Ammianus Marcellinus - Biography, Work

Roman historian, born of Greek parents in Antioch, S Turkey (formerly Syria). He wrote in Latin a history of the Roman Empire from AD 98 in 31 books, of which only the last 18 are extant. His work was therefore a continuation of that of Tacitus.

Ammianus Marcellinus (325/330-after 391) was a Roman historian who wrote during Late Antiquity.

Biography

He was born about 325‑330, probably at Antioch (the probability hinges on whether he was the recipient of a surviving letter to a Marcellinus from a contemporary, Libanius - Matthews 1989: 8).

He was "a soldier and also a Greek" ut miles quondam et graecus (A.M. 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 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 allegedly unjust accusations of his enemies into proclaiming himself emperor in Gaul. When Ursicinus lost his office and the favour of Constantius, Ammianus seems to have shared his downfall;

Work

Eventually he settled in Rome during the early eighties of the fourth century, where, in his fifties (calculating his age to be coeval to Julian, who was born in 331 - cf. Syme 1968: 216), he wrote (in Latin) a history of the Roman empire from the accession of Nerva (96) to the death of Valens at the Battle of Adrianople (378), thus forming a continuation of the work of Tacitus. Like many ancient historians, Ammianus supposedly had a strong political and religious agenda to pursue, and he contrasted Constantius II with Julian to the former's constant disadvantage.

Edward Gibbon judged Ammianus as "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 26.5). Ernst Stein goes as far as praising Ammianus as "the greatest literary genius that the world produced between Tacitus and Dante".

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;

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.