Constantius, as though the Temple of Janus had been closed and all enemies had been laid low, was longing to visit Rome and, following the death of Magnentius, to hold a triumph, without a victory title and after shedding Roman blood. For he did not himself defeat any belligerent nation or learn that any had been defeated through the courage of his commanders, nor did he add anything to the empire, and in dangerous circumstances he was never seen to lead from the front, nor even to be among the front ranks. But he wanted to display an exaggeratedly long procession, standards stiff with gold and the beauty of his attendants, to a population who were living more peacefully, neither anticipating nor wishing to see this or anything like it. For perhaps he was unaware that some earlier emperors had been content with lictors in peacetime, but when the heat of battle could not allow inactivity, one of them had entrusted himself to a small fishing boat, blasted by raging gales, another had followed the example of the Decii and offered up his life in a vow for the state, and another had himself explored the enemy camp alongside the regular soldiers; that, in short, various of them had won renown for magnificent deeds, and so committed their glories to the distinguished memory of posterity. …
When he was approaching the city, observing with a serene expression the respectful attendance of the Senate, and the venerable likenesses of the patrician families, he thought, not like Cineas, the legate of Pyrrhus, that a multitude of kings had been assembled together, but rather that this was the refuge of the whole world [cumque urbi propinquaret, senatus officia, reuerendasque patriciae stirpis effigies, ore sereno contemplans, non ut Cineas ille Pyrrhi legatus, in unum coactam multitudinem regum, sed asylum mundi totius adesse existimabat]. Next, when he turned his gaze to the general populace, he was astonished at the speed with which every type of men from everywhere had flowed into Rome. As though he were trying to terrify the Euphrates or the Rhine with the sight of arms, with the standards in front of him on each side, he sat alone in a golden chariot, glittering with the shimmer of many different precious stones, whose flashes seemed to produce a flickering light. After many others had preceded him, he was surrounded by dragons, woven from purple cloth and affixed to the golden, bejewelled tips of spears, open to the wind with their broad mouths and so hissing as though roused with anger, trailing the coils of their tails in the wind [eumque post antegressos multiplices alios, purpureis subtegminibus texti, circumdedere dracones, hastarum aureis gemmatisque summitatibus illigati, hiatu uasto perflabiles, et ideo uelut ira perciti sibilantes, caudarumque uolumina relinquentes in uentum]. Then there came a twin column of armed men, with shields and plumed helmets, shining with glittering light, clothed in gleaming cuirasses, with armoured horsemen, whom they call clibanarii, arranged among them, masked and protected by breastplates, encircled with iron bands, so that you might have thought them to be statues finished by the hand of Praxiteles, not men [sparsique catafracti equites, quos clibanarios dictitant, personati thoracum muniti tegminibus, et limbis ferreis cincti, ut Praxitelis manu polita crederes simulacra, non uiros]. Slender rings of metal plates, fitted to the curves of the body, clothed them, spread across all their limbs, so that, in whatever direction necessity moved their joints, their clothing moved likewise, since the joins had been made to fit so well.
