ABSTRACT
It has been well said of Ammianus that ‘it is his silences that reveal his apologetical or polemical intentions more than his explicit criticisms of Christianity’, and it is my intention here to draw attention to yet another such silence on his part.1 To begin, however, I must focus on the positive, and demonstrate how Ammianus provides the key to the correct interpretation of that fragment of Eunapius’ History which has excited more attention than most, his account of the manner in which an anonymous Persian prefect of Rome celebrated an imperial victory over some unidentified barbarians (Eunapius, Frg. 68):2
There was a Persian, a prefect in Rome, who reduced the success of the Romans to mockery and laughter (
). Wishing to offer a representation of what had been done, he assembled many small panels in the middle of the Circus. But all the contents of his paintings were laughable, and he unwittingly mocked his subjects in his presentation. For nowhere did the paintings show or allude to either the bravery of the emperor, or the strength of the soldiers, or anything that was obviously a proper battle. But a hand extended as if from the clouds, and by the hand was inscribed, ‘The hand of God driving off the barbarians’ (it is shameful but necessary to write this down), and again on the other side, ‘The barbarians fleeing God’, and other things even more odious and stupid than these, the nonsense of drunken painters.
