John S. Ott
Portland State University
HST 354U - Early Medieval Europe, 300-1100
(c) John S. Ott (2000-2018, 2020, 2021, 2024)

Reading Guide 1:

Week I: Ammianus Marcellinus, the Roman panegyrics, Rutilius Namatianus

Week III: Ammianus Marcellinus; Sidonius Apollinaris, Letters; and Orosius, Histories against the pagans

Week I. The later Roman Empire

For the next week, we will be reading texts that revolve around a series of core issues which will form for us the basis of our discussions. Below, I highlight a few of the major historical questions we will consider this week, in order to map out historical change and analyze historical texts in their contemporary contexts. For the first week, keep in mind the following questions:

The Latin panegyrics exist in a single manuscript collection. There are a total of 12 in the manuscript; we are reading selections from four of them. Our four panegyrics were composed between the years 291 and 313, and were seemingly delivered before the Tetrarchs Maximian, Constantius, and Constantine at the provincial capital-city of Trier on the Moselle River, a tributary of the Rhine. A panegyric was a formal public address, delivered in the emperor's presence and presumably at his invitation, by appointed court orators. As the name implies, it is a praise text: the contents intentionally flatter and elevate the recipient. Whether the events they describe give the whole historical picture is another question entirely.

Rutilius Namatianus lived in the decades around 400; this poem, then, was written after the sack of Rome in 410 (an event of major importance that we'll discuss next week). It remains his only known surviving work. Of the poem itself, far more has been lost than preserved, and our translation has taken a text originally in verse and converted it to prose for the convenience of modern readers. (It has also been excerpted.) Whether Namatianus was Christian or pagan is uncertain, but the scholarly consensus points to the latter. The poem describes a trip, taken mostly by sea, from Italy back to his home province in what is now southwestern France.

Stilicho, the Roman general mentioned by Rutilius in the final section, was a figure of great political and military importance in the first decades of the fifth century. We'll also meet him again. Here, Rutilius is alluding to the scandal that led to his downfall and eventual execution in 408, two years before the sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410. The Roman emperor Nero (r. 54-68), mentioned in the poem, plotted against and had his mother, Agrippina, killed in 59 C.E.

Ammianus Marcellinus was a Greek, born around 330 C.E. at Antioch. He was a pagan and a military officer, a supporter of the short-lived emperor Julian (r. 361-363), and often involved in the political intrigues of the late fourth-century empire. He wrote in Latin, and was a close observer of many of the events he describes, which he often appraises from the standpoint of a military tactician. His Histories were written in 31 books, the first 14 of which have been lost, and his goal was to continue the history of the first-century Roman historian Tacitus. He wrote the surviving books of his Histories in the late 380s and early 390s, after retiring from the army.

Week III. A barbarian empire

Ammianus Marcellinus (see above).

Sidonius Apollinaris was born about 430 in Roman Lyon (southeastern France), and died as a subject of the Visigothic king Euric (466-484), about 490 C.E. His lifetime thus spanned the dissolution of the empire in western Europe in 476 and the emergence of the Germanic successor states. Sidonius was well-equipped to navigate these changes and the tumultuous times in which he lived, however. A provincial elite, he was the son of the Roman prefect of Gaul and married the daughter of a future Roman emperor, Avitus (r. 455-456). They would have several children. A poet and panegyrist of great note, Sidonius was patronized by multiple emperors and eventually made a prefect and then Senator of Rome. He was ordained bishop of Clermont around 470, and was a prolific letter-writer. The first of his letters we are reading was written to his brother-in-law, Agricola, who was the son of the emperor Avitus. In it he describes Euric's predecessor as Visigothic king, Theodoric II (453-466). The second letter was addressed to his friend Evodius, about the wife of King Euric, Ragnahild.

Paulus Orosius (b. ca. 375, died sometime after 418) was a Christian priest; a Spaniard (he may have been born in Braga, in modern Portugal); a contemporary and friend of the famous Christian theologian Augustine of Hippo; and a citizen of the Roman Empire. He was very well-connected with the Christian intelligentsia of his day and travelled the breadth of the Mediterranean to study and live with Augustine and Jerome, another leader of the early Christian church. He was a close contemporary of Melania the Elder (the subject of the excerpt we read from Palladius). He wrote a total of three works, the most famous of which is his Histories against the Pagans, which he had finished by around 418. Orosius wrote his work to respond to the criticisms being raised in some quarters about the influence of Christianity, and whether it bore some of the blame for the sack of Rome by the Visigothic king Alaric in 410. That event also led Augustine of Hippo to begin work on his monumental treatise On the City of God. Note that, at the time Orosius was writing, Christianity was politically dominant within the Empire. But, as Wickham points out (Inheritance of Rome, 52-53), there were many shades of Christian. Orosius was a rigorist -- one who took a hard line against pagans and easily assimilated and still fairly secular elite Christians, like Sidonius -- and it shows in his work of history.

(1) Analyze the different rhetorical pairs present in the works, that is: Christian/pagan, Roman/barbarian, civilized/uncivilized. How does Orosius portray the positive or negative characteristics of each?
(2) How does Orosius react to and explain the destruction of (largely Christian) Rome in 410? What does he think of the Visigoths? Why do you think he tries to play down the destruction to the city?
(3) What for Orosius are the dominant forces in history? How does Orosius' conception of history influence his recollection of historical events?
(4) In terms of the historical content Orosius includes, what are his main organizational principles for historical information? What sorts of events and people does he describe? Whom does he omit? Whom, or what, does he defend? Why?