Eunuchs in the « Historia Augusta »

Societe d’Etudes Latines de Bruxelles

Eunuchs in the «Historia Augusta »Author(s): Alan CameronSource: Latomus, T. 24, Fasc. 1 (JANVIER-MARS 1965), pp. 155-158Published by: Societe d’Etudes Latines de BruxellesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41524451 .

Accessed: 31/07/2013 17:58

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Societe d’Etudes Latines de Bruxelles is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toLatomus.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 129.68.65.223 on Wed, 31 Jul 2013 17:58:46 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=selbruxelles

http://www.jstor.org/stable/41524451?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Eunuche in lhe «Historia Augusta »

Ever since 1889 when Dessau astonished the scholarly world by claiming that the Historia Augusta (HA) could not have been written under Diocletian and Constan tine when its authors (SHA) profess to have written it but was in its entirety a forgery of a later age, hardly a year has passed without some new alleged anachronism in the work being announced, or some new theory propounded to explain why the authors concealed their true identity. But the matter has never been definitely proved to the satisfaction of all. A. D. Momigliano in particular has shown that it is possible to disbelieve in most of the arguments hitherto adduced without incurring the reproach of pre- posterous special pleading (1), though few perhaps would share the conviction of A. H. M. Jones, the most recent historian of the Later Empire, that « there is no valid reason for doubting that the Historia Augusta could have been written at the date its authors profess to have written it» (2). Most scholars would probably agree that there is at any rate something highly suspicious about the work (3), but even at this late stage of the quest for the answer to its riddle, it is still of vital importance for those who maintain that the HA is in whole or part a late forgery (and this is the majority of those who have concerned themselves with the problem in recent years), to be able to point to one really certain anachronism, one passage that could not possibly have been written before the death of Constantine. In a recent article T. Zawadzki claims at once to have detected such an anachronism, and to have explained why the authors found it necessary to conceal their identity (4) - this last point, as he rightly emphasises, being a fatal shortcoming in all theories hitherto propounded, not least those of Baynes and Hartke. It is doubtful, however, whether his own theory will stand up to criticism any better than the others.

(1) Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes , XVII (1954), p. 22 f., reprinted in Secondo Contributo alla storia degli studi classici (1960), pp. 104-43 with additional bibliography.

(2) Later Roman Empire , III (1964), p. 1, n. 1. (3) See my own contribution, Literary Allusions in the ' Historia Augusta , in Hermes,

92 (1964), 363 f. where at p. 374, n. 5 I wrongly accepted Chastagnol's argument that the reference to a indiciate carpentum in Aurel, i. 1 could not have been written before 382 : see now Momigliano's refutation in Rendiconti dell'Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei , 8, 19, 1964 pp. 225 f.

(4) Encore sur les buts et la date de composition de V Histoire Auguste in Studii clasice, V (1963), p. 249 f.



156 A. CAMERON

According to Zawadzki, the obvious dislike of eunuchs and resentment of their influence at court expressed in various passages, notably Vita Alex. Sev. 66-7, are an anachronism under Diocletian or Constantine, and only make sense under Constan tius II (*) or Arcadius, who were notoriously dominated by their eunuch chamberlains. He further claims that it was the very fact that they had dared to attack these all-powerful eunuchs and at Vita Alex . Sev. 67.1 had implored the reigning Emperor (ostensibly Constantine) to keep them in their place that obliged the authors to hide their real names. « Celui qui - publiquement - aurait donné au prince de tels conseils et admonitions, en insultant de plus son entourage immédiat, pouvait se con- sidérer comme pratiquement perdu» (2).

To take the second of these points first, there are two serious flaws in Za- dawski's argumentation. Firstly, he alleges that the one period in the later 4th century that is excluded is the reign of Julian - precisely the period proposed by Baynes - because it was the one period when it would have been unnecessary to implore the Emperor to keep eunuchs in their place, for Julian notoriously dismissed all the court eunuchs immediately upon his accession. But here Zawadzki has unfortunately not read his texts very carefully. For Alex. Sev. 67.1 does not implore the Emperor to dispense with eunuchs : it congratulates him on having already done so. After a section denouncing their vices the writer continues :

« Scio imperatore 4u°d periculo ista dicantur apud imperatorem , qui talibus serviity sed salva re publica posteaquam intellexisti quid mali clades istae [= eunuchi] habeant et quemadmodum principes circumveniant, et tu eos e о lo - ci h ab e s ut пес chlamyde uti iusseris, sed de necessitatibus domesticis delegaris».