When he was hailed as Augustus with favourable cries, [Constantius] did not shudder at the din that thundered from hills and shores, but showed himself unmoved, as he appeared in his provinces. For, when passing through high gates, he stooped his short body, and, keeping his gaze straight, as though his neck were fixed, he turned his head neither right nor left, as though an image of a man, and he was never seen to nod when the wheel shook, or to spit or wipe or rub his face or nose, or to move his hand [nam et corpus perhumile curuabat portas ingrediens celsas, et uelut collo munito, rectam aciem luminum tendens, nec dextra uultum nec laeua flectebat, tamquam figmentum hominis, nec, cum rota concuteret, nutans, nec spuens, aut os aut nasum tergens uel fricans, manumue agitans uisus est umquam]. Although this behaviour was an affectation, it, and other aspects of his more private life, were however indications of extraordinary endurance, granted to him alone, as it was given to be supposed.Footnote 1
This passage, which describes the aduentus of Constantius II into Rome in 357, is one of the best-known episodes in the Res Gestae of Ammianus Marcellinus. This historical work was completed by the retired military officer in around 390, with the surviving books covering the period from 353 to the aftermath of the Battle of Adrianople in 378. Unsurprisingly, this passage is also one of the most debated. Throughout his work, Ammianus regularly criticized Constantius as a weak, vicious ruler, influenced by women and, in particular, eunuchs, and so contrasted him with his cousin and successor Julian, the emperor who receives the most favourable treatment within this text.Footnote 2 The degree and nature of criticism within this particular passage has, however, been the subject of a variety of wildly differing interpretations. It is clear that, at the outset, Ammianus is inveighing against the notion of holding a triumph for victory in a civil war, but there has been debate over whether Constantius was actually celebrating a triumph or merely the anniversary of his accession.Footnote 3 Similarly, the description of the Senate as ‘the refuge of the whole world’ has been read in contrasting ways, being regarded as derogatory by Johannes Straub, as neutral, or even positive, by Pierre Dufraigne, and as respectful by R.C. Blockley.Footnote 4 While this passage as a whole is generally read as an attack on Constantius for his pretentions to ill-deserved military glory, it also raises the question of whether Ammianus was also criticizing Constantius for the way in which he performed his aduentus, emphasizing his pompous and autocratic behaviour in order to contrast him with Julian, who preferred to behave more like a ciuilis princeps in public.Footnote 5 Of course, such a reading almost inevitably produces a portrait of Ammianus as an impractically nostalgic figure, harking back to a style of rule which was anachronistic in the post-Diocletianic Later Roman Empire. In addition, Ammianus also presented Julian as performing an aduentus into Constantinople in 361, employing some phrases that were similar to those used to describe Constantius’ procession in 357.Footnote 6 Furthermore, as John Matthews has illustrated, Ammianus’ presentations of the occasions when Julian eschewed late-antique imperial protocol are not without tinges of criticism, and his judgement on the propriety of different modes of imperial behaviour varied dependent on the context.Footnote 7
Whether or not Ammianus is read as being critical of elaborate, late Roman aduentus rituals, he is generally regarded as a faithful reporter of their details, with 16.10 standing out as an excellent example of his ability to conjure up a vivid scene in the minds of his readers. For example, Matthews regards Ammianus’ description of Constantius’ aduentus as ‘classic’, ‘a demonstration of the historian's technique and visual power’ and ‘an evocation of the late Roman imperial office at its most ceremonious’.Footnote 8 This passage has come to be employed frequently to illustrate discussions of the imperial image in Late Antiquity, especially the notion of the emperor's ‘hieratic’ pose.Footnote 9 In particular, Sabine MacCormack, whose work has done the most in recent times to illuminate the development of the aduentus ceremony, states that Ammianus provided a clear account of Constantius’ ‘dignified bearing during the ceremony as a whole’, and that ‘Constantius, in the context of the aduentus Ammianus describes, had become an image, a statue’.Footnote 10 So pervasive is the use of Ammianus 16.10 in studies of imperial power in the Later Roman Empire that, when one reads a reference to aduentus in a modern scholarly work, this is the passage from ancient literature which is most likely to be cited as evidence for the appearance and expectations of the ceremony.Footnote 11 It has become the locus classicus for our understanding of the proper performance of this key late-antique ritual.
It is a reading of this scene as neutral reportage of an aduentus that this article sets out to challenge. In particular, it focusses on the presentation of Constantius’ deportment, his ‘hieratic pose’ tamquam figmentum hominis—‘as though an image of a man’—which has become such a vivid illustration of modern conceptions of the aloof late Roman emperor, emphasizing the distance between himself and even his most powerful subjects, in contrast to the primus inter pares model of the Principate.Footnote 12 This assimilation of the emperor to a statue has often been seen as a parallel development to the carrying of statues in processions and their treatment as substitutes for the actual emperor within a city or province.Footnote 13 Yet, while statues were one medium through which the imperial presence could be brought to the far-flung corners of his empire, and so could be a place of refuge for fugitives, or a target for mob violence, as at Antioch in 387, we should be wary of regarding an account of the elision of Constantius and his inanimate effigy as a positive, or even neutral, statement about this particular emperor. As Brian Croke has described in an article on the development of Constantinople under Theodosius I, the annual ritual, in which Constantine's statue was carried in a chariot and presided over the games on the city's birthday, was stopped after Theodosius took up residence in the eastern capital. While a statue could go some way towards standing in for an absent ruler, it became redundant once a real emperor had arrived.Footnote 14 This article does not set out to overturn completely our image of aduentus, nor is it my intention to challenge the view that many late-antique imperial rituals were focussed on the figure of a distant emperor, whose elevation above his subjects was emphasized, rather than concealed. I do, however, wish to argue that reconstructions of late Roman ceremonies should not rely so heavily on this passage from Ammianus. Rather than being an uncontroversial commonplace in Late Antiquity, the assimilation of a living emperor with an image was potentially loaded with criticism.
