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Gregory of Nazianzus on the Death of Julian the Apostate (Or. 5.13)

Writing in 365, Gregory of Nazianzus (Or. 5.13) revealed that he already knew four different accounts concerning the circumstances of the emperor Julians fatal wounding in June 363.1 First, some reported that Julian was hit by the Persians ( ) while dashing here and there in the midst of battle. Next, others reported that he went to the peak of some high ground in order to survey his army, and that when he had declared that it would be a disgrace to return to Roman territory with so many men, one of his own soldiers ( ) became angry at him, and stabbed him. Third, others reported that it was one of the barbarian jesters ( - ) who followed the soldiers in order to entertain them who had killed him.2 Finally, some credited the glory of having killed the emperor to one of the Saracens ( ), although Gregory did not clarify on which side this Saracen was supposed to have been fighting on at the time.

It is clear from a number of other relatively early and reliable sources that Julian was killed in the midst of battle, exactly as reported by Gregory in the first of his accounts.3 Furthermore, Libanius (Or. 24.6) and Philostorgius (HE 7.15) specifically identify his attacker during this battle as a Saracen. Hence Gregorys first and fourth reports probably preserve slight variants of the same basic account that Julian was killed in battle by an enemy missile, whether thrown by a Persian or a Saracen. However, Gregory is our only source for the second and third of his varied accounts. Neither seems to have any factual basis, as presented at least. So what was their origin?

In the case of the claim that Julian was killed while surveying his army from some high ground, two possible explanations suggest themselves.4 The first is

1 On the circumstances of Gregorys composition of Or. 5, see Elm 2012, 433-477.2 The claim that Julians burning of his fleet at Ctesiphon aroused laughter (Or. 5.12), because

it seemed to be akin to suicide, may be intended to prepare the reader for this version of his death.

3 See e.g. Lib. Or. 268-269; Fest. Brev. 28; Eutr. Brev. 10.16; Amm. 25.3.6; Epit. de Caes. 43.3.4 Lugaresi (1997, 200) treats it as a rhetorical re-working of one of the arguments offered by the

Persian deserter in favour of the burning of the Roman fleet in Or. 5.11, that the possession of

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that it is a re-working of the account by Herodotus (7.44-46) of how the Persian king Xerxes had surveyed his army from a seat on a hill at Abydos before his invasion of Greece in 480BC and had openly wept when he had considered the shortness of human life and how not one of his men would be alive in a hundred years. The second is that it is a re-working of a tradition now pre-served only by Zonaras (13.8) that the emperor Constantius II had ascended a hill immediately after the battle of Mursa against the usurper Magnentius in AD351, had wept openly on account of the great numbers that had been killed, and had ordered an honourable burial for all, regardless of on which side they had fought. In the context of a description of the death of Julian while leading a massive invasion of Persia, one suspects that Gregorys story is probably a re-working of the former rather than of the latter. In either case, the intention would have been to contrast the compassion felt by either Xerxes or Constantius for the plight of the ordinary soldier to the cold disregard allegedly displayed by Julian towards the same.5

It is not necessary here to accuse Gregory, or even his source, of having delib-erately invented this story in order to blacken the name of Julian. Gregory may well have misunderstood some extended rhetorical contrast between Julian, characterized as a pitiless man who had led his army to the point of starvation by the time of his own death, and Xerxes, characterized as a man who had been moved to tears of compassion while surveying his army on a hill, to the point that he had genuinely, but mistakenly, believed it to claim that Julian had also been surveying his army from a hill when he had been killed. If this was not the result of the hurried and careless reading of a Greek source, it may well have been due to his poor translation of a Latin source, since Gregory himself admits that he had little Latin.6

In the case of the claim that Julian was killed by one of the barbarian jesters who followed the soldiers in order to entertain them, it has been argued that

excessive supplies engenders cowardice, where the purpose of this invention is to encourage the belief that one of his own soldiers could have killed Julian. Unfortunately, this attempted explanation pays no attention to the actual details of the story.

5 Julian himself compares the size of Constantius fleet during his civil-war against Magnentius to that of Xerxes during his invasion of Greece (Or. 1, 42c-d). Similarly, Ammianus (23.3.9) compares the size of Julians fleet during his Persian expedition to that of Xerxes. Again, Libanius (Or. 15.40) writes begging Julian to show mercy towards Antioch in the way that Xerxes had shown mercy towards his former enemies. Hence Xerxes always loomed large in the late Roman imagination when describing large military undertakings, not least when these involved the Persians. See Shayegan 2011, 361-366.