Since Julian is the only Emperor who is known to have drastically curtailed the power of eunuchs, it is hardly surprising that Baynes regarded the passage as strong evidence in support of his view that the Emperor addressed was really Julian. However this may be, it certainly does not tell against Baynes' theory, and if Baynes was right, then it could not possibly have been fear of eunuchs that caused the SHA to conceal their names : his reign would have been the one period when it was possible to denounce eunuchs with complete impunity. Zawadzki falls here into the common methodological error of basing his date on his own theory concerning the Tendenz of the HA instead of basing his theory on an independently established date. Next he claims as a parallel supporting his theory that it was not till after the fall of Arcadius' eunuch chamberlain Eutropius that Claudian dared to publish his savage attack on Eutropius. Unfortunately this is not true. The second book of Claudian's invective was published after Eutropius' fall, but the first and by far the most violent of the two books was recited when he was still at the height of his power as consul in the early part of 399 (3). In any case Eutro-

(1) As already argued by H. Stern, Date et Destinataire de Г« Histoire Auguste» (1953) p. 79 f.

(2) op. cit. 256. (3) P. Fargues, Claudien : Étude sur sa poésie et son temps (1933), p. 23, n. 5 ; E. De-

mougeot, De l'unité à la division de Vempire romain (1951), p. 220.



EUNUCHS IN THE (( HISTORIA AUGUSTA )) 157

piiis* power did not extend to the West, which was at this time at a state of cold war with the Eastern part of the Empire. The SHA , who certainly wrote in Rome, would have been perfectly free, just as Claudian was, to attack eunuchs quite openly during the reign of Arcadius. More generally, it is hard to believe that they would have needed to take the double precaution both of concealing their real names under pseudonyms and of taking such immense pains to pass off the whole of the HA as having been written 50 or 100 years previously, just so that they could indulge in a mere half-dozen brief references to eunuchs.

But is dislike of eunuchs necessarily an anachronism under Constantine ? Zawadzki himself admits that the first eunuch praepositus sacri cubiculi is attested in 326, some years before Constantine's death (x), and there is in fact good reason to believe that eunuchs were already becoming influential at the court of Diocletian (2). It has recently been plausibly suggested« that the consistent use of eunuchs as chamberlains and their exercise of power is likely to have begun with Diocletian and is to be connected with the elaboration of court ritual » (3) . Senators, as we know from later 4th century sources found it particularly galling to be obliged to curry favour with such creatures, and this resentment must surely have been particularly acute when eunuchs first began to usurp these functions. The HA undoubtedly represents the point of view of the senatorial aristocracy of Rome, and what more natural than for senators to have denounced Diocletian's policy of fostering oriental eunuchism to his successor Constantine in the hope that he would discontinue it ? It is known that Constantine was more disposed to conciliate the senatorial class than Diocletian had been (4), and it is also known that he passed a law forbidding castration on Roman soil {Cod. Just. IV.42.1), which of itself implies that there was a growing demand for eunuchs at the time. Taking these factors into consideration it does not seem to me that there are sufficient grounds for denying the possibility that Constantine might have taken steps to curb the ascendancy that eunuchs had been gaining during the long reign of Diocletian (and were to regain so disastrously in the reign of his own son and successor Constantius II) - or at any rate that senatorial writers might during his reign have warned him of the dangers of eunuchism and congra- tulated him in anticipation on restricting them. The references to eunuchs in the HA may then be anachronisms (5), and tendentious anachronisms

(1) Following E. Stein, Histoire du Bas-Empire , I (1959), p. 469, n. 79. (2) The evidence is collected by B. de Gaiffier, Palatins et eunuques dans quelques docu-

ments hagiographiques y in Analecta Bollandiana , LXXV (1957), pp. 17-46. (3) M. K. Hopkins, Eunuchs in Politics in the Later Roman Empire , in Proceedings of the

Cambridge Philological Society, 189 (n. s. 9) 1963, p. 77 : on the 'orientalising' elaboration of court ritual see ib. p. 73, and Stein, Bas-Empire , I, p. 437, n. 20.

(4) A. H. M. Jones, op. cit., I, p. 106. (5) Though again it is perfectly possible that a weak oriental like Elagabalus, used to

an oriental way of life, did depend on his eunuchs (Vita Alex. Sev. 45, 4-5), and that his successor Alexander Severus, who allowed himself to be influenced by the senate (cf.



158 A. CAMERON

at that, but there is no necessity to date them after Constantine (1). I would suggest therefore that Zawadzki's attempt to solve the riddle of the

date and purpose of the HA at one stroke falls well short of conviction on both counts.

Bedford College , London. Alan Cameron.

F. Millar, A Study of Cassius Dio , [1964], p. 103), did take steps to reduce their power С Vita ib . and 66.3-4).

(1) Since the above was written, Lellia Ruggini, Il vescovo Ambrogio e la Historia Au- gusta : Attualità di un topos politico-letterario , Atti del Colloquio Patavino sulla Historia Augusta (Università degli studi di Padova : publicazioni dell'istituto di storia antica iv), 1963, pp. 67 f., has underlined once more the prominence accorded by the HA to eunuchs. It cannot, of course, be denied that these allusions would have greater contemporary relevance if written under Constantius II or Arcadius ; but this is very far from proving that they were actually written then. See my review in J RS lv (1965).



Documents

Eunuchs in the « Historia Augusta »