To What Account Is Ammianus Marcellinus` Account Of The Siege Of Amida A Literary Stereotype?

It should be recalled, as outlined by John Matthews, that conformity to literary stereotype, and use of rhetorical device, structure and selection, does not preclude an accurate outline of events. To this end, the obvious rhetorical and literary accents placed by Ammianus on his account of the death, and funerary rites, of King Grumbates' son, are best interpreted as Ammianus conveying a real event through reference to, and conformity with, rhetorical structure and devices and literary mores. Other examples are possible, but as a programmatic comment with which to frame an analysis of Ammianus' account of the siege of Amida, the potential for co-existence between factual accuracy and rhetorical conformity is valuable to recall. Ammianus' account of the siege of Amida should be evaluated within the intellectual framework and hinterland into Ammianus sets himself. In the absence of the Ammianus' programmatic preface, presumably included in the lost earlier books of Ammianus, his intentions, intellectual references, and loci classici must be reconstructed from other, less fulsome, and more oblique, comments. Ammianus' concise definition of himself as ut miles quondam et graecus, as outlined by Naude, is programmatic statement on his intellectual milieu, aspirations and credentials. The first component of Ammianus' self-definition, his being miles quondam, illuminates much of the structure, content and technique of his account of the siege of Amida. In self-consciously conforming to the prescri ptions of Polybius, Ammianus therefore commits himself to conveying himself to his audience as an author with genuine experience of active military life, administration, and leadership. In reminding his audience of his presence at Amida by conveying circumstantial detail, such as the firing of unloaded ballistae to disguise a Gallic night attack on the Persian attack by noise, and through use of the first person singular and plural to outline his own actions, Ammianus underscores his personal experience of military life and command, and therefore constructs an appropriately authoritative ethos for a Polybian historian. The second component of Ammianus' characterisation, his being graecus, places Ammianus in the intellectual, historiographical tradition of universal, military historians such as Thucydides and Polybius. A central component of this intellectual ambition was conveying to the audience the personal experiences, and therefore historiographical credentials, of the historian, and as outlined above, Ammianus' use of circumstantial detail, personal experience, and the first person singular and plural, in his account of Amida all conform to this rhetorical and literary framework well. The death of the son of King Grumbates, shot from the walls of Amida by a ballista bolt, appears to correspond strongly to literary stereotype. The role the death of Grumbates' son fulfils in compelling Sapor to take Amida, and therefore imperil his strategic objectives, corresponds closely to that of Patroclus in the Iliad. The similarity, obvious to Ammianus' intended audience, whose intellectual milieu was framed by paideia and the corpus of Classical epic and literature, is made explicit by Ammianus, who uses the example of the battle over Patroclus' body to illuminate the conflict between Romans and Persians over the body of Grumbates' son. The death of Grumbates' son, by forcing Sapor to remain at Amida and take the city in response, fulfils the same role in Ammianus' narrative as that of Patroclus in compelling Achilles to remain at Troy, confront Hector, and therefore sacrifice himself in the destruction of the city. The similarities are deeper still, in that, as Achilles' decision to avenge Patroclus condemns him to die at Troy, so too Sapor's decision, whether voluntary or not, to take Amida produced a delay fatal to his wider strategic ambitions. Moreover, Ammianus' characterisation of the son of King Grumbates as "a prince early in manhood who surpassed his peers in height and good looks" corresponds closely to the characterisation of Patroclus in the Iliad as an extraordinarily beautiful young man. Psychoanalysis, and the evaluation of motivation, is an intractable problem for the historian, and in the absence of extant evidence, Persian or Roman, against which to judge Ammianus' claim that Grumbates' grief prompted Sapor to take Amida, it is difficult to accurately determine the veracity of Ammianus' account. The explanation of Sapor's decision to delay for seventy three days at Amida, at the expense of his strategic ambitions, as the product of furor is one that conforms well to Classical rhetorical and ethnographic traditions. As expounded in the Aenied, the subordination of furor and irrationality to rationality and pietas was a central Roman virtue, distinguishing Aeneas from Turnus, and by implication Achilles. In placing Grumbates, and Sapor, in a literary role equivalent to the non-Roman, Turnus and Achilles, Ammianus conforms to Classical literary and ethnographic models of behaviour and motivation for