The Historians of Late Antiquity (10 page)

Perhaps the historian Eutropius should also be identified with the Eutropius who moved in important circles in Rome in the late 370s and the 380s. This would suggest that after the death of Valens, Eutropius regained influence in the courts of Gratian and Theodosius. The powerful Roman aristocrat Symmachus corresponded with this Eutropius, in one case attempting to enlist his support on behalf of a governmental position for a protégé. Eutropius would have shared an interest in early Roman history with Symmachus, who was an editor of the works of Livy. This Eutropius was appointed prefect of Illyricum. Numerous laws appear under his name from January of 380 until September of 381. It has been suggested that the laws reveal a merciful character, since some mitigate or remit serious penalties. After his departure from that position, he presumably remained in the east. His correspondence with Symmachus and with Libanius survives from the following decade. In 387, Eutropius received the highest possible honor when he was appointed eastern consul with the emperor Valentinian II as his colleague in the west. He last appears in history as the addressee of a letter from Libanius written in 390 and of letters from Symmachus in the same year.

Eutropius was almost certainly a pagan, but not a militant one. He faults Julian for his overzealous attacks on Christianity, but points out that he refrained from bloodshed (10.16.3). He is guardedly critical in his judgement of Constantine (Bird 1987: 147–8), and he prudently avoids discussion of religion when he treats the other emperors. His correspondence with the pagan Symmachus omits any mention of Christianity, although opportunities were not lacking (Seeck 1883/1984: cxxxii).

Work

The
Breviarium
of Eutropius is divided into ten books and treats Roman history from Romulus to the death of Jovian. The work takes up seventy-one pages in the Teubner edition, as compared to the fifty-two pages Victor uses to cover only the empire. The first book covers the period from the founding of the city to the sack of Rome by the Gauls around 390, and thus covers the same ground as the first five books of Livy. The second book, which ends with the successful conclusion of the First Punic War, covers the same ground as books 6 to 20 of Livy. Book 3 also parallels the structure of Livy’s history, concluding with the defeat of Carthage in the Second Punic War, which Livy treated in books 21 to 30. Book 4,
however, diverges from the Livian model by concluding with the Jugurthine War, passing quickly over the Third Punic War, and completely omitting the Gracchi from consideration.

The conclusion of the fourth book introduces “the great” Sulla, along with Marius, and their struggle dominates the fifth book. The sixth book features the war between Pompey and Caesar and concludes with Caesar’s assassination. Eutropius makes no secret of his preference for Sulla in the fifth book and Pompey in the sixth (Bird 1990: 88). The history was arranged to place the two civil wars in the central books, at the price of a slight imbalance in the fifth book, which is considerably shorter than the rest.

The books which cover the empire end at traditional division points. Book 7 concludes with the assassination of Domitian, which Tacitus and Suetonius had also understood to be a significant historical turning point. To begin the eighth book, Eutropius takes advantage of a coincidence to praise his sponsor by dating the transition from the tyrant Domitian to the noble Nerva during the consulship of Vetus and the emperor’s namesake Valens. Book 8 concludes with the death of Alexander Severus, which had been recognized as an important transitional moment by Aurelius Victor as well (Bird 1990: 89) and book 9 begins with Maximinus gaining power. Victor (25.1), and presumably their common source, the
KG
, note that Maximinus was the first emperor to seize power without senatorial consent. Eutropius concludes the ninth book with the voluntary retirement of Diocletian, whom he admires, and thus a book which had begun on an ominous note and which covered a difficult period for the empire ends on an upbeat note. The last book brings the story up to the death of Jovian. Eutropius concludes with words very similar to those with which Ammianus concludes his history: “What remains must be related by a greater pen. We do not now so much pass over them as reserve them for greater care in writing” (10.18.3).

