Exemplarisches Erzahlen bei Ammianus Marcellinus: Episode, Exemplum, Anekdote (review)

Ammianus Marcellinus ends his Res Gestae (originally covering events from the death of Nerva to the death of Valens) by admonishing future historians to follow a loftier style (31.16.9: ad maiores moneo stilos). In the last fifteen years, ancient historians in English-speaking countries have given increasing attention to Ammianus as a historian.¹ In the last five years in Germany, scholars have turned more and more to Ammianus' literary style.² In this new book, Frank Wittchow uses modern literary theory to examine Ammianus' use of anecdotes and examples.

This book is a slightly revised version of Wittchow's Doktorarbeit at the Humboldt University of Berlin, which he finished in 1999 under the direction of Professor Johannes Christes. It is important that the reader know that this dissertation derives from an institute for classical philology, not one devoted to ancient history, and it becomes clear early on to the reader that this is not a work of historical analysis so much as a literary study of the Antiochene historian. Thus, one encounters citations of Thomas Mann, Voltaire, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (of Little Prince fame), Michel Foucault, and even the psychologist Jerome Bruner. Wittchow acknowledges that he was especially influenced by the German English-literature specialist ("Anglistin") Monika Fludernik of the University of Freiburg and her theories of narratology.³

In his first chapter, Wittchow explores the concepts of anecdotes and exemplum in ancient literature and attempts a new descriptive model of such exemplary narratives. In chapters 2–3, Wittchow examines exempla before turning in chapter 4 to anecdotes in the Res Gestae. Along the way, the reader encounters charts that project literary categories on to episodes in Ammianus' history (93–97; 120–21). Chapter 5 presents a comparison and contrast between Aurelius Victor and Ammianus. Lastly, chapter 6 examines the application of the book's thesis to the topic of the audience of the Res Gestae.

The book was clearly generated through camera-ready copy and bears some of the challenges of that: occasionally strange spacing and footnotes sometimes appearing on the next page. An intermittent typographical error (314–17) renders Bishop Liberius instead Bishop Libanius (ironically in a section entitled "Problem Cases"). Perhaps this was due to a spell-check program. While authors are ultimately deemed responsible for mistakes, it does seem unfortunate that many publishing houses are relinquishing more and more responsibility for the text of their books. The book also bears the mark of a doctoral dissertation, with block after block of notes to the same authors, the record going to Klaus Rosen who receives nineteen consecutive footnotes (174–78).

Although as an ancient historian I feel that we must take the application of modern theory to ancient literature with a shaker or two of salt, at least Wittchow is up front about his methodology. I naturally found the last chapter on Ammianus' audience interesting because Wittchow ends up agreeing with my hypothesis of imperial officials, although for different reasons. While thirteen years ago I had attempted to suggest such an audience based on internal evidence (content, prosopography, and examples of citations of ancient literature), Wittchow, using literary theory, argues that the paedea of Ammianus confirms an audience of civil (and perhaps also military) officials. Nonetheless, and I feel a bit awkward in saying this, while Wittchow cites my name seventeen times from 365–71, he never gives the title of my work in either bibliography or notes.⁴

Specialists on Ammianus are always interested in new books on the last great Roman historian. Wittchow has clearly worked through the earlier scholarship and put a great deal of effort in applying his literary analysis to the Res Gestae. Because of his methodology, aside from the last two chapters, this book may be more interesting to classicists of a literary bent than to ancient historians.