Mimesis (13 page)

¹
The translator has profited by an English version of this passage contributed by Professors Oates and Raubitchek of Princeton University.

3

THE ARREST OF PETER VALVOMERES

A
MMIANUS
M
ARCELLINUS
, an officer of high rank and historian, of the fourth century
A.D.,
the extant portions of whose work describe the events between 350 and 380, reports, in chapter 7 of his book 15, a mob riot in Rome. The text runs as follows:

Dum has exitiorum communium clades suscitat turba feralis, urbem aeternam Leontius regens, multa spectati judicis documenta praebebat, in audiendo celer, in disceptando justissimus, natura benevolus, licet autoritatis causa servandae acer quibusdam videbatur, et inclinatior ad amandum. Prima igitur causa seditionis in eum concitandae vilissima fuit et levis. Philocomum enim aurigam rapi praeceptum, secuta plebs omnis velut defensura proprium pignus, terribili impetu praefectum incessebat ut timidum: sed ille stabilis et erectus, immissis adparitoribus, correptos aliquot vexatosque tormentis, nec strepente ullo nec obsistente, insulari poena multavit. Diebusque paucis secutis, cum itidem plebs excita calore quo consuevit, vini causando inopiam, ad Septemzodium convenisset, celebrem locum, ubi operis ambitiosi Nymphaeum Marcus condidit imperator, illuc de industria pergens praefectus, ab omni toga adparitioneque rogabatur enixius ne in multitudinem se arrogantem immitteret et minacem, ex commotione pristina saevientem: difficilisque ad pavorem recte tetendit, adeo ut eum obsequentium pars desereret, licet in periculum festinantem abruptum. Insidens itaque vehiculo, cum speciosa fiducia contuebatur acribus oculis tumultuantium undique cuneorum veluti serpentium vultus: perpessusque multa dici probrosa, agnitum quendam inter alios eminentem, vasti corporis rutilique capilli, interrogavit an ipse esset Petrus Valvomeres, ut audierat, cognomento; eumque, cum esse sono respondisset objurgatorio, ut seditiosorum antesignanum olim sibi compertum, reclamantibus multis, post terga manibus vinctis suspendi praecepit. Quo viso sublimi tribuliumque adjumentum nequicquam implorante, vulgus omne paulo ante confertum per varia urbis membra diffusum ita evanuit, ut turbarum acerrimus concitor
tamquam in judiciali secreto exaratis lateribus ad Picenum ejiceretur; ubi postea ausus eripere virginis non obscurae pudorem, Patruini consularis sententia supplicio est capitali addictus.

The following translation attempts to preserve the strangely baroque style of the original:

While that carrion crew was causing these catastrophes of general destruction, Leontius, governor of the Eternal City, gave many evidences of being an excellent judge—speedy in hearings, most just in decisions, by nature benevolent, though he seemed to some to be severe in the matter of maintaining his authority and over-inclined toward sensual love. Now the first cause of a rebellion breaking out against him was of the basest and slightest. For Philocomus, the charioteer, having been ordered to be arrested, the whole mob following him, as if defending the most precious treasure, set upon the prefect with dreadful tumult, to intimidate him; but he, firm and erect, ordering the police to intervene, had some seized and flogged and, while not a man murmured or resisted, sentenced them to deportation. A few days later, when the mob, again roused to its usual heat, alleging the scarcity of wine, congregated at the Septemzodium—a much frequented place, where the emperor Marcus had erected the ostentatious edifice of the Nymphaeum; there the prefect, purposely proceeding thither, was earnestly entreated by all his officials and attendants not to risk himself among the arrogant and threatening multitude, still angry from their earlier riot; he, being hard to frighten, went straight on, so that some of his following deserted him, though he was hastening into imminent danger. And so, sitting in his carriage, with an imposing confidence, he gazed with piercing eyes into the faces of the packed crowd raging all about like serpents; he steadfastly endured many shameful words; then recognizing one who was conspicuous among the rest by his great stature and red hair, he asked him if he was not Peter, surnamed Valvomeres, as he had heard; and when the man replied in blustering tones that he was, he ordered him, as a leader of the rioters long known to him, over the protests of very many, to be strung up [for a flogging] with his hands tied behind his back. When he was seen aloft, vainly imploring the help of his cronies, the whole mob, which had only a little before thronged together, now diffused through the various arteries of the city and vanished, so that this
most fervid inciter of mobs, having had his sides harrowed open as if in a secret judgment chamber, was transported to Picenum; where later, having dared to rape a girl of not unillustrious family, he was sentenced by the consul Patruinus and underwent capital punishment.