Eutropius’ suggestion that contemporary events require the more elevated prose of panegyric emphasizes the plain and unpretentious style of his work (see Santini 1979; Bird 1992: li–liii; Hellegouarc’h 1999: xlvii–liii). In contrast to Aurelius Victor, Eutropius makes few attempts to allude to historical models or to adorn his prose with rhetorical figures. The work appears as the product of a bureaucrat in several ways. Lexically, Eutropius employs many abstract substantives which are commonly found in legal codes and other products of the chancery (Santini 1979: 5–6). The narrative connections, particularly in the first half of the work,
are frequently rudimentary. Simple sentences follow upon each other with simple transitional phrases such as “then,” “next,” or “a little later.” The lack of subordination creates a monotonous feel to the syntax, which perhaps reaches its peak in a description of Trajan (8.4) which contains eleven coordinate participles. Eutropius’ use and reuse of the same phrases and words increase the monotony of the work. Consider the first phrases of the chapters in the first book, which deal with the Roman kings: “Afterwards, Numa Pompilius became king … ” (1.3.1); “Tullus Hostilius succeeded him” (1.4.1); “After him, Ancus Marcius … ” (1.5.1); “Then Priscus Tarquinius took the throne” (1.6.1); “After him, Servius Tullius took power…” (1.7.1). Consider as well, also in the first book, the first phrases of the chapters which describe the early republic: “In the second year also …” (1.11.1); “In the ninth year after the kings were expelled …” (1.12.1); “In the sixteenth year after the kings were expelled …” (1.13.1); “In the following year” (1.14); “In the eighteenth year after the kings were driven out …” (1.15). Eutropius even twice uses the word “exordium,” “beginning,” artlessly in the very first sentence of the work.

Other elements of the history are formulaic, and thus perhaps typical of a historian who is used to the hackneyed and repetitive writing typical of official documents. He is given to numbers and lists: four wars of Sulla (6.1) and four campaigns of Domitian (7.23.4), four theaters of battle in the Second Punic War (3.13.1), three triumphs in the year 146 (4.14.2) (Hellegouarc’h 1999: xliii–xlv). He dutifully records which emperors were voted divine honors by the senate upon death. His use of the impersonal passive has been seen as typical for a bureaucrat who is trained to write objectively and to see people as cogs in the machinery of the empire (Santini 1979: 9).

Hellegouarc’h emphasizes the difference in style between Eutropius’ treatment of the royal and republican periods and his treatment of the imperial period. While the first part is organized in annalistic fashion, the second part is organized biographically (1999: xxii–xxiii). Pompey, Caesar, and Octavian serve as transitional figures in this arrangement, since the sections devoted to them incorporate more biographical information than had appeared in earlier books, but less than would appear in later books. In the last book, where Eutropius draws upon his personal experience to describe contemporary emperors, he provides more detail. The different approaches to the arrangement of the material result from the changing sources upon which Eutropius drew.

Livy, and perhaps an epitome of Livy, is the primary source for the royal and republican sections of Eutropius. The
Suda
(under the entry “Kapiton”) describes Eutropius as an epitomator of Livy, and many modern studies have demonstrated the accuracy of this description for the first six books of the work (Capozza 1962/3, 1973; Scivoletto 1970; Ratti 1996: 24). This dependence is clear both in the annalistic structure of the first books and in some of the phrasing and judgements. Eutropius’ dependence upon Livy for the history of the royal and republican periods does not, however, result in mere compression and reproduction of the earlier historian’s work. Rather, the act of compression lends different emphasis to certain events, and results in the omission of others. Eutropius also brings a distinctly fourth-century approach to his interpretation of the earlier periods. His criterion for evaluating the kings, for example, is colored by their superficial similarities to the autocratic emperors of his own day, and his evaluations of the republican senate and consulship are influenced by his understanding of the vastly different late antique institutions (Capozza 1973).

Book 7, which covers the emperors from Augustus to Domitian, contains information and phrasing which was clearly derived from the biographies of Suetonius. Eutropius included other information, however, which was not found in Suetonius, but which Aurelius Victor also included. These commonalities between Eutropius and Victor, and particularly their shared errors, formed the basis of the hypothesis of their shared source, “Enmann’s Kaisergeschichte,” or the
KG
(Ratti 1996: 25–30). Although some scholars have denied the existence of this work (which is more fully described in the chapter on Aurelius Victor), the evidence for its existence and influence is substantial. For example, although Eutropius often provides information which is identical to that of Victor, he also occasionally is more accurate or more specific than Victor. Since Victor wrote before Eutropius, it is clear that a shared source could be the only explanation (cf. Ratti 1996: 33–45). The
KG
was arranged biographically, as are Eutropius’ books 7–9. Eutropius also seems to mirror the
KG
by including similar details in each biography: the emperor’s family background, his personality and actions, the date of his death, the length of his reign, his age at death, and whether he was voted divine honors by the senate (Hellegouarc’h 1999: xxxiii).