6 Greg. Naz. Ep. 173.1 (to the praetorian prefect Postumianus): , .

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this may represent his misinterpretation of a report that a barbarian scurra had killed Julian, where scurra had acquired a new meaning in late Latin, slang for a guardsman in the Roman army, in addition to its original classical meaning jester.7 This explanation has been widely reported, often with warm support.8 Its main weakness, however, is that it is not at all clear that the term scurra could actually be used of a Roman soldier in this way, whatever his eth-nic origin. In fact, none of the frequently cited occurrences of this term either in the work of Ammianus or in the Historia Augusta provide an unambiguous example of its use with this alleged meaning.9 The nearest any text comes to identifying the scurra as a type of soldier is when the author of the Historia Augusta claims that the German soldier who had killed the emperor Alexander Severus was performing the duty of the scurrae at the time.10 However, since this soldier seems to have been a recruit, the obvious reading of this text is that he was performing some menial task that would normally have been per-formed by scurrae, attendants of some type, rather than that these scurrae were themselves soldiers. On the whole, therefore, the evidence suggests that, in addition to its traditional classical meaning, fourth-century sources use the term scurra to describe the sort of individual who might previously have been described as a lixa, an attendant or camp follower of some sort, where these terms have come to overlap in meaning.11

Yet is it possible that Julian was killed by some menial attendant or camp fol-lower, whether or not he was actually a jester accustomed to entertaining the troops?12 On the whole, this seems most unlikely. Julian is not known to have indulged in the sort of harsh or cruel behaviour that might have provoked such a person to so desperate an action. More importantly, we know that Julian was actually killed on the battle-field, not in some domestic situation. Unless one is to assume that the original source for this tradition had deliberately fabricated

7 Baldwin 1986. On the classical meaning of scurra, see OLD, 1713.8 See e.g. Matthews 1989, 507, n. 3; Lugaresi 1997, 200; den Boeft et al. 2005, 68; Elm 2012, 455,

n. 74.9 As Baldwin (1986, 179, n. 4) admits in his discussion of Amm. 29.4.4 where it certainly

cannot be interpreted in reference to Roman soldiers: It does not absolutely have to mean guardsman in the HA and Ammianus passages.

10 HA, Alex. Sev. 61.3: unus ex Germanis, qui scurrarum officium sustinebat. The reference at Alex. Sev. 62.5 to his death at the hand of a barbarian scurra (scurrae barbari manu) simply abbreviates this fuller description earlier. In general, see Straub 1980.

11 On lixae, see Vishnia 2002. For a full discussion of the late antique use of the term scurra, see Straub 1980.

12 Von Petrikovits (1980) suggests that the lixae included professional entertainers among their number, but Vishnia (2002, 267) dismisses his arguments as highly speculative.

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it, and it is not clear why anyone would have attempted to do this when the truth was so well known, then the solution to this strange claim probably lies in some misunderstanding of an account of how Julian really was killed. Here one wonders whether Gregory, or his source, has not mistakenly applied a lit-eral meaning to the derogatory use of scurra, perhaps best translated as fool rather than jester in this case.13 This raises the question as to why anyone would have described Julians killer as a fool, and the obvious explanation is that it was because the killer did not in fact mean to kill Julian, but only did so accidentally, whether due to carelessness or incompetence. Such a term of abuse would presumably only have been used of a Roman soldier who had accidentally hit his own emperor rather than of a Persian who had been delib-erately trying to do so.14 Hence Gregorys claim that Julian was killed by a bar-barian jester may conceal a reference to the fact that he was accidentally hit by a barbarian fool serving within the Roman ranks.

There is, however, an alternative approach to this problem, without having to assume that Gregorys source had used the term scurra, although, as will become clear, these approaches are by no means incompatible. During the late 3rd or early 4th centuries, the Tetrarchs created a new type of infantry unit, the auxilium palatinum, from barbarian prisoners-of-war whom they had cap-tured in campaigns along the Rhine frontier, and one of the earliest of these units was entitled the Petulantes, from the Latin adjective petulans meaning forward, insolent, unruly.15 The interest of this name here lies in the fact that the adjective petulans, or its cognates, were often used to describe insolent or offensive humour.16 Hence Suetonius uses this adjective to describe how the emperor Augustus was attacked with insolent jokes, and the cognate noun to describe how Othos lixae and calones were provoked to particularly insolent mockery of Galba after his beheading.17 It is arguable, therefore, that Gregorys story of how Julian was killed by a barbarian jester may represent his misinter-pretation of a claim that he was killed by a member of the barbarian Petulantes

13 See e.g. Cic. N.D. 1.93: (Zeno) Socraten...Latino verbo utens scurram Atticum fuisse dicebat.14 Accidents did happen. Julian had a near miss when his horse Babylonius was accidentally

killed by a Roman artillery missile at the start of his campaign (Amm. 23.3.6).15 Speidel 2004. On the significance of this name, see also Wagner 2006, 191-193.16 OLD, 1370-1371; ThLL x.1, cols. 1984-1989.17 Suet. Aug. 56.1: Iocis quoque quorundam invidiosis aut petulantibus lacessitus; Galba 20.2:

maxime irritati ad talem iocorum petulantiam. The behaviour of the lixae and calones in the last case nicely illustrates the sort of behaviour that Gregory seems to have had in mind when referring to barbarian jesters who followed the soldiers.