Much of what we said in the preceding chapter concerning Tacitus’ description of the soldiers’ revolt applies to the present passage as well; indeed, it comes out even more strikingly here. Ammianus is still less inclined than Tacitus to concern himself with objective problems and to give a thorough analysis of the causes leading up to the riot, or of the condition of the Roman populace. Nothing, it seems to him, except their stupid effrontery is behind the Roman mob’s unrest. It is quite possible that he is right in his attitude. The metropolitan masses had for centuries been spoiled by every government, they had been trained to idleness, and cannot have amounted to much. Yet a modern historian would have taken up the question of how such a state of affairs had come about, he would have discussed the problem of the mob’s corruption, or at the very least have touched upon it. But this does not interest Ammianus at all; and in this attitude he goes much further than Tacitus. The latter acknowledges, after all, that there is a rational and coherently framed set of demands which the soldiers put forward and in regard to which the commanders in the field and the authorities have to take a stand. The parties negotiate; there is an objective and even a human relationship between them. This is apparent for instance in Blaesus’ speech at the end of chapter 18 or in the scene of Agrippina’s departure in chapter 41. However fickle and superstitious the soldiers may be in Tacitus’ description, he never hesitates to admit that they are human beings of a definite culture and with a definite sense of honor. In Ammianus’ scene, on the other hand, there is no objectively rational relationship whatever between the authorities and the rebels, let alone a human relationship based on mutual respect. There is only a physical relation based on magic and brute force. On one side there is a pure mass of bodies, stupid and full of effrontery, like a crowd of juvenile delinquents, and on the other imposing authority, fearlessness, instant decision, flogging. And as soon as the mob sees that one of their number is treated as all of them apparently deserve to be, they lose heart and vanish from the scene. Ammianus supplies as little information as Tacitus about the life these people lead—even less, for he has nothing corresponding to
Percennius’ address. He gives nothing from which we might deduce any human contact. He does not make the populace talk (he barely mentions one nickname, Valvomeres, like Tacitus’
Cedo alteram
); instead, he clothes the whole incident in the somber splendor of his rhetoric, which is as distant from popular style as possible. Yet the incident is so treated that it produces a strongly sensory impression—to such an extent, in fact, that many readers will find it unpleasantly realistic. Ammianus has oriented it entirely toward gestures: the compact crowd set against the imposing prefect as he domineers over them. This element of the sensory and the gestural is prepared for from the first—through the choice of words and similes, to which we shall return later on—and reaches its climax in the scene at the Septemzodium when Leontius, sitting in his carriage with flashing eyes, confronts the “snakily” hissing mob like an animal tamer, unmoved as they rapidly vanish. A riot, a solitary man trying to quell it by the power of his eyes, then stepping in—some harsh words, a ringleader’s muscular body raised high, finally a flogging. Then all is quiet, and, by way of conclusion, we get a rape and the subsequent capital punishment.

