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St. Peter in Ammianus?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 August 2011
Extract
In his digression on Egypt, Ammianus Marcellinus tells of the influence which Egyptian learning exerted on Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, and Solon. He then continues: Ex his fontibus per sublimia gradiens, sermonum amplitudine Iovis aemulus Platon, visa Aegypto militavit sapientia gloriosa (xxii, 16.22). Such is Clark's standard text (1910): Gardthausen's edition of 1874 printed the non of the codices in place of Valesius' suggested Platon, and Iesus (from an assumed ihs.), a clever emendation of Gutschmid's, after his. At this late day it would be superfluous to observe that the reading non is the more probable point of corruption in the received text; Iesus, I believe, has vanished forever from this passage, leaving us without a single specific allusion to Christ in the surviving portion of the history. Of course Ammianus has much to say about Christianity and its bishops and other devotees, but an expression of warm regard for its founder would have changed our estimate of his attitude, which, as matters now stand, seems one of tolerance at best.
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- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1954
References
1 Annuaire de l'Institut de Philologie et d'Histoire Orientales et Slaves, X (= Mélanges Grégoire) (1950) 329–32.
2 W. Ensslin, Klio, Beiheft XVI (1923) 9; Thompson, E. A., The Historical Work of Ammianus Marcellinus (Cambridge, 1947), 18Google Scholar.
3 See Thompson, op. cit, 18, 117.
4 Thompson, op. cit., 108–17, argues plausibly that Ammianus felt restricted in the expression of his opinions, especially on religious topics, when he was writing Books XXVI–XXXI in the last years of Theodosius' reign.
5 Exsuperare is common enough in both the absolute sense (e.g., Virgil, Aeneid, xii, 19–20: quantum ipse jeroci/ virtute exsuperas) and as a transitive. According to the index verborum in Ernesti's edition (1773), Ammianus uses the verb in only two other passages, once with an object and once without: … quas (sc. gentes) exsuperant Tochari (xxiii, 6.57); leges … inter quas diritate exsuperant latae contra ingratos et desertores (xxiii,6.81).
6 See Cicero, In Vatinium 14; Horace, Epode 5; Juvenal, Sat., vi,551–52; an epigram attributed to Seneca, De sacris evocantis animas Magnorum (Baehrens, Poetae Latini Minores, IV, p. 60), which Herrmann, by an ingenious but hardly cogent argument, would relate to St. Peter (Latomus, V [1946] 303–10); Eusebius, Hist. Eccles., viii,14.5, concerning Maxentius; and two such charges brought against Julian: Theodoretus, Hist. Eccles., iii,21 (cf. Cassiodorus, Hist. Tripart., vi,48, in Migne, PL, LXIX, cols. 1062–63), and a Syriac text (published by J. G. Ernst, Kiel, 1880; inaccessible) which alleges that the Apostate tore out the hearts of five infants for use in magic (see Labriolle, P., La réaction païenne [Paris, 1934], p. 427Google Scholar).