Mimesis (14 page)

Ammianus, as we hope we have shown, possesses a very strong sensory power of expression. If his Latin were not so hard to understand and so untranslatable, he might well be one of the most influential authors of antique literature. Yet his procedure is by no means imitative in the sense that he builds up his characters before our eyes and ears, out of their own premises, and lets them, as it were, think, feel, act, and speak out of their own nature; he does not let them speak their own natural language at all; he definitely belongs to the tradition of the antique historians in the elevated style, who look down from above and judge by moral standards, and who never make conscious and intentional use of the technique of realistic imitation because they scorn it as fit only for the low comic style. The particular form of this tradition, which seems to have been especially favored in late Roman times (it is already embodied in Sallust, but especially in Tacitus), is very strongly stoic in temper; it delights in choosing exceptionally somber subjects, which reveal a high degree of moral corruption, and then sharply contrasting them with its ideal concept of original simplicity, purity, and virtue. This is the pattern which Ammianus
obviously wants to follow, as appears from many passages of his work in which he cites deeds and sayings of earlier times in moralistic contrast. But from the very beginning we sense—and, in Ammianus, the impression becomes unmistakable—that in this tradition the material increasingly masters the stylistic intent, until it finally overwhelms it and forces the style, with its pretension to reserve and refinement, to adapt itself to the content, so that diction and syntax, torn between the somber realism of the content and the unrealistically refined tendency of the style, begin to change and become inharmonious, overburdened, and harsh. The diction grows mannered; the constructions begin, as it were, to writhe and twist. The equable elegance is disturbed; the refined reserve gives way to a somber pomp; and, against its will as it were, the style renders a greater sensoriness than would originally have been compatible with
gravitas
, yet
gravitas
itself is by no means lost, but on the contrary is heightened. The elevated style becomes hyperpathetic and gruesome, becomes pictorial and sensory.

The first traces of this development are to be found in Sallust. An important contribution in this direction came from Seneca, who, though he does not belong to the tradition of Roman historiography, exercised a strong general influence. In Tacitus the somberness and weightiness of the historical style, reinforced by the somberness of the events he reports, is charged with sensory perception. Time and again it is there, evoked by the suggestive power of horrible happenings—but only to be quickly repressed again by the refined and pointed brevity of the style, which will not allow such outbursts to prevail (one example among many: the execution of Sejanus’ children,
Ann
. 5, 9). In Ammianus the sensory, the perceivable, runs riot; it has forced its way into the elevated style, not by vulgarizing it popularly or comically but by exaggerating it beyond all bounds. With glittering words and pompously distorted constructions language begins to depict the distorted, gory, and spectral reality of the age.

Instead of the calm, refined vocabulary which briefly states the sensory or merely alludes to it moralistically, we have a gestural and pictorial vocabulary. For example in the description of the Roman riots, instead of an ethical expression of imperturbability, we have
stabilis, erectus, cum speciosa fiducia intuebatur acribus oculis
; instead of
iter non intermisit
we have
recte tetendit
; whipping is referred to in the pompously periphrastic yet sensory
latera exarare
; a like effect is produced by
pudorem eripere
; and where Tacitus says, for example,
accusatorum maior in dies et infestior vis grassabatur
(
Ann
. 4, 66), we here read:
dum has exitiorum communium clades suscitat turba feralis
. All these and many like examples show that this mannerism, this so-called turgidity, is not simply a product of the desire to be different but that it also, indeed above all, serves sensory vividness. We are forced to picture the scene. Then too there are the numerous comparisons of men with animals (serpent and bull are favorites), or of human events with events on the stage or in the realm of the dead. The choice of words is studied throughout, but in complete contrast to classical practice, which saw the choice and the studied in refined periphrases of sensory phenomena and allowed no one but the poet to depict them (though he too had to keep aloof from life in its present realities, if he wanted to avoid the low style of satire or comedy)—in complete contrast to all this, the studied in the elevated style of historiography now serves to depict things occurring in the present. Yet the depiction is not really imitative; the morally judging historian is still there, discoursing in the elevated style and avoiding the lowlands of imitative realism; only now he regularly uses the most glaring colors.

