Art. 3. THE LAST OF THE LATIN HISTORIANS.

1. Ammiani Marcellini Rerum Gestarum libros qui supersunt recensuit rhythmiceque distinxit Carolus U. Clark. Vol. I, libri xiv-xxv. Berlin: Weidmann, 1910. 2. Die verlorenen Bücher des Ammianus Marcellinus. By Hugo Michael. Breslau: Maruschke, 1880.

3. Ammien Marcellin, sa vie et son œuvre. By Jean Gimazane. Toulouse: Chauvin, 1889.

4. Die geschichtliche Litteratur über die Römische Kaiserzeit. By H. Peter. Leipzig: Teubner, 1897.

5. The Text Traditions of Ammianus Marcellinus. By C. U. Clark. New Haven, 1904.

6. Ammien Marcellin. By L. Dautremer. Lille, 1899. 7. Studien zu Ammianus Marcellinus. By W. Klein. Leipzig: Weicher, 1914.

A STERN and melancholy interest, hardly to be matched in any other epoch, attaches to the records of the Roman Empire in the fourth century of our era. The old world was passing away in storm and agony, its frontiers assailed, its creeds challenged and perplexed, its social tissue suffering a slow and steady process of degeneration, which the political science of that time might note but was impotent to analyse or to cure. It was an age of bitter factions, when the demise of an emperor gave the signal for turmoil, intrigue or civil war; when, even within the Christian circle, sect contended with sect in savage and unrelenting animosity, and great political interests were often sacrificed to the vile machinations of the palace. And meanwhile the Empire was assaulted on all sides, by the Persians in Mesopotamia, by the Goths in Thrace, by the Germans on the Gaulish frontier -a contest waged with varying fortunes and exhibiting abundant proof that the legions of Rome had lost neither the discipline nor the coolness of their ancient renown, but nevertheless revealing to the understanding eye the ominous spectacle of a weakening defence against an ever-growing momentum of attack.

This, too, is the century which witnessed the codification of the orthodox creed of the Western Church and the expiring effort of paganism to maintain itself as the official religion of the Western world. In the brief

reign of Julian, which occupies a disproportionate space in Gibbon's majestic work and is therefore to Englishmen the most familiar episode of later Roman history, the contest between the Christian religion and a sublimated form of the older beliefs is shown against the sombre background of the German and the Persian wars. The pagan Emperor, fighting against overwhelming spiritual and material forces, dies after a reign of less than two years; and the wheel of fortune swings suddenly round. The worship of the Sun-god is discarded; the Nicene Creed expels the brief and enlightened catechism of the pagan Sallustius; and by the end of the century the official triumph of Christianity is secure.

For twenty-five years of this tormented age we may follow the guidance of a writer, who, though standing outside the Christian fold, was so temperate in spirit and so honourably distinguished for judgment and impartiality that critics have been divided as to the exact shade of his religious opinions. The History of Ammianus Marcellinus begins for us (for the earlier books have been lost) in 353 and ends with the defeat and death of Valens at Adrianople in 378, recounting in whole or in part the reigns of seven Emperors, Constantius, Julian, Jovian, Valens, Valentinian I, Gratian and the child Valentinian II. But the original work, which was designed as a continuation of the histories of Tacitus, went back to the death of Nerva (96 A.D.), so that the accident of literary survival has preserved to us, perhaps fortunately for his reputation, only so much of the history as concerns the period of the author's active participation in the public affairs of the Empire. We have no external evidence as to the character of the lost books of Ammianus. Probably Gibbon is right in assuming that the first thirteen books were but a superficial epitome of two hundred and fiftyseven years.' It has, however, been argued, from references to the earlier books contained in the surviving fragments and seeming to imply a full treatment of certain topics, that the history was written upon a uniform scale, and that it contained some eighty books, thirty-one of which were devoted to the period with respect to which Ammianus was able to employ ocular and oral testimony. This, however, is an hypothesis entirely unsupported by literary tradition; and, since Ammianus exhibits scant

regard to proportion in those parts of his work which we are enabled to test, we need not be at pains to defend the symmetry of his general design.

The last of the Latin historians was a soldier of Greek speech and lineage who was born about A.D. 332 in the half-Greek, half-Syrian city of Antioch. That Ammianus spoke Greek as his native tongue would be a natural inference from his birthplace, even if Greek modes of speech and thought were not plentifully illustrated in his writings. And it may give matter for surprise that, having been suckled in the speech of Herodotus and Thucydides, Ammianus should have staked his literary reputation upon a work written in a foreign language, over which he never succeeded in obtaining an easy and graceful mastery. Language is a delicate and intricate thing, so delicate and so intricate that only a man with a rare genius for style can hope to win complete purity of expression in a foreign tongue; and, though the gifts of Ammianus were numerous and solid, a sense of style in writing was not among them. He wrote Latin, then, not out of an artistic impulse to practise himself in a new and difficult mode, but because Latin was the official language of the Empire, because it was spoken in the armies and the public offices, because it was the instrument of a public career, and because, through the use of a long line of poets, historians, philosophers and legists, Latin might be regarded as the authentic voice of Roman patriotism itself.

