The sixth century was a period awash in many and varied works of history, from John Malalas’ Chronograph and Evagrius’ Ecclesiastical History to Procopius’ Wars and Gregory of Tours’ History of the Franks. One of the better-known works of history is Jordanes’ Getica, and one of the lesser known, at least to judge by the amount of scholarship devoted to it, is that same Jordanes’ Romana. The volume under review, a translation of both works complete with a detailed introduction and extensive commentary, should bolster the Getica’s popularity while bringing much needed awareness to the Romana. This work is a significant achievement, which can be read with profit by anyone with even a modicum of interest in Jordanes, late antique ethnography, and historiography more generally.
The book opens with a detailed introduction, which covers the life of Jordanes, the date of the works, and the historical context. The authors also provide detailed overviews of the two texts in question, which include consideration of their genre, structure (including outlines), and themes. In the case of the Getica, they also devote a lot of space to the Getica’s role in scholarship on migration and identity among the Goths, as well as the related issues of primordialism, the Amals, and the Ostrogoths and Visigoths. This is followed by a close consideration of Jordanes’ written sources including the vexed issue of Cassiodorus. The introduction finishes with a few words on the text, its translation, and Jordanes’ later reception.
The translation and commentary of the Romana and Getica follow in that order. Mommsen’s text was used, and where there are significant differences between Mommsen’s, and Giunta and Grillone’s (1991), and Grillone’s (2017) editions of the Getica the authors flag it in the notes. The translation itself is good. It both provides a contemporary update to Mierow’s nearly one-hundred-year-old English translation, and a corrective to many of the infelicities in that earlier version. To give but one example, at 39.204 of the Getica, Mierow has, “While they are still gathering in order and forming in one line with locked shields, they are checked, I will not say by the first wound, but even by the dust of battle”, while Van Nuffelen and Van Hoof have, “They will be worn down first not, I say, by wounds, but by the dust, when they march in order and form their lines into the tortoise” (317). These translations are drawn from Mommsen’s text, which reads, primo etiam non dico uulnere, sed ipso puluere grauantur, dum in ordine coeunt et acies testudineque conectunt. For one thing, Van Nuffelen and Van Hoof kept the larger structure of the original sentence from primo to uulnere. They correctly translate primo, not as an adjective modifying uulnere, but as an adverb modifying dico; moreover, their translation of testudineque as “tortoise” is much more accurate than Mierow’s “locked shields” even if, as they argue in their notes (317, n. 656), the classical testudo is not intended.
While the translation, on the whole, is good, the commentary, which fills the notes, is excellent. Therein we find a wide range of valuable material. Some of it deals with historical matters, like the identity of an individual referred to in the text (Lucius Cornelius Scipio at 168 n. 388); some with textual issues, like Jordanes’ changing of Florus’ cupiditas into avaritia at Romana 236 (171 n. 412); some provides explanations for those spots where Jordanes had erred, as he did at Romana 325 when he claimed Marinus fled to Carthage with a single ship, rather than the many more that the source text of Marcellinus Comes had indicated (195 n. 553); and some shows how, in spots, Jordanes deliberately changed the order of certain events to serve his primary literary goals, like showcasing the long and storied past of the Goths as he does at 10.66 of the Getica, when he has the Goths fighting for freedom alongside the Athenians (252 n. 252). The translations are followed by a short set of appendices on issues raised by the Getica, like Balamber, the king of the Huns, Berimud’s journey to Spain, and the Goths in Macedonia. There are several detailed maps, a short glossary, and then an extensive bibliography and long index, which round out this excellent book.
It should be clear at this point that there is a lot to love about this book. For one thing, the detailed treatment of Jordanes’ sources in the introduction is complemented by the rigorous flagging of the sources for every part of the text in the translation. Most of the work on Jordanes’ sources in the past has concentrated on his use of Cassiodorus. What the authors’ thorough discussion makes plain is that this is only a small part of the story, and an overdone one at that. Jordanes also used many other Latin authors like Jerome, Orosius, and Count Marcellinus. There also seems good reason to think that Jordanes made use of Greek sources like Strabo and Josephus owing, in large part, to his residence in Constantinople. In their multifaceted discussion of sources, the authors build on their own and others’ earlier work, which has stressed Jordanes’ Constantinopolitan outlook. Although most of the focus is on written sources, however, they go further too, at times raising the prospect of additional categories of evidence, like oral sources and documentary material.