* * *
Some useful context for this reading of Ammianus 16.10 is provided by descriptions of emperors and images from three texts, all of which date from the 350s and 360s, and two of which specifically concern Constantius II. The first of these is a passage from the fragmentary Letter to a Priest, written by Constantius’ cousin and successor, the Emperor Julian. In a passage discussing the worship of the gods through veneration of their statues, Julian reminded his readers that, despite being the objects of reverence, the statues were not the gods themselves, and so the destruction of such an image was not evidence of the impotence or inexistence of a particular deity.Footnote 15 In making this argument, Julian drew an analogy with the imperial images that stood in many public places throughout the empire: ‘Looking at the images of the gods, let us not think that they are stones or wood, but of course let us not think that they are the gods themselves. For we do not say that statues of emperors are just wood and stone and bronze, but we certainly do not say that they are the emperors themselves, but that they are statues of emperors’.Footnote 16 His message was clear: while they were more than mere works of art, no one should mistake a statue for the actual flesh-and-blood ruler, and it is this latter point that Julian emphasized here. Even though an individual could gain favour by venerating the emperor's statue, just as with an image of a god, Julian was keen to distinguish between the actual object of reverence and the artificial conduit through which worship was offered.Footnote 17 Julian's view might be regarded as over-intellectualized, in comparison to the attitude taken by many of his contemporaries, as well as being driven by a specific desire to counter Christian criticism of idol worship by denying that statues of the gods were either mere empty works of artifice or actually the gods themselves, since they could evidently be destroyed.Footnote 18 Nevertheless, his comments do highlight the possibility of drawing a distinction between an emperor and his statue, as well as warning against assimilating them completely.
The other two texts, both of which date from the late 350s or early 360s, contain direct attacks on Constantius II himself, explicitly criticizing him for failing to live up to the authors’ own perceived standards for imperial behaviour. In each of these, one of the charges levelled against the emperor is that he merely resembled a lifeless image, rather than being a real living person. In his lament for Julian, the Antiochene orator Libanius extolled the virtues of the recently deceased young emperor, contrasting him, as Ammianus would later do, with his cousin and predecessor. He referred to Constantius pejoratively, exclaiming that ‘this man, this Salmoneus or Lycurgus, even more, in fact, this Melitides possessed no intellect and was not much better than a picture or a clay figure’ (Or. 17.8). Libanius here compared the emperor to a trio of paradigmatic villains and idiots: Salmoneus, the mythical king of Salmone, who sought to rival Zeus and so brought down destruction on himself and his city; Lycurgus, whose impiety towards Dionysus led to his blinding and death, as well as to his murdering his family in a fit of madness; and Melitides, a proverbial idiot mentioned in Aristophanes’ Frogs.Footnote 19 While the last of these names emphasizes Constantius’ stupidity, the other two present him as an impious and failed ruler, with the reference to Lycurgus also possibly alluding to Constantius’ role in killing his relatives during the dynastic massacre of 337, from which Julian barely escaped.Footnote 20 In this context, the claim that Constantius was little better than ‘a picture or a clay figure’ referred to his lack of the virtues that were expected of emperors, such as intelligence, piety and justice. For Libanius, he was nothing more than an empty shell, resembling a ruler on the surface but lacking the internal qualities required for the role, in stark contrast to the ideal represented by Libanius’ hero, Julian.
