by Ammianus Marcellinus

This is a Good Works Translation produced by the New Tianmu Anglican Church from the Latin text of Ammianus Marcellinus, Rerum Gestarum 31.2.17-23.

Ammianus was a fourth-century Roman historian and former soldier. In Book 31, while describing the movements of Huns, Goths, and Alans before the disaster at Adrianople, he pauses to describe the Halani or Alans as a steppe people connected with the Scythian world.

This source-unit gives Ammianus' compact account of Alan wagon life, horse culture, war ethic, and the famous sword fixed in the ground and worshipped as Mars, the presiding war-god of the lands through which they roam.

The English translation was made from the Latin text in The Latin Library, with the public-domain Rolfe translation in Perseus consulted only as a control.

Translation

31.2.17

The Halani are divided across both regions of the world. It is not useful now to list their various peoples. Although they are separated by long distances and wander through immense districts like nomads, in the course of time they have come together under one name. In summary, all are called Halani because of their customs, their fierce way of life, and their shared equipment of war.

31.2.18

They have no huts, and no concern for turning the plowshare. They live on meat and an abundance of milk, sitting on wagons which they carry across endless stretches of wilderness under curved coverings of bark.

When they come to grassy places, they set their wagons in a circle and feed in the manner of wild beasts. When the fodder is used up, they carry away what are almost cities set upon carts. On the wagons, men have intercourse with women; on them infants are born and raised. These are their permanent dwellings, and wherever they have gone, they consider that place their native hearth.

31.2.19

They drive cattle before them and pasture them with their flocks, and they give special care to breeding horses. There the fields are always green, with fruit-bearing places set among them. For this reason, wherever they travel, they lack neither food nor fodder, because the soil is moist and many rivers run past.

31.2.20

Every age and sex unfit for war stays close around the vehicles themselves and is occupied with lighter tasks. But the youth, growing together with the habit of riding from earliest childhood, thinks it contemptible to go on foot; and all of them, through many kinds of discipline, are skilled warriors. For this reason the Persians too, who are Scythians by origin, are highly skilled in fighting.

31.2.21

Nearly all the Halani are tall and handsome, with moderately fair hair. They are terrifying through the controlled fierceness of their eyes, and swift because of the lightness of their arms. In every respect they are close to the Huns, but milder in food and culture. In raiding and hunting they range as far as the Maeotic marshes and the Cimmerian Bosporus, and likewise into Armenia and Media.

31.2.22

As leisure is pleasant to quiet and peaceful people, so dangers and wars delight them. Among them, the one judged blessed is the one who has poured out his life in battle. Those who grow old and leave the world by chance deaths they attack with bitter insults, as degenerate and cowardly.

There is nothing they boast of more loftily than killing any person at all. As glorious spoils, they tear away the heads of those they kill, strip off the skins, and fasten them as trappings to their war-horses.

31.2.23

No temple or shrine is seen among them, nor can even a hut thatched with straw be found anywhere. Instead, by a barbarian rite, a naked sword is fixed in the ground, and they worship it with reverent awe as Mars, the presiding power of the regions through which they roam.

Colophon

This Good Works Translation was made from the Latin of Ammianus Marcellinus, Rerum Gestarum 31.2.17-23. The English is independently derived from the Latin source text. The working source was the Latin text in The Latin Library; Rolfe's public-domain English translation in Perseus was consulted only as a control.

This passage is a late Roman witness to Alan steppe life and sword worship. It is especially important for the Scythian shelf because Ammianus explicitly connects the Alans with the broader Scythian world and preserves a later form of the sword-as-war-god motif also known from Herodotus' account of Scythian Ares worship.

Compiled and formatted for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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Source Text: Rerum Gestarum 31.2.17-23

Latin source text from The Latin Library's Ammianus Marcellinus, Rerum Gestarum Book 31. Presented here for reference, study, and verification alongside the English translation above.

Ammianus 31.2.17

Bipertiti per utramque mundi plagam Halani - quorum gentes varias nunc recensere non refert - licet dirempti spatiis longis, per pagos ut Nomades vagantur inmensos, aevi tamen progressu ad unum concessere vocabulum et summatim omnes Halani cognominantur ob mores et modum efferatum vivendi eandemque armaturam.

Ammianus 31.2.18

Nec enim ulla sunt illisce tuguria aut versandi vomeris cura, sed carne et copia victitant lactis, plaustris supersidentes, quae operimentis curvatis corticum per solitudines conferunt sine fine distentas. Cumque ad graminea venerint, in orbiculatam figuram locatis sarracis ferino ritu vescuntur, absumptisque pabulis, velut carpentis civitates inpositas vehunt, maresque supra cum feminis coeunt et nascuntur in his et educantur infantes, et habitacula sunt haec illis perpetua, et quocumque ierint, illic genuinum existimant larem.

Ammianus 31.2.19

Armenta prae se agentes cum gregibus pascunt, maximeque equini pecoris est eis sollicitior cura. Ibi campi semper herbescunt, intersitis pomiferis locis: atque ideo transeuntes quolibet, nec alimentis nec pabulis indigent, quod efficit umectum solum et crebri fluminum praetermeantium cursus.

Ammianus 31.2.20

Omnis igitur aetas et sexus inbellis circa vehicula ipsa versatur, muniisque distringitur mollibus: iuventus vero equitandi usu a prima pueritia coalescens, incedere pedibus existimat vile, et omnes multiplici disciplina prudentes sunt bellatores. Unde etiam Persae, qui sunt originitus Scythae, pugnandi sunt peritissimi.

Ammianus 31.2.21

Proceri autem Halani paene sunt omnes et pulchri, crinibus mediocriter flavis, oculorum temperata torvitate terribiles et armorum levitate veloces, Hunisque per omnia suppares verum victu mitiores et cultu, latrocinando et venando ad usque Maeotica stagna et Cimmerium Bosporum, itidemque Armenios discurrentes et Mediam.

Ammianus 31.2.22

Utque hominibus quietis et placidis otium est voluptabile, ita illos pericula iuvant et bella. Iudicatur ibi beatus qui in proelio profuderit animam, senescentes enim et fortuitis mortibus mundo digressos ut degeneres et ignavos conviciis atrocibus insectantur, nec quicquam est quod elatius iactent quam homine quolibet occiso, proque exuviis gloriosis interfectorum avulsis capitibus detractas pelles pro phaleris iumentis accommodant bellatoriis.

Ammianus 31.2.23

Nec templum apud eos visitur aut delubrum, ne tugurium quidem culmo tectum cerni usquam potest, sed gladius barbarico ritu humi figitur nudus, eumque ut Martem, regionum, quas circumcircant, praesulem verecundius colunt.

Source Colophon

The Latin source text was extracted from The Latin Library's Ammianus Marcellinus Book 31 page, https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/ammianus/31.shtml. The source text was cleaned of HTML paragraph markup and normalized into section headings.

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