The authors also make a number of important pronouncements on authorship, or more specifically Jordanes’ hand in creating these two works. Like a growing number of recent studies, they emphasize that for all that Jordanes made extensive use of a wide range of different sources, many of which we can identify with tremendous certainty, Jordanes did more than quote, or at least paraphrase, those works he used. Indeed, as noted, the authors are careful to highlight those places where Jordanes altered his source texts to suit his interpretation of events. For instance, while discussing the early (myth-)history of Roman Italy in the Romana, Jordanes relies on the account of Florus. When the account turns to the Sabine women, Jordanes changes Florus’ more positive furentibus, “the raging ones,” to the more negative funeribus, “bodies” (127, n. 151). Staying on the subject of the literary qualities of Jordanes’ oeuvre, after a careful consideration of the manuscripts, the authors ultimately conclude that Jordanes’ apparent classicism owes much more to the endeavours of Carolingian scholars who tried to tidy up some of his language, which, in their eyes, fell short of established classical standards. In fact, the apparent mistakes they attempted to fix were, instead, more typical features of late Latin, which means Jordanes’ writing had much more in common with many contemporary trends in Latin literature and late antique historiography than has usually been appreciated. All in all, I found their arguments here persuasive, as I did wherever they discussed these matters.
As for room for improvement, there really is not much to dislike about this book, and so anything I say here is, essentially, nitpicking. The authors flag a lot of misconceptions and errors in previous scholarship. At times, the language might be a bit too combative for some. There are occasionally points where a little more explanation might have helped, as is the case with Jordanes’ reference to the inner Arabs at 275 of the Romana. The authors say the inner Arabs “are probably those living closest to Roman territory” (181, n. 477), without providing any possibilities about who they might be, a topic on which there has been a good deal of scholarship. Beyond that, there are places where you might quibble with minute aspects of the translations. One such English word that appears at several spots in the book, in both the Romana and the Getica, is bodyguard. Jordanes, however, does not use the same Latin term consistently to identify these individuals. At 259 of theRomana, Jordanes notes the death of Caligula at the hand of “his bodyguards” (protectoribus) (p. 177). At 305 of the same text, Jordanes notes the raising of the “commander of the bodyguard” (primicerius domesticorum) to the throne (p. 189). Then, at 360, when discussing the accession of Justin I, he notes that he had been “head of the imperial bodyguard” (comite scubitorum) (p. 208). In English, the term bodyguard does cover, generally, the three groups of individuals discussed. In Rome, however, the three named groups, protectores, domestici, and excubitores (Jordanes erred – a point made in the notes, n. 618), were different kinds of bodyguards. The first instance, for example, was wrong. It was the praetorians who killed Caligula (d. 41 CE), with the protectores not emerging until the second or even third century CE. Though the protectores were bodyguards at least from early third century, the term also gets applied to imperial staff officers. The domestici likely also emerged around the same time as the protectores and so their identification as bodyguards is correct. Justin’s excubitores were bodyguards too, who answered directly to the emperor. So, while bodyguard does adequately identify who these individuals, it also occludes some of the specifics of these individuals. It should be clear, however, that these are minor quibbles.
In the end, it is hard to overstate the value of this volume. The sheer quantity of material included beyond the publication of good, up-to-date, translations of the Romana and Getica, is one of the chief benefits of the book. This makes it invaluable in the classroom, though also for anyone less familiar with Jordanes, especially since Mommsen’s Latin edition is readily available online. That said, the identification of every possible written source used by Jordanes, at their precise location in the text in the footnotes, alone makes the book a tremendous resource for those much more intimately familiar with the Romana and Getica. Van Nuffelen and Van Hoof deserve fulsome praise for their achievement.