The third passage demonstrates that this form of criticism was not limited to pagan authors. Lucifer, bishop of Cagliari in Sardinia and a staunch defender of the theological formula enshrined in the Nicene Creed, wrote several lengthy denunciations of Constantius and his religious policy after being exiled at the Council of Milan in 355.Footnote 21 Across these works, he abused the emperor in a plethora of vivid and fascinating phrases, with some of the most extreme and colourful appearing in his pamphlet entitled Moriundum esse pro Dei Filio (On the Necessity of Dying for the Son of God). Like Libanius, he sought to present Constantius as falling far short of the standards expected of a successful Roman emperor. In a section of this text that denounced Constantius’ failure to display the imperial virtue of justice, he addressed the emperor directly and asked him: ‘Do you really believe that you are a man, although you have nothing of a human being except the mere shape and outline?’.Footnote 22 This was itself an adaptation of a line from Lactantius’ Divine Institutes, which had described pagan rulers who displayed animal savagery in their persecution of Christians.Footnote 23 Lucifer took Lactantius’ phrase and wove it into a broader attack on many aspects of Constantius’ rule, in which the emperor's vices revealed the disjunction between his appearance and his essential nature. Lucifer's portrait of a Constantius who lacked a sense of justice, just like Libanius’ depiction of him as devoid of intellect and piety or Lactantius’ generic vicious tyrant, used the notion of a hollow image of a human being to bring force to its imperial invective. While Constantius might have the appearance of a man, he lacked the internal qualities which would actually make him a real person, or allow him to live up to the ideal of the virtuous emperor that was proclaimed in panegyrics.
These treatments of imperial images provide a context within which to read Ammianus’ account of Constantius’ aduentus. I do not wish to argue that Ammianus was drawing directly on passages from these earlier authors, but, rather, that such language formed part of the contemporary register of imperial assessment. Such rhetoric continues to be found in the later fourth and early fifth centuries. When Synesius of Cyrene wrote his De regno, after his unsuccessful embassy to the court of Arcadius in Constantinople in the late 390s, he provided his own vision of ideal kingship, which stood in sharp contrast to many of the emperor's own practices. At the end of the work, he invited Arcadius to bring to life this ‘statue of a king in words’ and then to ‘deliver to me the action of a king’ (De regno 29.4). Similarly, Ambrosiaster, in a passage on understanding God, used an analogy with images of emperors, stating that, ‘although we do not know emperors, we see them in a statue, but not in truth’.Footnote 24 Since most inhabitants of the empire would never encounter an emperor, they perceived something of his authority in his statue, although Ambrosiaster also stated that this was no substitute for the real man: ‘for when the emperor is absent, his image possesses authority, but it does not have it when he is present’.Footnote 25 While statues were significant in bringing a distant emperor closer to his subjects, the difference between a lifeless image and a living person was employed rhetorically by fourth-century authors, sometimes in philosophical and theological contexts, but especially when criticizing an emperor for his failings.
* * *
Despite both the existence of this theme in contemporary descriptions of emperors and also the comments about Constantius’ military ineptitude that immediately precede the aduentus passage, Ammianus should certainly not be read as criticizing every aspect of the emperor's behaviour when entering Rome; for example, it seems highly unlikely that he was saying that a good emperor should actually be constantly spitting and blowing his nose in public.Footnote 26 None the less, this passage describing Constantius’ aduentus consistently undermines his imperial status, emphasizing the emptiness of his rule. Ammianus opened with the complaint that not only did Constantius wish to celebrate a triumph, despite failing to achieve the requisite martial successes, but he also seemed to be unaware of the examples set by his worthier predecessors on the imperial throne. He did not know that some had been happy just to be accompanied by lictors, and he also failed to act as three other better rulers had done in battle (16.10.3). Ammianus’ descriptions of the exploits of these earlier emperors provided exempla of good imperial behaviour, although without naming the illustrious predecessors, leaving his readers to fill in the gaps if they could, while also demonstrating his own superiority over the ill-informed Constantius in his knowledge of Roman history.Footnote 27
The rest of the passage then continues this theme by presenting Constantius as a man who did not know how to be an emperor, being desperate to look the part, but not actually able to become a real ruler. Since Ramsey MacMullen discussed it in 1964, the description of Constantius’ fastidiously immobile pose has been linked with Tacitus’ account of Nero's activities on the stage during his musical performances, in which he ‘obeyed all the laws of the lyre, not sitting down when tired, nor wiping away sweat, except with the garment which he wore, so that no refuse of his mouth or nose might be seen’.Footnote 28 Surprisingly, this was not used to support the argument that Ammianus may have been criticizing Constantius through an allusion to Tacitus, but instead to demonstrate that the model of the motionless emperor had its roots in the rules of the stage. In fact, Tacitus’ Nero, in seeking to be both an emperor and a musician, succeeded in being neither, his strict adherence to the letter of the rules only serving to demonstrate his failure to comprehend what was actually required of him.Footnote 29 He was the consummate bad actor, whose method for attempting to play the part was as bad as the attempt itself, like a man trying to learn charisma from a book.
