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AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS concludes his history, the ‘Res Gestae’, with the comment:
“These events, from the principate of the emperor Nerva [96] to the death of Valens [378], I, a former soldier and a Greek, have set forth to the measure of my ability, without ever (I believe) consciously venturing to debase through silence or through falsehood a work whose aim was the truth. The rest may be written by abler men, who are in the prime of life and learning. But if they chose to undertake such a task, I advise them to forge their tongues to the loftier style.”
‘Res Gestae’ Book XXXI Chapter 16
From other remarks within his history, it can be deduced that Ammianus was born around the year 330 and was probably a native of Antioch, Syria (now Antakya, Turkey); that he was well connected – he was probably the son of a high ranking officer in the Roman army; that his own military career did not turn out as successfully as it might; and that he eventually settled in Rome, where, probably between late-389 and mid-391, he published the ‘Res Gestae’.
As well as hints within the ‘Res Gestae’, there is a piece of external evidence which would seem to make it a certainty that Ammianus hailed from Antioch. There exists a letter, which is dated to 392, from, the pagan sophist and rhetorician, Libanius (Epistle 1063) to a Marcellinus who was living in Rome. Libanius was a Syrian Greek, a native of Antioch, and the Marcellinus to whom he wrote was from the same city as himself. This Marcellinus had enjoyed some success in Rome giving readings from his own work. It seems reasonable, therefore, to suppose that he is none other than Ammianus Marcellinus. It has been argued, however, that, despite the name, the date and the fact that he was a writer, the recipient of Libanius' letter was not Ammianus – it is said that Marcellinus was not an uncommon name, and that Libanius' phraseology and tone suggest that he was addressing a young orator recently arrived in Rome, rather than a sixty-odd-year-old historian and long time resident (Ammianus had probably been in Rome for around a decade). However sophisticated the argument, though, it does seem a very large coincidence that there were two Greeks of the same name having success with recently published works in Rome in 392 – as David Rohrbacher (‘The Historians of Late Antiquity’, 2002) says: “Surely it is most economical to identify the recipient as the historian.”
Ammianus was Greek but he wrote in Latin. The ‘Res Gestae’ – covering the period from 96 (picking up from where the last major Latin history, by Tacitus, left off) to 378 – comprised thirty-one books, but only books fourteen to thirty-one survive.* Perhaps surprisingly, the extant eighteen books – over half the original work – just deal with the few years from 353 to 378.
There is a long-standing theory that Ammianus published his history in instalments. In particular, that the last six books, XXVI–XXXI, were published after 392. This is based on the opening paragraph of Book XXVI, which might imply that what follows was an afterthought, and on the encouragement Libanius gives to his Marcellinus (in ‘Epistle 1063’) to produce “another instalment”. Perhaps, though, on balance, as stated by Gavin Kelly (‘Ammianus Marcellinus: The Allusive Historian’, 2008), “many intra-textual features, from cross-references to the use of themes, suggest that the work was conceived, written and very probably published, as a unity”. The latest reference in the ‘Res Gestae’ appears in Book XXVI (Chapter 5) – a mention of the consulship of one Neoterius, which was in 390. Presumably Ammianus would have been aware of this appointment late in 389. Ammianus says (Book XXII Chapter 16) that “the whole world beholds nothing more magnificent” than the Serapeum (a temple dedicated to Serapis) in Alexandria. It was probably soon after June of 391 that the Serapeum was destroyed by anti-pagan activists. Hence Ammianus would appear to have published between late-389 and mid-391. Timothy Barnes (‘Ammianus Marcellinus and the Representation of Historical Reality’, 1998) suggests that “Ammianus cannot have compressed his history of the Roman Empire from 96 to 353 into a mere thirteen books” and proposes that the ‘Res Gestae’ originally comprised thirty-six books – that the surviving books naturally divide into three groups of six books (hexads) and these are actually books nineteen to thirty-six, i.e. the second half of the work, but the book numbers have become corrupted in the work's transmission, and that the missing section was similarly composed of three hexads.
The surviving books of the ‘Res Gestae’ record times that Ammianus lived through, and, most vividly, events he was involved in.* Ammianus' literary style is, though, rather bizarre. In the introduction to his translation (first published, by Loeb, in 1935), John C. Rolfe observes that “some of his peculiarities are an unnatural word-order, attempted picturesque and poetic forms of expression, and a general striving for effect”, whilst, in the preface to their 1986 Penguin edition, Walter Hamilton and Andrew Wallace-Hadrill say that “any attempt at a close rendering in modern English would be unreadable”. Edward Gibbon, in various footnotes to Chapter 26 of his influential masterwork, ‘The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ (published, in six volumes, 1776–1788), voices his complaints: “Such is the bad taste of Ammianus that it is not easy to distinguish his facts from his metaphors”; “superfluous prolixity is disagreeably balanced by his unseasonable brevity”; “those turgid metaphors, those false ornaments, that perpetually disfigure the style of Ammianus”; “the vices of his style, the disorder and perplexity of his narrative”. Despite his criticisms, however, Gibbon greatly admired Ammianus – “this impartial historian”; “the impartial Ammianus” – and, famously, bids him a fond farewell:“It is not without the most sincere regret that I must now take leave of an accurate and faithful guide, who has composed the history of his own times without indulging the prejudices and passions which usually affect the mind of a contemporary.”
‘Decline and Fall’ Chapter 26
Modern historians, however, tend to be considerably more sceptical than Gibbon seems to have been about Ammianus' self-professed reliability and impartiality.
Ammianus was a pagan. Julian, who was the last pagan emperor, is the undoubted hero of the piece – his reign (as Caesar 355–360, as Augustus 360–363) spans eleven books (XV–XXV) of the ‘Res Gestae’. Ammianus admits (Book XVI Chapter 1) that his account of Julian's deeds “will almost belong to the domain of the panegyric”, but insists that “no wordy deceit adorns my tale, but untrammelled faithfulness to fact, based upon clear proofs, composes it”. He does have some criticisms of Julian. For instance:
“... [Julian was] too much given to the consideration of omens and portents, so that in this respect he seemed to equal the emperor Hadrian. Superstitious rather than truly religious, he sacrificed innumerable victims without regard to cost ... the laws which he enacted were not oppressive, but stated exactly what was to be done or left undone, with a few exceptions. For example, it was a harsh law that forbade Christian rhetoricians and grammarians to teach, unless they consented to worship the pagan deities.”
‘Res Gestae’ Book XXV Chapter 4
Ammianus gives the impression of being tolerant of Christianity – a “plain and simple religion” (Book XXI Chapter 16) – but whether this is just an impression or not – whether he was actually anti-Christian – is the subject of ongoing debate. Nevertheless, Ammianus Marcellinus is generally touted as ‘the last great historian of Rome’. Averil Cameron sums up:
“He is a major historian on any count, and one whose range and geographical scope are far greater than had previously been seen among Roman historians. He belongs to his age in many ways, not least in the fact that he writes as a member of a bureaucracy whose officials were liable to find themselves in any part of the empire, and who were in close contact with numerous others like themselves, both civilian and military. It is Ammianus who gives us our best information both about the late Roman army in action and about the extraordinary juxtapositions of life in imperial and senatorial circles. Finally, it is Ammianus the writer who, once read, is never forgotten.”
‘The Cambridge Ancient History’ Volume XIII Chapter 22 (1998)
Ammianus Marcellinus ‘Res Gestae’ translated by John C. Rolfe