Ammianus’ syntax gives rise to the same observations as his diction. Even though much in it may be explained by the striving for rhythmical cola and the strong Grecization of his style (cf. Norden,
Antike Kunstprosa
, 646ff.), enough remains which can be accounted for satisfactorily only by our present approach. His placing of nouns, especially of subject nominatives, his broadly construed use of appositive adjectives and participles, and his tendency to use word order to define and separate his clusters of appositions, all testify to his endeavor at all times to suggest a monumental, striking, and usually gestural perception. Note for example his elaboration of the subjects
turba feralis, Leontius regens, ille, Marcus imperator, praefectus, acerrimus concitor
; of the objects
urbem aeternam, Philocomum aurigam, multitudinem, vultus, agnitum quendam, eumque
; his wealth of appositions—Jespersen would call them “extra-positions”—and of quasi-appositional forms, each set out as independently as possible. With Leontius go
regens, celer, justissimus, benevolus
, then—given different syntactic treatment—
acer
, and, finally,
inclinatior ad amandum
; with
causa
go
vilissima
and
levis
in artful differentiation; with
plebs
, likewise differentiated,
secuta
and
defensura proprium pignus
; with
ille
go
stabilis
and
erectus
; with
multitudinem
, first
arrogantem
and then-set off from it and against each other—
minacem
and
saevientem
;
then follow—referring to the Prefect, continuing
pergens
, and strongly emphasized—
difficilis ad pavorem, insidens vehiculo, perpessus; agnitum quemdam
is taken up by
eminentem, vasti corporis, rutili capilli
, and later on
sublimi
and
implorante
; and the very name,
Petrus Valvomeres
, is introduced as an apposition with extreme emphasis. Other descriptively vivid elements of the sentence are likewise emphasized—as
ut timidum, nec strepente ullo nec obsistente, operis ambitiosi, enixius
, etc.; and the same impression is heightened when we look at longer word groups.
Urbem aeternam Leontius regens
, followed by a string of appositions, is intentionally monumental; so is
Marcus condidit imperator
; both dramatic and monumental (as image and gesture) is the opening clause,
insidens itaque vehiculo
; completely pictorial the anticipation by
contuebatur acribus oculis
of the showily animated and sonorous object,
tumultuantium undique cuneorum veluti serpentium vultus
; as is the
inter alios eminentem, vasti corporis, rutilique capilli
which rolls out after the colorless
agnitum quendam
. Tacitus would hardly have written a sentence like
Quo viso sublimi tribuliumque adiumentum nequidquam implorante
, with its inordinate weight of appositions, for the relation of
quo viso
to the compound apposition (the second member of which is itself overburdened) is completely unclassical. But how graphic it is! It makes us see Peter’s convulsive struggle; we hear him howl.

Judged by classical standards, the style, both in diction and syntax, is overrefined and exaggeratedly sensory; its effects are powerful but distorted. Its effects are as distorted as the reality it represents. Ammianus’ world is very often a caricature of the normal human environment in which we live; very often it is like a bad dream. This is not simply because horrible things happen in it—treason, torture, persecution, denunciations: such things are prevalent in almost all times and places, and the periods when life is somewhat more tolerable are not too frequent. What makes Ammianus’ world so oppressive is the lack of any sort of counterbalance. For if it is true that man is capable of everything horrible, it is also true that the horrible always engenders counterforces and that in most epochs of atrocious occurrences the great vital forces of the human soul reveal themselves: love and sacrifice, heroism in the service of conviction, and the ceaseless search for possibilities of a purer existence. Nothing of the sort is to be found in Ammianus. Striking only in the sensory, resigned and as it were paralyzed despite its stubborn rhetorical passion, his manner of writing history nowhere displays anything redeeming, nowhere anything that
points to a better future, nowhere a figure or an act about which stirs the refreshing atmosphere of a greater freedom, a greater humanity. It had begun, of course, in Tacitus, though by no means to the same extent. And the cause of it is doubtless the hopelessly defensive situation in which antique civilization found itself more and more deeply enmeshed. No longer able to generate new hope and new life from within, it had to restrict itself to measures which at best could only check decline and preserve the status quo; but these measures too grow more and more senile, their execution more and more arduous. All this is known, and I need not discuss it. But I should like to add that in Christianity itself—though Ammianus would not seem to be unfriendly in his attitude toward it—he sees nothing that might force a way through the prevailing futureless darkness.