As with Tacitus’ description of Nero, Ammianus’ presentation of Constantius emphasized the theatricality of the emperor's behaviour, in which he tried to perform a role that he did not understand. The presence of this theme in Ammianus Marcellinus has been discussed by Jacques Fontaine in an article that was published in 1985. Although he does not specifically explore the aduentus passage, his discussion of the portrait of the praetorian prefect Petronius Probus illuminates Ammianus’ use of the eminently Tacitean themes of dissimulation and false appearances: ‘Cette couleur théâtrale s'accorde avec la peinture d'un monde de personnages où dominent trop logiquement les masques divers de l'hypocrisie’.Footnote 30 Ammianus was providing a vivid description not only of a man who was successful through his skill in dissembling, but also of a political culture that nurtured and encouraged such behaviour. Elsewhere, in an ostensibly positive description of Constantius’ virtues, Ammianus described the emperor as ‘always preserving the majesty of imperial authority’ (imperatoriae auctoritatis cothurnum ubique custodiens).Footnote 31 The word cot(h)urnus originally meant the raised boot or buskin worn by actors in tragedies and is used negatively by Ammianus at other times to refer to haughty behaviour by both Petronius Probus and the general Lupicinus.Footnote 32 The display of imperial power is here made to seem theatrical, with the suggestion that Constantius might be playing a role, even when he appears to be succeeding in behaving like an emperor.
These tropes of pretence and costume are also to be found in a passage from Book 26, in which Ammianus described the failed usurpation of Procopius, a relative of the Emperor Julian, in 365. After comparing his seizure of the throne to the shameful exemplum of the coup of Didius Julianus in 193, Ammianus provided a memorable account of Procopius’ farcical accession ceremony. The unfortunate figure was presented to the waiting public in a collection of hastily assembled gold and purple clothes, ‘looking like a court page’, which was particularly ridiculous for the forty-year-old Procopius. His appearance was such that, in Ammianus’ words, ‘you would think that, on the theatrical stage, some decorated image [simulacrum quoddam insigne] had emerged suddenly through the curtain or some mime chicanery’ (26.6.15). As John Matthews has remarked, this scene presents the usurpation as ‘a ludicrous disgrace’, in which Procopius appeared not as a legitimate emperor, but as a ‘fancy-dress mockery’, ‘deserving scorn and hilarity had not the outcome been so disastrous’.Footnote 33 Not only does Ammianus present this performance as theatrical, he also specifically links it to mime, thereby underlining the image of Procopius as a comic parody of a proper ruler.Footnote 34 He wanted to play the part of an emperor, but instead ended up imitating an infamous usurper, failing to fulfil his intended role.Footnote 35 Rather than being a majestic monarch, Procopius comes across as nothing but a simulacrum, an artificial and ridiculous creation that belonged in the false world of the theatre.
