emperor:
HA Pius 12,6).

Another case of Quellenforschung is Domenico Vera's "Osservazioni
economiche sulla Vita Sylvestri del Liber Pontificalis" (pp. 419-430).
Vera supposes that the highly interesting statements of the 6th-century
Liber Pontificalis on Constantine's donations to the Church (rather
churches) of Rome came from a list dating after 383/4 but not from the
original deeds themselves. The two successive redactors of the LP
additionally brought in reports on private foundations. At the same
time Vera is able to rule out that Constantine himself already exempted
the Christian churches and clergy from property tax (annona).

Two notes are the gift of E/tienne Wolff ("Fulgentiana", pp. 431-443).
The first one portrays Fulgentius' Expositio Virgilianae continentiae
as a rejection of over-reliance on allegorical analysis of epic poetry,
complete with instructive remarks on Fulgentius' own use of allegory as
well as on date and disposition of this approach to Virgil. In the
second note Wolff turns a sceptical eye on the apparent Petronius vogue
of the 4th to 6th centuries and contends that it mostly comes down to
simple name-dropping and second-hand quotations of rare words: the
moralizing Prudentius for one may never have known the naughty
original.

Finally Giuseppe Zecchini ("Note sull' atteggiamento di Sulpicio Severo
verso l'Impero Romano", pp. 445-456) tries to show that Sulpicius
Severus imitated Sallust to the degree of making his St Martin of Tours
a second Marius fighting the deformities of heresy. As in his earlier
papers Zecchini detects a fundamental antipathy of Sulpicius against St
Ambrose. The absence of legitimate emperors after Constantius II in
Sulpicius' Chronica is interpreted as a reflex of Gallo-Roman autonomy
and growing estrangement from Italy, including its church, that led
Sulpicius to an impassionate view on the possible end of Rome.

The editors' work has in general been done with great care. On p. 9, a
Californium (Cf) neutron source has been transmogrified into "cf.",
including the number of its isotope that should appear as inferior
letters. The change to the Greek font was overlooked after "fre\re" on
p. 124. While 'that horrible German language' accounts for a dozen
minor mistakes in the list of Callu's publications and elsewhere,
fumbles like "Standbewusstssien" (p. 212 n. 41) for
"Standesbewusstsein" may be more harmful to the user. Awkward is
garbled Latin like "cesisse" (p. 179) and "utlitas" (p. 215), not to
mention the occasional French victim ("une dizaine d'anne/e" p.167;
"Jaques" p. 210 n.39). Given the exorbitant price, the editorial office
of Bretschneider might have gone to some additional exertions. The
robust paper and binding are a blessing to the eye and touch, and for
most of the time so is the print (p. 256f. of my copy being fairly
pale); still this is also a bare necessity since most scholars and even
some institutions will hesitate to invest the demanded sum. Yet another
book worthy of great distribution and intense perusal that is destined
to crop up only in large University libraries, there to be Xeroxed
again and again.


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Notes:


1.   F. Paschoud, "Propos sceptiques et iconoclastes sur Marius
Maximus", in: F. Paschoud (ed.), Historiae Augustae Colloquium
Genevense. (Historiae Augustae Colloquia n.s. VII.) Bari: Edipuglia
1999, 241-254.

2.   R. Syme, Antonine Relatives: Ceionii and Vettuleni, Athenaeum n.s.
35 (1957), 306-315; now in: Roman Papers I, Oxford: Oxford University
Press 1979, 325-332.

3.   Cf. vol. V.2 of the Bude/ edition (Histoire Auguste, Vies de
Probus, Firmus, Saturnin ... Carus, Nume/rien et Carin), ed. F.
Paschoud, Paris: Les Belles Lettres 2002, p.67.