AMMIANUS, MARCELLINUS, the last Roman historian of
importance, was born about A.D. 325-330 at Antioch; the
date of his death is unknown, but he must have lived till
391, as he mentions Aurelius Victor as the city prefect
for that year. He was a Greek, and his enrolment among the
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 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
(mod. Diarbekr), when it was taken by the Persian king Shapur
(Sapor) II. When Ursicinus lost his office and the favour of
Constantius, Ammianus seems to have shared his downfall;
but under Julian, 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 to the death of Valens (96-378), thus
forming a continuation of the work of Tacitus. This history
(Rerum Gestarum Libri XXXI.) was originally in thirty-one
books; of these the first thirteen are lost, the eighteen
which remain cover the period from 353 to 378. As a whole
it is extremely valuable, being a clear, comprehensive and
impartial account of events by a contemporary of soldierly
honesty, independent judgment and wide reading. "Ammianus is
an accurate and faithful guide, who composed the history of
his own times without indulging the prejudices and passions
which usually affect the mind of a contemporary" (Gibbon).
Although Ammianus was no doubt a heathen, his attitude
towards Christianity is that of a man of the world, free from
prejudices in favour of any form of belief. If anything he
himself inclined to neo-Platonism. His style is generally
harsh, often pompous and extremely obscure, occasionally
even journalistic in tone, but the author's foreign origin
and his military life and training partially explain this.
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
Livy 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 Goths twenty years after his death.
The work was discovered by Poggio, who copied the original
MS. Editio princeps (bks. 14-26) by Sabinus, 1474; completed
by Accursius, 1533; with variorum notes, by Wagner-Erfurdt,
1808; latest edition of text, Gardthausen, 1874-1875. English
translations by P. Holland, 1609; Yonge (Bohn's Classical
Library), 1862; also Max Budinger, Ammianus Marcellinus und
die Eigenart seines Geschichtswerkes (1895); F. Liesenberg,
Die Sprache des Ammianus Marcellinus (1888-1890); T. R.
Glover, Life and Letters in the Fourth Century (1901); Abbe
Gimazane, Ammianus Marcellinus, sa vie et son oeuvre (Toulouse,
1889), a work containing a number of very doubtful theories.
For a criticism of his views on Roman society see S. Dill, Roman
Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire (London, 1898).
This article is from the 1911 edition of an
encyclopedia, which is out of copyright here in the U.S. It is in the
public domain and you may copy, download, print and distribute this work
as you see fit.
Every effort has been made to present this text accurately and
cleanly, but no guarantees are made against errors. Neither Melissa
Snell nor About may be held liable for any problems you experience with
the text version or with any electronic form of this document.