Similarly, Ammianus’ Constantius was an imitation of a real emperor, whose strenuous attempts to look like an authoritative ruler only underlined the gulf between presentation and reality. This sense of fabrication, of deceptive appearances, is created by Ammianus’ choice of language, both in describing Constantius himself and in the rest of this passage on the aduentus into Rome. In reading Ammianus’ description of the emperor as tamquam figmentum hominis, it is appropriate to translate the word figmentum as ‘statue’, but it is none the less important to remember that it could also mean a ‘fiction’, ‘invention’ or ‘unreality’.Footnote 36 Of the fifteen appearances of this term within the surviving portions of Ammianus’ work, on five occasions it is employed to denote a false claim, flattery or trick.Footnote 37 These include two uses within the story of the fabricated accusations used to bring down the military commander Silvanus in Gaul in 355.Footnote 38 In this vivid tale, where deception and disloyalty are exhibited by almost every character, Ammianus employs figmentum to denote both the original fraud of the conspirator Dynamius and also the insincere praises offered by the military officer Ursicinus, in order to put Silvanus off his guard and make it easier to kill him.Footnote 39 Here, the term appears in the context of a failure at all levels of imperial government, in which nobody, from the emperor downwards, acts with honesty and honour, leading to the destruction of a capable general.
Moreover, one of the other passages where figmentum is used to mean ‘statue’ is also, like the aduentus episode, concerned with the city of Rome. In Book 14, while recounting the first urban prefecture of Orfitus, Ammianus provides a famous account of the faults of the contemporary Senate and people of the eternal city.Footnote 40 The senators in particular are described as failing to live up to the models provided by earlier, greater Romans, despite their pretensions in this regard: ‘Some of them believe that they can be committed to eternity through statues, and so they aspire to them eagerly, as though they could achieve a greater reward from bronze images [figmenta] devoid of sense, rather than from the consciousness of honest and proper actions’ (14.6.8). Elsewhere, Ammianus complains of both the senators’ undeserved pride in their ancient names, which, so they believe, recall their eminent ancestors, and also their habit of drawing unreasonable comparisons between themselves and the great men of old, such as Cato the Younger or Marcus Claudius Marcellus.Footnote 41 Ammianus’ central complaint here is not that the current senators do not live up to these impressive examples (although that too certainly forms part of his criticism), but that they believe that they do, because they lack any real understanding of the models which they seek to imitate. They are also described as being like people performing on the stage, dressing like actors in comedies or tragedies when they go either to take out or to repay loans.Footnote 42 It is therefore notable that, in the account of Constantius’ aduentus, which, as Ammianus informs the reader, took place during the second urban prefecture of Orfitus (16.10.4), the senators who come to meet the emperor are described using the peculiar phrase ‘venerable likenesses of the patrician families’—reuerendas patriciae stirpis effigies (16.10.5). Here, like the bronze statues that they pompously erected to glorify themselves, they tried to appear as worthy descendants of their distinguished senatorial predecessors who had made Rome great. In fact, however, as in so many of their other attempts to imitate earlier models that they did not understand, they instead came across as merely hollow images, as effigies, unable to live up to their famous names.Footnote 43
Meanwhile, within the aduentus procession itself, the soldiers marched, arrayed in glittering armour, along with the clibanarii cavalry, dressed in breastplates and masks, whose appearance was such that ‘you might have thought them to be statues [simulacra] finished by the hand of Praxiteles, not men’ (16.10.8). I would not wish to argue that Ammianus’ description of the close-fitting armour of the cavalry was inaccurate or that describing them as resembling statues would necessarily always be pejorative, but rather that there is a tension inherent in the way in which they are described in this passage.Footnote 44 Ammianus states not only that they appear to be the products of great technical skill, but also that they no longer resemble men: they have gained a statuesque appearance, yet, in making this transformation, they have also lost any sense of recognisable humanity. This image is reinforced by the use of the term personatus to describe the fact that the cavalrymen are wearing masks, as one might expect in a ceremonial parade of this sort.Footnote 45 Like figmentum or simulacrum, however, this is a term which can have other, more critical resonances, since it often refers to the wearing of a mask for a theatrical performance, and thus also meant ‘pretended’, ‘affected’ or ‘masking one's true nature’.Footnote 46 Just as Jacques Fontaine identified the themes of theatricality and masking in his analysis of Ammianus’ description of Petronius Probus, here the description of the soldiers shows up the gulf between appearance and reality: these are fabricated troops for a fabricated triumph. In contrast, the dragon standards, the product of human artifice, were ‘open to the wind with their broad mouths and so hissing as though roused with anger, trailing the coils of their tails in the wind’ (16.10.7). Guy Sabbah has remarked on the contrast between the movement of the dragons and the immobility of the emperor, but regards it as part of the passage's wider disparity between the motionless Constantius and the activity of everything else surrounding him.Footnote 47 In fact, however, the dragons seem to stand in opposition not only to the emperor, but also to the many other seemingly lifeless figures that populate this diorama. In an inversion of the proper state of affairs, the only things that actually appeared to be alive in this procession were these false creations, woven from purple cloth.