Indeed it is curious to reflect upon the singular power and magnetism which the name and tradition of Rome were still able to exert over the mind of a provincial and critical Greek, some of whose most famous pages are devoted to a delineation of the vices of the Roman capital, to the defeat of Roman armies in Persia and in Thrace, and to the acceptance of an ignominious peace at the hands of victorious Orientals. Ammianus paints the decadence of Rome with every hue of elaborate contempt; he shows us Roman society eaten out to the core by the vermin of sloth, luxury and vice. He notes the shameful rule of the eunuch and the parasite, the breakdown of criminal justice, the perennial curse of calumny and terrorism, with its melancholy tale of

innocent victims, which has been the inseparable accompaniment of an uneasy and revolutionary age. All this he describes with rude and insistent emphasis, and yet it never occurs to him to question the claims of the sacred city to the eternal veneration of mankind, or to challenge its supreme place in the Divine ordering of the Universe. That the architectural splendours of the Imperial capital-its amphitheatres, temples, baths and palaces-contributed in some measure to counterbalance the impression left upon his mind by the degraded habits of its population is probable enough; for, though Antioch was sumptuous and famed for luxury, Rome was in respect of material magnificence far superior to any city in the Empire. But, in his many allusions to Rome, Ammianus was not chiefly inspired by the emotions of the architectural connoisseur or the retired veteran from the provinces, dazzled by the glittering marbles and huge structures of the capital. If we read his mind aright, he thought of Rome chiefly as the mother-city of a great and enduring Empire, rich in sublime associations, celebrated by a long line of famous authors as the shrine of ancient hardihood and virtue, and still in her old age the legitimate object of sentimental reverence. Nothing will enable us more fully to understand the feeling of the devout Catholic for the city of St Peter than the spell which the grandeur of Rome cast upon the mind of an Antiochene pagan in the last decades of the Empire of the West. In the time of Ammianus it was impossible to discern the future destinies of the Roman Episcopate, but it is clear from his narrative that the city of Romulus still worked its old enchantments, and conferred upon its officials and upon the members of its aristocracy a special renown throughout the Empire.

It has, indeed, been objected against Ammianus that, living under a sky black with storm-cloud, he appears to be insensible to the direction of the wind. A philosophic historian, considering the happenings of that time, would at least, one would think, have noted, as likely to change the very warp and woof of Mediterranean civilisation, two great tendencies-the impending victory of the Christian religion and the declining power of the Roman Empire. But Ammianus did not argue thus.

He belonged to that large class of men who feel little interest in theological speculations and possess no gift for the mystical ascesis of the spirit. The Christian religion did not attract him. As a soldier he admired the fortitude of the martyrs; and a well-known passage, contrasting the pomp and luxury of the Roman Bishop with the poverty and self-denial of the poor country priest, shows that he was not insensible to the milder virtues of the pastoral life. But of Christianity as a system of belief or conduct he has little knowledge and less curiosity. To the political mind the religious zealot principally presents himself as an administrative nuisance; and Ammianus condemns the synods of the Christian Fathers on the practical ground that they disorganised the postal transport of the Empire. It is not, therefore, to him that we must look for an appreciation of the strength and promise of the Christian life. A cold and somewhat scornful spectator of ecclesiastical events, he appears to be unversed in the literature and only remotely conversant with the ceremonies of the Christians. So far as he could judge the general outcome of that Oriental movement, it led to barbaric chaos, sect wrangling with sect, and every episcopal vacancy furnishing matter for intrigue or bloodshed. In one disputed election to the Bishopric of Rome a hundred and thirty-seven corpses were counted in a Christian Church.

The most impressive feature, on the contrary, of this honest and impartial writer's outlook upon his own age is a robust faith in the permanence and power of the Roman Empire. This Greek from Antioch is in spirit more Roman than the Romans, so Roman that it is difficult to believe that no Latin blood ran in his veins. His masters in literature are the classical authors of Rome-Cicero, Livy, Virgil, Sallust, Tacitus; and he draws his ideal of human conduct from that older and more simple Roman life which was canonised in the retrospective affection of a luxurious age. Indeed, as we read Ammianus, we are made sensible, at every turn, of the span and impetus of that great body politic which, despite furious batteries from without and more subtle maladies gnawing at the heart, still remained the most impressive monument in the world of force, fortune and prudence. How could a soldier historian fail to feel the