barbarians. The funerary rites of the son of King Grumbates appear to be a heavily literary component of the narrative. The Chionitae whom King Grumbates' ruled had Grumbates' son's body laid on a bier, in full military dress, around which were placed the effigies of ten soldiers in litters. Feasts, songs and dances of mourning were then held, with the wailing of women a ubiquitous noise. As Matthews notes, much of the account corresponds with the funeral of Patroclus in the Iliad, and the funerary rituals of the Royal Scythians described by Herodotus. Notwithstanding the wider anthropological correlation between the funerary rites Ammianus describes and those in the Americas, India, and China, the similarities between the funeral of Patroclus and that of Grumbates' son is significant. Given the obvious dangers of straying within range of Amida's mural artillery, it seems unlikely that Ammianus could have directly observed Grumbates' son's funerary rites, and more unlikely that he could have done so in the detail he offers in his account of them. Furthermore, Ammianus' account of the funerary rites of Grumbates' son conforms to those outlined by Procopius, in the sixth century, for the Hepthalites, a subordinate people to the Persians. As Matthews outlines, the correspondence between Ammianus' Chionitae and Procopius' Hepthalites is contested, however, the similarity between their funerary rituals can be easily attributed to mutual conformity to Classical ethnographical mores. Moreover, the comparison between the death of King Grumbates' son to mural ballista fire, and Julian's surviving an equivalent attack before the walls of Meinas Sabatha, suggests the use of rhetorical antithesis and comparison to subtly aggrandise Julian in advance of Ammianus' account of his reign. As noted above, Grumbates' son is praised by Ammianus as a young man of extraordinary beauty and height, and implicitly equated to Patroclus. Julian's survival of an equivalent attack can be interpreted as the product of the continued protection of the genius publicus: Ammianus attributes his death later in the Persian campaign in 363 to the withdrawal of divine protection from Julian, and Julian's survival of a potentially fatal attack seems to conform to Ammianus' explanation of his reign as the acquisition, retention, and loss of divine favour. That Sapor, Grumbates, and Julian, were all fired on by mural artillery, with reasonable accuracy and threat, might also be attributed to the subordination of fact to literary framework and rhetorical commonplace. However, as noted by Matthews, it might also be the product of the repetitive nature of contemporary siege warfare. Such repetition and regularity as does occur in Ammianus' sieges might also be a product of the repetitive, formulaic nature of siege warfare, as argued by Matthews. Furthermore, if Ammianus' account of Amida corresponds to accounts of sieges significantly earlier than the fourth century, it should be recalled that the techniques, technology and basic nature of siege warfare had changed little in antiquity. Matthews outlines how the helepolis, on which Ammianus expounds at length in his digression on siege technology, had changed little after its construction in 304 BC by Demetrius Poliorcetes at Rhodes, and an equivalent stagnation in offensive and defensive technology and techniques might explain the relative uniformity of Ammianus' sieges. Moroever, when possible, Ammianus does outline idiosryncratic, individual events in sieges. The use of blazing wicker baskets at Bezabde, Persian exploitation of recently and incompletely repaired wall at Singara, the fall of Cyzicus to Procopius when the harbour chain was cut, and the fall of Anatha to Julian by negotiation, are all individual events which add verisimilitude at least to Ammianus' account. In the absence of extant evidence against which to compare them, such details cannot be confirmed, and might therefore be attributed to Ammianus' attempt to construct an appropriately informed and authoritative ethos for a universal, Polybian historian. However, such details cannot be disproved either, and given the extent of Ammianus' likely literary and oral sources, there seems little reason to dispute their veracity. In conclusion, it is difficult to dispute the formulaic, uniform nature of Ammianus' account of the siege of Amida. The ceremonial exhortations and refusals to surrender, the efficacy of mural artillery, the construction of elevated platforms, and the evocation and conformity to literary stereotypes, rhetorical topoi and Classical ethnography, all suggest a heavily rhetorical account. However, this need not be at the expense of factual accuracy: Ammianus was personally present at Amida, and although his account cannot be cross-referenced, and his emphasis on personal experience outlined above is likely a rhetorical device, the value of this experience should not be understated. Hence, it seems likely that Ammianus' account is an essentially accurate outline of events conveyed through a heavily rhetorical, paideia influenced lens, for an audience which would have expected such intellectual accentuation.