These images thus contribute to the sense of unreality in the text, in which images can be mistaken for living creatures, and men for effigies. At the centre of this vivid scene, like the ridiculous figure of the usurper Procopius, sits the statuesque, yet ultimately hollow, Constantius, the great pretender. The one movement that Ammianus says that Constantius did make during his entry into the city was that, ‘when passing through high gates, he stooped his short body’.Footnote 48 Ammianus remarks elsewhere that Constantius was actually rather tall in the top half of his body, although his legs were short and bowed (21.16.19). Because of this, R.C. Blockley has suggested that perhumile in this passage should be taken predicatively to mean that Constantius ‘used to bend his body very low’.Footnote 49 This is possible, although Ammianus may merely be remarking on the difference between the heights of the gates and of the emperor, highlighting the fact that his ducking to pass through the gates was merely another facet of his deluded self-perception. This is underlined by Ammianus’ following comment on Constantius’ behaviour in the parade: ‘Although this behaviour was an affectation, it, and other aspects of his more private life, were however indications of extraordinary endurance, granted to him alone, as it was given to be supposed’ (16.10.11). Ammianus thus presented him as trying to act out the role of an emperor, a unique figure amongst humanity, by performing in this manner, but failing to understand that people easily saw through his charade.
There is another famous passage from Late Antiquity that could seem, at first glance, to suggest that describing an emperor as resembling a statue could be panegyrical. In his poem on Honorius’ fourth consulship, Claudian compares the appearance of the young emperor in a procession to a ceremony that took place in Egypt, where the effigies of the god was brought out and paraded.Footnote 50 This should not, however, be treated as analogous to Ammianus’ account of the aduentus at Rome. As Guy Sabbah has argued, it is important that Ammianus describes Constantius as resembling a statue not of a god but of a man, remarking that ‘l'immobilité de Constance qui, malgré tous ses efforts pour s'identifier à un dieu, n'arrive à imiter qu'une statue d'homme—figmentum hominis—n’était que la figure pauvrement masquée de la mortalité’.Footnote 51 Sabbah's reading contrasts the mortality of the emperor—and of all emperors—with the eternity of the city of Rome itself. While Constantius’ pretensions to a lofty status are evidently being ridiculed here, particularly in the comment about him stooping when passing under high gates, Ammianus’ criticism cuts deeper even than Sabbah acknowledges. Constantius does fail to appear as god-like, but, more significantly, he is also incapable of being a proper man, instead merely resembling a statue, with the outward appearance of an emperor but none of the essential virtues.Footnote 52 He strives to look the part, but only succeeds in revealing that he is incapable of fulfilling it.
* * *
With these issues in mind, it is worth briefly examining the remainder of Ammianus’ account of Constantius’ visit to Rome, in which the emperor moves through the city, entranced by its many wondrous sights. It is frequently remarked upon that Constantius’ behaviour in his aduentus is contrasted with his more ciuilis behaviour in 16.10.13-17, where he acts in a manner much more becoming for an emperor within Rome itself.Footnote 53 Undoubtedly, there is a clear change in his deportment. He marvels at the numerous amazing buildings, visits the Senate House and the imperial palace, addresses the people and presides over the games, even allowing them to be contested freely. In attempting to explain this apparent switch in Constantius’ behaviour, Guy Sabbah argues that the passage highlights the difference between Constantius’ affected immobility and the real quality possessed by the eternal city.Footnote 54 Pierre Dufraigne and Gavin Kelly have also sought to find a thematic unity to the whole account of Constantius’ visit, identifying it in an inversion of a triumph or aduentus, with the arriving emperor attempting to dazzle the city, but instead ending up being dazzled by it.Footnote 55 This passage thus becomes a hymn of praise to Roma aeterna.