A comparison with Tacitus serves to show how much stronger the magical and the sensory has become at the expense of the human and the objectively rational. From the end of the first century of the Imperial Age something sultry and oppressive appears, a darkening of the atmosphere of life. It is unmistakable in Seneca, and the somber tone of Tacitus’ historical writing has often been noted. But here in Ammianus we find that the process has reached the stage of a magical and sensory dehumanization. That the sensory vividness of the events should profit from this paralysis of the human is indeed notable. It might be objected that I have compared Tacitus’ scene with a mob riot, not with a soldiers’ rebellion. But in that case, there is only one scene which could enter into consideration, the soldiers’ uprising at the beginning of book 20. To me, that scene is highly suspicious; it seems to deal, not with a spontaneous reaction on the part of the soldiers but with a planned mass demonstration in which the instincts of the soldiery are skilfully exploited in a way we know only too well from contemporary history. Such a passage could not be used for my purposes, and so I had to take the popular uprising in Rome. But the characteristics of Ammianus’ style, which we discovered at first sight in this passage, are to be found all through his work. Everywhere human emotion and rationality yield to the magically and somberly
sensory, to the graphic and the gestural. Certainly, Tacitus’ Tiberius is somber enough, but he still retains a great deal of intrinsic humanity and dignity. In Ammianus nothing survives but the magical, the grotesque, and, with them, the rhetorically horripilating; we are astonished to see what a genius in this direction has come to flower in a practical, active, serious-minded, high-ranking officer. How powerful must have been the atmosphere which developed such talents in men of this rank and way of life (Ammianus apparently spent a large part of his life in arduous campaigns)! Read for instance Gallus’ death journey (14, 11), or the journey of Julian’s dead body (21, 16), or Procopius’ proclamation as emperor (26, 6): “So there he stood, like a rotting corpse, like a man risen from the grave, without a mantle [because imperial purple could nowhere be found], his tunic embroidered in gold like an attendant at court, from the waist down dressed like a school boy …; in his right hand he bore a lance, with his left hand he waved a piece of purple cloth … you might have thought that a splendidly decorated figure from the painting on a stage curtain or some grotesque part in a comedy had suddenly come to life … in servile flattery he addressed the wire-pullers of his elevation and promised them tremendous spoils and offices. … When he had mounted the tribunal and all were filled with amazement, keeping a gloomy silence, he thought—as he had previously feared—that his last hour had arrived; he trembled so that for a long time he could not speak. Finally he began, in a halting voice, to say a few words like a man about to die, justifying his action by his relationship with the imperial family. …” Again it is the gestural, the graphically imaged, which predominates. A whole gallery of gruesomely grotesque and extremely sensory-graphic portraits can be culled from Ammianus’ work: the Emperor Constantius who never turns his head, never blows his nose, never spits,
tamquam figmentum hominis
(16, 10 and 21, 16); Julian, the great conqueror of the Alemanni, with the goatee, who is always scratching his head, thrusting out his narrow chest to make it look broader, and taking steps much too long for his short figure (17, 11 and 21, 14); the pleased-looking Jovian, whose body is so big around (
vasta proceritate et ardua
) that after his unexpected election to the imperial throne, in the middle of a campaign, there is trouble in finding imperial garments to fit him, and who, very soon after his election, at the age of thirty-three, dies an unexplained death (25, 10); the somber, melancholy conspirator Procopius, always looking down, who, scion of an illustrious family, hides among the scum of the people
when he is unjustifiably suspected, and who, like many another character in Ammianus, tries to make himself emperor only because he sees no other way of saving his life—in which, to be sure, he does not succeed (26, 6-9); the secretary Leo, later chief of the imperial chancellery, “a Pannonian and a grave-robber, snorting forth cruelty from the grinning jaws of a wild beast” (
efflantem ferino rictu crudelitatem
) (28, 1); the soothsayer or “mathematician” Heliodorus, a professional informer who has had an incredibly successful career: he is now a gourmet, abundantly provided with money for his whores; he promenades his somber face through the city, where everyone fears him; he frequents houses of prostitution openly and eagerly (he is officer of the imperial bedchamber,
cubiculariis officiis praepositus
) and proclaims that the pleasures of the beloved father of the country will yet ruin many more subjects; the horrible irony of the words brings to mind Tacitus’
Tiberiolus meus
(
Ann
. 6, 5) but is even more disgusting; when Heliodorus dies suddenly, the entire court is obliged to attend his solemn funeral, bareheaded, barefoot, hands folded (29, 2); the Emperor Valentinian, a remarkable and handsome prince, although with somber and squinting eyes; in a dark mood he orders a groom’s hand to be cut off because he was awkward in helping him mount a shying horse (30, 9); the Emperor Valens, campaigner against the Goths, swarthy, with one eye covered by a white film, with his rather protruding belly and crooked legs (31, 14). It would not be hard to prolong this list of portraits and supplement it with incidents and vignettes of manners of a nature no less grotesquely gruesome. And the background of it all is this: the persons treated live between a frenzy of bloodshed and mortal terror. Grotesque and sadistic, spectral and superstitious, lusting for power yet constantly trying to conceal the chattering of their teeth—so do we see the men of Ammianus’ ruling class and their world. His strange sense of humor might also be mentioned—read for instance the description of the nobles whose pride makes them refuse the customary kiss of salutation,
osculanda capita in modum taurorum minacium obliquantes
[what a gesture!],
adulatoribus offerunt genua suavianda vel manus, id illis sufficere ad beate vivendum existimantes: et abundare omni cultu humanitatis peregrinum putantes, cuius forte etiam gratia sunt obligati, interrogatum quibus thermis utatur aut aquis, aut ad quam successerit domum
(28, 4: like threatening bulls they turn aside their heads, where they should be kissed, and offer their flatterers their knees to kiss or their hands, thinking that quite enough to ensure
them a happy life; and they believe that a stranger is given an abundance of all the duties of courtesy, even though the great man may perhaps be under obligation to him, if he is asked what hot baths or waters he uses, or at what house he has been put up); or his remark on the dogmatic conflicts in the Christian Church: “Throngs of bishops hastened hither and thither to the synods as they call them, and while each sought to impose upon the other his own interpretation of the faith, they achieved nothing but a complete break-down of the overburdened means of transportation” (21, 16). In this humor there is always an element of bitterness, of the grotesque, very often of something grotesquely gruesome and inhumanly convulsive. Ammianus’ world is somber: it is full of superstition, blood frenzy, exhaustion, fear of death, and grim and magically rigid gestures; and to counterbalance all this there is nothing but the equally somber and pathetic determination to accomplish an ever more difficult, ever more desperate task: to protect the Empire, threatened from without and crumbling from within. This determination gives the strongest among the actors on Ammianus’ stage a rigid, convulsive superhumanity with no possibility of relaxation, expressed for example in the
moriar stando
which he attributes to Julian:
ut imperatorem decet, ego solus confecto tantorum munerum cursu moriar stando, contempturus animam, quam mihi febricula eripiet una
(24, 17).