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where he failed to recognize that this was the title of a military unit rather than a description of a group of insolent barbarian camp-followers.

The question arises as to whether it is credible that a member of the Petulantes should have killed Julian, accidentally or otherwise. As an auxilium palatinum, the Petulantes were an elite mobile unit attached to the palace, and it would have not have been surprising had they been fighting in relatively close proximity to the emperor himself at the time of his fatal wounding.18 More importantly, the auxilia palatina were light-infantry units, and Ammianus seems to describe the main group involved in the repulse of the Persians dur-ing the skirmish in which Julian was wounded as a light-infantry force.19 Given the confused circumstances of the skirmish, the fact that there seems to have been no co-ordination between this light-infantry force on the one hand and the small group gathered about Julian on the other, it is not impossible that a weapon thrown by a member of the light-infantry force may have hit Julian as he was engaged in hot pursuit of the retreating Persians. In this way, although relatively little is known about the skirmish which resulted in the death of Julian, such details as are preserved by Ammianus at least are consistent with the belief that it was a member of the Petulantes, or an associated light-infan-try unit, who threw the weapon that fatally wounded him.

Ammianus reports that immediately after the death of Julian deserters spread an unfounded rumour among the Persians that he had been killed by a Roman weapon.20 It is difficult to believe that such a rumour would not have included some speculation also as to the identity of the unit from which this weapon came, based on the relative position of the various units on the battle-field at the time, if nothing else. If Gregory does not preserve some version of this particular rumour, it is arguable that his strange story about how a barbar-ian jester had killed Julian may originate in his misunderstanding of a similar

18 There is no explicit evidence as to the whereabouts of the Petulantes during the Persian expedition, or whether they even participated in it at all. However, if the Maurus, draconarius of the Petulantes at Paris in 360 (Amm. 20.4.18), is identifiable as the Maurus who rescued his dying brother from the Persians in a skirmish just days before Julians death (Amm. 25.1.2), then their presence seems probable. See Woods 1998.

19 Amm. 25.3.5: exsilivit nostra succinctior armatura. On the identification of this force as a group of light-armed troops, see den Boeft et al. 2005, 64-65. On auxilia palatina as light-armed troops, see Nicasie 1998, 53.

20 Amm. 25.6.6. At 25.3.6 he describes the weapon as an equestris hasta, which would seem to exclude the possibility that it was thrown by a member of the Petulantes, or of a similar light-infantry unit, perhaps deliberately so. Unfortunately, there is as much disagreement among the sources concerning the nature of the weapon that killed Julian as there is concerning the identity of his killer. See den Boeft et al. 2005, 70.

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rumour that it was a member of the barbarian Petulantes in particular who had hurled the fateful weapon. Here one notes that the possibility that it was a member of the Petulantes who had killed Julian would certainly have provoked some comment, not least due to the sheer irony of the event had this been the case. After all, it was the Petulantes, together with their sister unit the Celtae, who had led the effort to hail Julian as Augustus at Paris in early AD 360, and it was a draconarius of the Petulantes, Maurus by name, who had first crowned Julian as Augustus, using his own torc.21 However, the idea that Julian could have been the accidental victim of friendly fire from one of his longest serving units was never destined to receive the attention that it deserved. It would not have served the interests of the army as a whole to admit that this was what had happened, while the polemicists preferred to believe in some form of reli-gious conspiracy, or delivery, instead.22

In conclusion, it is arguable that Gregorys strange claim that a barbarian jester killed Julian may conceal a reference to the accidental killing of Julian by a barbarian soldier serving within Roman ranks, where Gregory has either misunderstood a derogatory reference to this man as a scurra (fool) or has misinterpreted the title of his unit, the Petulantes (the Insolent), in reference to unruly camp followers instead. Indeed, it is possible that his source may have used both terms, itself deliberately describing the soldier as a scurra in play upon the title of his unit, Petulantes, so reinforcing any misinterpretation by Gregory.

David WoodsUniversity College Cork, Department of ClassicsWestern Road, Cork, Ireland

d.woods@ucc.ie

Received: December 2012; accepted: April 2013

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21 Amm. 20.4.10-20; Julian Ep. ad Ath. 283b.22 See Baynes 1937; Hahn 1960.

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