Justin and Pompeius Trogus: A Study of the Language of Justin's 'Epitome' of Trogus (review)

Pompeius Trogus was a Gaul whose grandfather was given Roman citizenship by Pompey during his campaigns against Sertorius and whose father was employed by Julius Caesar as a trusted secretary. Trogus wrote a universal history which started with the mythical King Ninus of Assyria and ended with the diplomatic successes of the emperor Augustus in his dealings with the Parthians. The original is lost, but an abbreviated version of Trogus's history survives from the pen of the otherwise unknown M. Iunianus Justinus. It is an important source for Hellenistic history.

The eminent Latinist Wilhelm Kroll pronounced Justin a colourless writer ('die Sprache Justins hat wenig Charakteristisches'). John Yardley, who has shown himself an able translator of Justin, investigates the language of Justin in an attempt to define both his literary personality and that of Trogus. The bulk of the book consists of lists with annotation and commentary of phrases and expressions in Justin, for which electronic searches have turned up exact or close parallels in other Latin writers. The first part of the book deals principally with Trogus. Trogus was certainly acquainted with the writings of Cicero, Caesar, Sallust, and Livy (of whom he had read more than now survives). But how much was he actually influenced by their language and style? In the case of Cicero, it is usually impossible to assign particular phrases to either Trogus or Justin with certainty. The three historical writers, however, yield clear results: Yardley shows that the influence of Caesar and Sallust on Trogus was probably slight, that of Livy 'deep and pervasive.'

In the second part, Yardley offers some seventy pages of 'Justinisms' in Justin and more than thirty pages documenting poetic elements in the Epitome: predictably, Virgil is the poet who bulks largest, but Justin also echoes later poets, including Ovid, Seneca, and probably Statius. Yardley's most significant discovery is that there are 'closer and more persistent parallels' between the Epitome and the Minor and Major Declamations transmitted under the name of Quintilian than with any other extant Latin author: indeed, the similarities are such that Yardley floats the suggestion that Justin may have composed some of these school exercises himself. Yardley also documents Justin's use of phrases found most frequently elsewhere in the Roman jurists, but here his scholarship reveals an unfortunate limitation. He argues that, since 'the greatest number of parallels are to be found in Ulpian and Papinian,' Justin is likely to have been their contemporary. The inference looks plausible only until one realizes that Yardley has not searched later legal sources such as the Theodosian Code systematically. I give one random example. Yardley states that the phrase 'matrimonium contrahere' occurs six times in the jurist Gaius, more than twenty times in the Digest, and 'elsewhere only' in Apuleius, Suetonius, and Servius. In fact, the expression also occurs twice in a law issued by Constantine in 319 and twice again in a law issued by Theodosius in 380.

The date of Justin is disputed. Yardley follows the communis opinion that Justin was writing in the late second or early third century. But in 1988 Ronald Syme argued for the fourth century, partly at least on linguistic grounds. Since the first author either to use or name Justin is Jerome in the late 390s, the onus probandi lies on those who advocate a significantly earlier date. Regrettably, Yardley contents himself with declaring that 'the problem of dating has recently been discussed elsewhere and there is no need to revisit the arguments here.' A footnote directs readers to a brief article published in 2000 in which the author set out to rebut the present reviewer's attempt to strengthen Syme's arguments. But even if Yardley's rebuttal were cogent, that would not in itself establish a date of c 200 as correct. Positive arguments are needed. Yardley asserts several times that his computer...