Home > Ammianus Marcellinus

He was "a soldier and a Greek" he tells us, and his enrolment among the elite protectores domestici (household guards) shows that he was of noble birth. He entered the army at an early age, when Constantius II was emperor of the East, and was sent to serve under Ursicinus, governor of Nisibis in Roman Mesopotamia, and magister militiae.

He returned to Italy with Ursicinus, when he was recalled by Constantius, and accompanied him on the expedition against Silvanus the Frank, who had been forced by the unjust accusations of his enemies into proclaiming himself emperor in Gaul. With Ursicinus he went twice to the East, and barely escaped with his life from Amida or Amid (modern Diyarbakir), when it was taken by the Persian king Shapur II. When Ursicinus lost his office and the favour of Constantius, Ammianus seems to have shared his downfall; but under Julian the Apostate, Constantius's successor, he regained his position. He accompanied this emperor, for whom he expresses enthusiastic admiration, in his campaigns against the Alamanni and the Persians; after his death he took part in the retreat of Jovian as far as Antioch, where he was residing when the conspiracy of Theodorus (371) was discovered and cruelly put down.

Eventually he settled in Rome, where, at an advanced age, he wrote (in Latin) a history of the Roman empire from the accession of Nerva ( AD 96)to the death of Valens at the Battle of Adrianople ( 378Events Mid-February: Lentienses cross frozen Rhine, invading Roman Empire. Later that year they are defeated by Gratianus. August 9 Battle of Adrianople: A large Roman army led by Emperor Valens is defeated by the Visigoths in present-day Turkey. Valens i), thus forming a continuation of the work of Tacitus. This history (Res Gestae Libri XXXI) was originally in thirty-one books, but the first thirteen are lost. The surviving eighteen books cover the period from 353Events Battle of Mons Seleucus Constantius II defeats the usurper Magnentius. Births Deaths August 10 Magnentius, usurper (suicide) August 18 Magnus Decentius, Caesar to Magnentius (suicide) 353. to 378. As a whole it has been considered extremely valuable, being a clear, comprehensive and impartial account of events by a contemporary of soldierly honesty, independent judgment and wide reading. Recent studies have, however, shown the rhetorical power in his histories. Like all ancient historians, he did not even attempt to produce a history in the modern style: he had a strong political and pagan religious agenda to pursue, and he contrasted Constantius II with Julian to the former's constant disadvantage.

Further, the work being intended for public recitation, some rhetorical embellishment was necessary, even at the cost of simplicity. It is a striking fact that Ammianus, though a professional soldier, gives excellent pictures of social and economic problems, and in his attitude to the non-Roman peoples of the empire he is far more broad-minded than writers like LivyTitus Livius (around 59 BC AD 17), known as Livy in English, wrote a monumental history of Rome from its supposed founding in 753 BC. Life and Works The book's title, Ab Urbe Condita ("From the Founding of the City"), makes Livy's ambition clear, but not and Tacitus; his digressions on the various countries he had visited are peculiarly interesting.

In his description of the empire--the exhaustion produced by excessive taxation, the financial ruin of the middle classes, the progressive decline in the morale of the army--we find the explanation of its fall before the GothsThis article is about the Germanic tribes. For the late 20th century youth subculture see Goth. The Goths were a Germanic tribe which according to their own traditions originated in southern Sweden (cf. Gotaland and Gotland). They migrated southwards and twenty years after his death.