In 2018 to deserved fanfare Brill published Philological and Historical Commentary on Ammianus XXXI, the last volume of a project that began some 83 years earlier with the 1935 Ph.D. dissertation of P. de Jonge. The critical acumen of its contributors pervades each page with detailed notes and references, the kind which typify an authoritative work that brings together experts with decades of experience and a deep abiding interest and familiarity with their text. The celebrations for concluding the project may have been somewhat muted by the prospect of revising or at least updating earlier volumes, especially Books 14–18, which were completed by P. de Jonge and now look somewhat worse for wear given the high standards set and achieved by Den Boeft, Drijvers (from Book 22 onwards), Den Hengst and Teitler.

When the project began in 1935, Ammianus’ text was in disarray, especially at points that involved unique syntax or peculiar vocabulary. With the aid of the commentary series a critical reader of Ammianus is now well equipped to reflect on such points, and even if not every solution is satisfactory, the severity and frequency of textual problems are now far less than they once were. In that regard the completion of the commentary series has paved the way for important advancements, including a new critical edition and English translation by G. Kelly, which will surely go a long way towards correcting the deep conservatism of the Teubner edition, still widely cited, and ameliorating the somewhat stilted modern translations, which the commentators rightly critique freely.

Another largely glowing English language review of this volume already exists by a former colleague of mine known for his critical perspicuity, and so there seems little point in continuing in such vein lest anyone find me bordering on panegyric (D. Woods, BMCR 2018.09.50). Instead I propose to offer a few specific criticisms, none of which should distract from the important contribution that this volume makes to the project and the study of Ammianus’ Res Gestae.

The volume, like others before it, is selective in what quotations it deems worthy of translation; finding a consistent rationale behind these decisions remains elusive, so for example, a quotation from Virgil's G. 2.105–6 on p. 69 is followed by G.P. Goold's translation whereas five pages later a quotation from Aen. 2.54–6 is left untranslated. Perhaps in this case it is because the Aeneid is more widely known, but these inconsistencies are so prevalent that one wonders whether it depends on the predilection of individual commentators rather than the merits of each case. The pedantic critic may find other inexplicable instances of variatio in the volume, such as on p. xvii ‘near the city of Dibaltum, modern Debelt’, ‘Beroea (Stara Zagora)’, ‘Marcianopolis (the present Devnja)’ and on p. 86 ‘Marcianopolis, the present Devnja’. Typically references to Ammianus are generously cited, but not always. On p. 5, for example, readers are merely pointed towards the TLL for the ‘several instances’ in which Ammianus uses agitare to mean ‘harass’ or ‘annoy’.

The series began in a different scholarly context. The volume's second aim is to ‘appreciate his [Ammianus’] literary achievement’, but this appreciation is regularly made secondary to historical concerns or betrayed by the commentators’ approach towards Ammianus’ ‘difficult language’. In the wake of G. Kelly (Ammianus, the Allusive Historian [2008]) and A. Ross (Ammianus’ Julian: Narrative and Genre in the Res Gestae [2016]) any new commentary project on Ammianus would probably need to give literary dimensions more attention. Perhaps this is asking too much for one commentary to be philological, historical and literary, but literary dimensions in Ammianus’ text nevertheless remain a consistent blindside in the series. In this volume this manifests itself in the detailed attempt to create a timeline for the battle of Adrianople, which assumes that Ammianus’ aim was to report accurately what happened rather than provide an engaging story complete with narrative time (e.g. p. xvii ‘temporal expressions inhibit the reconstruction of an exact chronology’). The commentators thus allow that Ammianus provides ‘a gripping account of the mounting tension during the days before the battle’ (p. 195), but offer little to no explanation as to how this excitement is achieved. Such speculation might fall beyond their scope, but other commentaries on Latin historiography, such as A.J. Woodman's Agricola (2014), stand as worthy models of how history and literature may benefit from being considered side by side. This is not to find fault with the meticulously constructed chronology, which is no mean feat given the challenges involved, but it may have been clearer to the reader unwilling to wade through the minutiae if the timeline preceded rather than followed the detailed chronological reconstruction.

A real strength of the commentary series is its engagement with secondary scholarship, especially on points that have failed to produce a scholarly consensus. No commentary on Book 31 could get away without discussing M. Kulikowski's radical argument (in ‘Coded Polemic in Ammianus Book 31 and the Date and Place of its Composition’, JRS 102 [2012], 79–102) that Book 31 was originally a separate composition, first composed in Greek. The former is put under strain by the repeated connections drawn between Amm. Marc. 31 and the other books, the latter is convincingly refuted: how could Ammianus allude with lexical precision to Virgil and Sallust in Greek, but Kulikowski's other arguments, including Ammianus’ engagement with Libanius and Themistius in Book 31, deserve further consideration. Closer consideration of S. Tougher's analysis of eunuchs in Ammianus (‘Ammianus and the Eunuchs’, in The Late Roman World and its Historian: Interpreting Ammianus Marcellinus [1999], pp. 64–74, which is not cited in the bibliography) may have helped complicate somewhat the characterisation of Ammianus’ attitude towards eunuchs at p. 17.

When reconciling ancient evidence, the commentators have a general tendency to preference Ammianus’ testimony over other sources, such as at p. 296, where Zosimus’ account of the action of the general Iulius differs substantially. This move is by no means wrong, but has a tendency to come across as a matter of taste rather than historical judgement ‘when, as in this case, there is no cogent reason to follow Zosimus, and we have to choose between these two authors, we prefer Amm.’, although few would probably quarrel with the view (that likely underpins that remark) that Ammianus is the better historian.

As to errors in the text, I found very few. Redundant commas may be found on p. xvi ‘shows, that’ and p. 11 ‘The reason is, that’. The prose is typically clear, although the phrase ‘[Ammianus] portrays the Huns and the Alans … as the ultimate Other if set against Graeco-Roman civilization’ (p. 12) is not a good example of that clarity.

The volume's contribution to scholarship remains impressive, and it will surely be essential to readers of Ammianus’ Res Gestae for decades to come.