CHAPTER 7 Unreliable Witness: Failings of the Narrative in

John Weisweiler

1 Introduction

Gallus was dead.1 The nephew of the ruling emperor Constantius, grand- nephew of Constantine, junior emperor of the : a disfigured corpse, hands bound together like a bandit, his neck cut through.2 Forgotten his once dignified appearance, forgotten the beauty of his face and of his fair blond hair. Forgotten also the terror he once had inspired in cities and prov- inces (14.11.23). Gallus had been executed on the order of Constantius—at the same place, in the garrison town on the Istrian peninsula, where years before, Crispus, eldest son of Constantine, had been suffocated in a sauna on the order of his father on allegations of adultery with his stepmother (14.11.20).3 Gallus’ rule had been cruel. On his final journey from his residence in to the western imperial court (where he would never arrive), in his dreams, his victims had appeared as terrifying spectres: amongst them Montius and Domitianus, high-ranking imperial office-holders, dragged through Antioch

1 The Res gestae are quoted in the Teubner edition by W. Seyfarth (Berlin, 1978). In longer pas- sages, double spaces are employed to indicate breaks between clausulae. Translations are my own, but the Penguin version by W. Hamilton, Ammianus Marcellinus: The Later Roman Empire (Harmondworth, 1986) has often been consulted with profit. 2 Gallus’ rule and Ammianus’ account of it: E.A. Thompson, The Historical Work of Ammianus Marcellinus (Cambridge, 1943), pp. 56–71; R. Blockley, “Constantius Gallus and as Caesars of Constantius ii,” Latomus 31 (1972), 433–445; H. Tränkle, “Der Gallus bei Julian,” Museum Helveticum 33 (1976), 162–179; G. Sabbah, La méthode d’Ammien Marcellin (Paris, 1978), pp. 456–463; T.G. Elliott, Ammianus Marcellinus and Fourth Century History (Toronto, 1983), pp. 15–21; T.D. Barnes, Ammianus Marcellinus and the Representation of Historical Reality (Ithaca, 1998), pp. 129–132; B. Bleckmann, “Gallus, César de l’Orient?,” in F. Chausson and É. Wolff, eds., Consuetudinis amor: Fragments d’histoire Romaine iie–vie siè- cles offerts à Jean-Pierre Callu (Roma, 2003), pp. 45–56; G. Kelly, Ammianus Marcellinus: The Allusive Historian (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 284–293. Chronology: T.D. Barnes, “Structure and Chronology in Ammianus, Book 14,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 92 (1989), 413–422. 3 Other sources: see plre i s.v. Fl. Iulius Crispus 4.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi ��.��63/9789004279476_008 104 Weisweiler by Gallus’ soldiers, then thrown into the river Orontes, joints and limbs dislocated, their bodies mutilated beyond recognition (14.11.18, cf. 14.7.15–6). They were not isolated cases. The victims of Gallus were to be found across the entire Roman East, in all social classes (14.7.1). Informers were everywhere (14.1.2 and 1.6), an atmosphere in which even walls were thought to be able to divulge secrets to the emperor’s agents (1.7).4 Justice had disappeared from the courts: no charges, no accusers were necessary (14.1.4–5, 7.21, 9.3–5). Gallus had been like a wild lion, feeding on human flesh (14.9.9, cf. 1.10 and 7.21). He was a rightly despised criminal whose brutal death seemed an appropriate (and ironic) end. The text then suddenly seems to refute itself. The sight of Gallus’ headless corpse in Pula evokes pity in the mind of the reader.5 The narrator rejoices that Gallus’ murderers—executors of Constantius’ orders (14.11.23 eum capi- tali supplicio destinauit), the unwitting reader would have thought—and the man who had for a long time already made up false charges against him (qui in eum iam diu falsa composuerat crimina)—false charges?—would soon also face terrible deaths (14.11.24). Nemesis, Justice’s daughter, did not rest (14.11.25). In later books, mention is made of the men who had betrayed Gallus and plot- ted against him (18.3.6 and 22.3.3). And Julian, Gallus’ half-brother, knew the reason for his brother’s fall: Gallus’ weakness and the combined treachery and perjury of certain people (21.1.2 quem inertia mixtaeque periuriis fraudes prodi- dere quorundam). Ammianus Marcellinus’ Res gestae is the most important surviving history of the Later Roman empire. It is the only source for many of the events described. For Edward Gibbon, Ammianus Marcellinus was “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 the contemporary.”6 These views have had a lasting impact, setting the terms for most modern dis- cussions of Ammianus. Many scholars see Ammianus as an almost modern historian, relying on eyewitness reports and even collecting archival material

4 Cf. , Annales 4.69.3. 5 R. Blockley, “A note on Ammianus Marcellinus 14.11.23,” Liverpool Classical Monthly 5 (1980), 11–12 exposes the double Vergilian allusion to Cacus, brigand killed by Hercules (Aeneis 8.264–265), and to Priamus’ dead body (Aeneis 2.556–558). On the significance of the inter- text, see further Kelly, Allusive Historian, pp. 288–289. 6 E. Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 2 (London, 1781), p. 627.