Certainly, Ammianus’ account celebrates the city of Rome itself, although, significantly, his focus is really on the monuments from the earlier ages of the Republic and the first two centuries of the Principate, rather than on the contemporary inhabitants.Footnote 56 In fact, the main appearance by the ordinary populace in this passage comes in a description of their enjoyment of the games, for which Ammianus criticizes them elsewhere.Footnote 57 Importantly, while Constantius’ actions within the city may be seen as respectful, Ammianus repeatedly emphasizes the alien nature of Rome, at least from the perspective of the emperor. When he first surveys the buildings, he is ‘astounded’—obstipuit—and ‘struck by the great mass of amazing sights’—miraculorum densitate praestrictus (16.10.13). Here, in what should be the centre of his empire, the emperor is acting like a tourist. Even the visit to his own palace is described as an exciting novelty, in which he ‘enjoyed a longed-for delight’.Footnote 58 In his exploration of the city, looking at a large number of historic buildings that are listed in this passage, he is constantly reminded of his predecessors, whose examples he fails to follow. Literally towering over him are the columns of Trajan, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, which carry ‘statues of earlier emperors’—priorum principum imitamenta (16.10.14). Here, after the end of the aduentus passage, statues continue to appear in Ammianus’ account, now providing models for Constantius to look up to and marvel at, but not to be able to reach through his actions.
The climax of his walkabout was the Forum of Trajan, where he once again ‘stopped, astonished’.Footnote 59 Ammianus reports that Constantius realized that he could not build anything like it, so he ‘said that he wished to, and could, copy [imitari] only the horse of Trajan, placed in the middle of the atrium, which carried the emperor himself’ (16.10.15). Constantius’ ambition is here limited to one tiny attempt to imitate Trajan: he cannot build a forum like his, let alone rule like him, so he merely tries to reproduce his statue.Footnote 60 In fact, however, the emperor's failure ends up being even greater. After Constantius declared his wish to copy the equestrian statue, the Persian prince Hormisdas, who was in his retinue, remarked: ‘first, Emperor, command that such a stable [stabulum] be constructed, if you are able; let the horse, which you are arranging to make, range as widely as the one which we see’.Footnote 61 Importantly, however, Constantius does not then go on to copy the statue, at least in Ammianus’ account, electing eventually to add an obelisk to Rome instead.Footnote 62 Whatever the term stabulum may be denoting here, Constantius is not able to resemble Trajan. In an eminently Tacitean inversion, his inability to live up to the model of this paradigmatic emperor was revealed through a remark by a Persian foreigner, while the Roman emperor himself, standing in the very heart of Rome, was conspicuously unable to live up to Roman standards, acting like a foreign visitor to his own city. Constantius’ failure was complete: not only could he not imitate this earlier emperor, he could not even imitate his statue.
* * *
The passage on the arrival of Constantius into Rome, as well as his subsequent tour through the great monuments of the city, is suffused with expressions that create a sense of unreality, false appearances and failed acting by a man who had some small inkling of how he needed to behave, but no real understanding of what it meant to be an emperor.Footnote 63 Ammianus’ writings contain numerous references to theatricality and pretence, both in the behaviour of Constantius and in pejorative descriptions of other figures. In 16.10, as elsewhere, Constantius emerges as an unsuccessful performer, unable to play his role properly, but also existing in a wider world of actors, masks and fictions. This passage should, therefore, be read not as a neutral description of an imperial ceremony, but as a skilful attack to undermine the authority of an inadequate ruler. As such, it ought not to be relied upon so heavily by historians in reconstructing the general conventions of late-antique aduentus or, more specifically, a concept of the hieratic statuesque pose of the emperor himself.
