Simplicitas militaris: Ammianus Marcellinus and sermo castrensis

What is it about?

In an epilogue to his Res gestae, Ammianus declares that he has written “as a former soldier and a Greek (ut miles quondam et graecus)”, a rare self-definition, indicating how he viewed himself and/or wished readers to view him, and raising the question: what does Ammianus’ “militia” bring to this literary composition? As the only substantial sample of Roman historical writing by an ex-soldier of relatively junior rank, albeit a privileged young staff officer who self-consciously differentiates himself from rank-and-file milites, Ammianus’ fusion of historiography and memoirism is of value not only for its historical insights into the contemporary Roman army and its operations but also as a resource for philological research into the “real-world” language and linguistic practices of fourth-century soldiers. This paper investigates Ammianus’ knowledge and use of so-called “sermo castrensis”, the demotic idiom coined and used by ordinary Roman milites, and seeks to explain its occurrence in a work of classicizing historiography, in light of stylistic conventions prohibiting vulgarisms, termini technici and foreign usages. A review of prior scholarship acknowledges persistent difficulties in defining “sermo castrensis” as a lexical subspecies of Vulgar Latin particular to military personnel, comprising institutional jargon, loanwords and alternative slang, which can variously express shared socio-linguistic community and professional identity. The paper analyses specimens of this occupational idiolect found in the Res gestae, relating to tactical deployments, army hierarchies and assignments, poliorcetic machinery, recruiting and logistical practices, and nicknames, both for their intrinsic historical-linguistic interest, and for what they might reveal about Ammianus and his conception of his work, in terms of his professional environment, Latinity and bilingualism, authorial persona and literary artistry. This paper is intended as both a self-contained study of an aspect of Ammianus and a contribution to a planned monograph on “sermo castrensis”.

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