While Eutropius seems to have used some other sources beyond Livy and the
KG
, their influence appears to have been limited. The
Breviarium
was presumably written in a quick and workmanlike
fashion which did not demand extensive research or pretensions to scholarship. It was, rather, written by a courtier in service to the emperor for official state purposes. Thus it is not surprising to find that one other source upon which Eutropius may have drawn directly or indirectly was the self-promoting testament of the emperor Augustus known as the
Res Gestae Divi Augusti
(Ratti 1996: 47–68).

Eutropius’ general approach to history is traditionalist. He favors the senate, the expansion of the empire, and powerful military leaders. A senator himself, the historian emphasizes the wisdom and importance of the senate in his account of the republican period. Of sixteen mentions of the senate in the first four books, for example, fifteen are positive (Bird 1988b: 65). Eutropius also favors Sulla over Marius (5.3–4), and Brutus over Caesar (6.25). In later books, Eutropius judges emperors in part based on their relationships with the senate. The abominable Nero “killed a large part of the senate and was an enemy to all good men” (7.14.1) and Domitian “killed the most noble from the senate” (7.23.2). But during the beneficent reign of Trajan, only one senator was condemned, and the condemnation took place at the direction of the senate itself (8.4). Eutropius’ habit of ending many imperial biographies with a notice of
consecratio
, the vote of the senate to confer divinity upon favored emperors after death, may likewise be interpreted as emphasizing senatorial power.

The
Breviarium
of Eutropius focuses almost entirely on military affairs. Both Eutropius and Festus write at the behest of Valens in preparation for a major eastern campaign, and their concentration on military glory in their official works may be compared to the work of Aurelius Victor, who is much more leery of military power. A preoccupation with military success can be seen in Eutropius’ diction: Hellegouarc’h counts thirty examples of
triumphare
and twenty-one of
triumphus
in the work (1999: xl). The
Breviarium
lacks significant information on economic, cultural, or institutional history. This helps to explain the almost complete lack of information on the “Struggle of the Orders” which marked the early republic, and the complete erasure of the career of the Gracchi. Republican history is reduced to events which demonstrate the supremacy of the senate and which chronicle the military expansion of the state. Eutropius treats the imperial period in a similar way, judging emperors largely on their military successes. He portrays Augustus primarily as a military conqueror (7.9). By contrast, bad emperors are not warriors, like Caligula, who “undertook a war
against the Germans, but after entering Suebia, made no effort” (7.12.2). Eutropius’ bellicose attitude is clear in his statement that Trajan widely extended the borders of the empire which, after Augustus, “had been defended rather than honorably enlarged” (8.2.2). He also makes military discipline a prominent theme, perhaps because Valens himself was a severe disciplinarian (Amm. 31.14.1; Bird 1990: 91–2). The conclusion of the work dwells on the humiliation of Jovian’s loss of territory in the east, which Eutropius sees as unequalled in more than a thousand years of Roman history (10.17.2). This should be understood as a rallying cry for the looming Persian campaign of Valens, and the final conclusion to the work, “we reserve these matters for a more ornate composition” (10.18.3), looks to a panegyric to praise the emperor’s military success to date and predict glory in the campaign to come.

The ideology of the
Breviarium
is wholly conventional, as one might expect from its quasi-official nature, and Eutropius’ concerns can be readily paralleled in other fourth-century works. The historian praises good relations between the emperors and the senatorial aristocracy, which may be achieved by emperors who recognize their shared interests with the local and bureaucratic elites. Emperors should be reminded of the need for
civilitas
, the “civility” which restrains them from excessive punishments and encourages them to support the established leadership of the cities (Scivoletto 1970). In turn, aristocrats are encouraged to support the glory of the state and, in particular, glorious military expansion. In a world in constant danger of civil war and of alienation between civilian and military leaders, Eutropius’ work draws upon the past in the hope of unifying contemporaries in support of foreign conquest.