It is clear that Ammianus’ manner of presentation signifies the complete coming of age of something in the making since Seneca and Tacitus—that is, a highly rhetorical style in which the gruesomely sensory has gained a large place; a somber and highly rhetorical realism which is totally alien to classical antiquity. Such a mixture of rhetorical devices of the most refined sort with a glaring and boldly distorted realism can be studied at a much earlier period and on much lower levels of style: in Apuleius for instance, of whose style Eduard Norden—in his work on the art of prose in antiquity, to which we have more than once referred—offers a brilliant analysis. The level of style in a Milesian tale is naturally quite different from that of a historical work. But despite all its playful, amorous, and often silly frivolity, the
Metamorphoses
exhibits not only a similar mixture of rhetoric and realism, but also (though Norden failed to point it out) the same predilection for a haunting and gruesome distortion of reality. I have in mind not only the numerous metamorphoses and ghost stories, all of which border upon the gruesome and grotesque, but also many other things—the quality of the eroticism, for instance. With an extreme emphasis on desire, which all the spices of rhetorico-realistic art are employed to arouse in the reader too, there is a complete absence of human warmth and intimacy. There is always an admixture of something spectrally sadistic; desire is mixed with fear and horror; though to be sure there is a good deal of silliness too. And this runs through the entire book: it is full of fear, lust, and silliness. If the feeling of the silliness of the whole thing were not, at least for a modern reader, so pronounced, one might be tempted to think of certain recent writers—Kafka for example—whose world of gruesome distortion suggests
the consistency of insanity. Let me elucidate what I have in mind by an apparently insignificant passage from the
Metamorphoses
. It occurs at the end of the first book (1, 24) and relates a purchase which the narrator Lucius makes in the market of a foreign (Thessalian) town. It runs as follows:

… rebus meis in cubiculo conditis, pergens ipse ad balneas, ut prius aliquid nobis cibatui prospicerem, forum cuppedinis peto; inque eo piscatum opiparem expositum video. Et percontato pretio, quod centum nummis indicaret, aspernatus viginti denariis praestinavi. Inde me commodum egredientem continuatur Pythias, condiscipulus apud Athenas Atticas meus; qui me post aliquantum temporis amanter agnitum invadit, amplexusque et comiter deosculatus, Mi Luci, ait, sat pol diu est quod intervisimus te, at hercules exinde cum a Clytio magistro digressi sumus. Quae autem tibi causa peregrinationis huius? Crastino die scies, inquam. Sed quid istud? Voti gaudeo. Nam et lixas et virgas et habitum prorsus magistratui congruentem in te video. Annonam curamus, ait, et aedilem gerimus; et si quid obsonare cupis, utique commodabimus. Abnuebam, quippe qui iam cenae affatim piscatum prospexeramus. Sed enim Pythias, visa sportula succussisque in aspectum planiorem piscibus: At has quisquilias quanti parasti? Vix, inquam, piscatori extorsimus accipere viginti denarios. Quo audito statim arrepta dextra postliminio me in forum cuppedinis reducens: Et a quo, inquit, istorum nugamenta haec comparasti? Demonstro seniculum; in angulo sedebat. Quem confestim pro aedilitatis imperio voce asperrima increpans: Iam iam, inquit, nec amicis quidem nostris vel omnino ullis hospitibus parcitis, qui tam magnis pretiis pisces frivolos indicatis et florem Thessalicae regionis ad instar solitudinis et scopuli edulium caritate deducitis! Sed non impune. Iam enim faxo scias, quemadmodum sub meo imperio mali debeant coerceri. Et profusa in medium sportula iubet officialem suum insuper pisces inscendere ac pedibus suis totos obterere. Qua contentus morum severitudine meus Pythias, ac mihi ut abirem suadens: Sufficit mihi, o Luci, inquit, seniculi tanta haec contumelia. His actis consternatus ac prorsus obstupidus ad balneas me refero, prudentis condiscipuli valido consilio et nummis simul privatus et cena. …