'''Ammianus Marcellinus''' ([[325]]/[[330]]-after [[391]]) was a fourth-century [[Ancient Rome|Roman]] historian <ref name= Burton > Robert Burton: The Anatomy of Melancholy Volume VI, Robert Burton, John Bernard Bamborough, Oxford University Press, p.303 </ref><ref name= Buchanan> The History of Scotland, George Buchanan, James Aikman, 1827 Blackie, Fullarton, p.31 </ref>. His is the last major historical account of the late [[Roman empire]] which survives today: his work chronicled the history of Rome from 96 to 378, although only the sections covering the period 353 - 378 are extant. <ref>[http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9007199/Ammianus-Marcellinus Encyclopædia Britannica Online - Ammianus Marcellinus]</ref>

==Biography==
He was born between [[325]] and [[330]] to an educated family of [[Greeks|Greek]] descent<ref name=Shatzman>Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Classical World, Israel Shatzman, Michael Avi-Yonah, 1975 Harper and Row, p.37, ISBN 0060101784 </ref><ref name=Young >East and West Through Fifteen Centuries: Being a General History from B.C. 44 to A.D. 1453, George Frederick Young, 1916 Longmans, Green and Co, p.336 </ref><ref>University of California Publications in Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley, 1943 University of California Press, p.3 </ref><ref name=Hobbes>Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes, Cambridge University Press, p. lxvii </ref><ref>[http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9007199/Ammianus-Marcellinus Encyclopædia Britannica Online - Ammianus Marcellinus]</ref>, 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). The date of his death is unknown, but he must have lived until [[391]], as he mentions [[Aurelius Victor]] as the city [[prefect]] for that year. The surviving books of his valuable history cover the years [[353]] to [[378]]; the work is sometimes referred to by a Latin title as ''Res Gestae''. Ammianus served as a soldier in the army of [[Constantius II]] in Gaul and [[Persia]].

He was "a soldier and also a [[Greek people|Greek]]" ''ut miles quondam et graecus'' (Amm. 31.16.9) he tells us, and his enrollment 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 (Roman general)|Ursicinus]], governor of [[Nisibis]] in [[Mesopotamia (Roman province)|Mesopotamia]], and ''magister militiae.''

He returned to Italy with Ursicinus, when he was recalled by Constantius, and accompanied him on the expedition against [[Claudius Silvanus|Silvanus the Frank]], who had been forced by the allegedly 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 (modern [[Diyarbakır]]), when it was taken by the Sassanid 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|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 [[Sassanid Empire|Sassanids]]; after the death of Julian, 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.

==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 [[Gaius Cornelius Tacitus|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 [[353]] to 378. As a whole it has been considered extremely valuable, being a clear, comprehensive and, according to Gibbon, impartial account of events by a contemporary. Recent studies have, however, shown the [[rhetoric]] power in his histories. 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). Ammianus was a [[paganism|pagan]], and some have said that he marginalises [[Christianity]] repeatedly in his account. Some maintain that his style is harsh, often pompous and extremely obscure, occasionally even journalistic in tone, due the author's foreign origin and his military life and training. On the other hand, some authors admire him as writer. Ernst Stein goes as far as praising Ammianus as "the greatest literary genius that the world produced between Tacitus and Dante".<ref> E. Stein, Geschichte des spätrömischen Reiches, Vienna 1928 </ref>

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 particularly interesting.

In his description of the Empire &mdash;the exhaustion produced by excessive taxation, the financial ruin of the middle classes, the progressive decline in the morale of the army&mdash; we find an explanation for [[Sack of Rome (410)|sack of Rome]] by the [[Visigoths]] only twenty years after his death.

== Notes ==
{{Reflist}}

==References and further reading==
* Latin text and facing English translation (by J.C. Rolfe) in the [[Loeb Classical Library]], 1935‑1940 with many reprintings.
* Walter Hamilton (trans.) ''The Later Roman Empire (AD 354-378)''. Penguin Classics, 1986. An abridged translation.
* Barnes, Timothy D. ''Ammianus Marcellinus and the Representation of Historical Reality (Cornell Studies in Classical Philology)''. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998 (hardcover, ISBN 0-8014-3526-9).
*[[Edward Gibbon|Gibbon, Edward]]. ''The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire''.
* Matthews, J. (1989) ''The Roman Empire of Ammianus''. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.
* Syme, R. "Zeitkritik und Geschichtsbild in Werk Ammianus," ''JRS'' 58, Parts 1 & 2 (1968) 215–218.
*Crump, Gary A ''Ammianus Marcellinus as a military historian'' Steiner, 1975, ISBN 3515019847.
*Drijvers, Jan Wi ''Late Roman World and its Historian'' Routledge, 1999, ISBN 041520271X.
*Rowell, Henry Thompson ''Ammianus Marcellinus, soldier-historian of the late Roman Empire'' University of Cincinnati, 1964.
*Seager, Robin ''Ammianus Marcellinus: Seven Studies in His Language and Thought'' Univ of Missouri Pr, 1986, ISBN 0826204953.


*{{1911}}

==External links==
*[http://odur.let.rug.nl/~drijvers/ammianus/index.htm Ammianus Marcellinus on-line project]
*[http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/ammianus.html Ammianus Marcellinus' works] in Latin at the Latin Library
*[http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/index.htm#Ammianus_Marcellinus Ammianus Marcellinus' works] in English at the Tertullian Project with introduction on the manuscripts
*[http://www.uwo.ca/english/florilegium/vol-xiii/blockley.pdf Ammianus Marcellinus’s Use of Exempla]

[[Category:Ancient Greek historians]]
[[Category:Ancient Roman soldiers]]
[[Category:Late antique Latin writers]]
[[Category:Late Antique writers]]
[[Category:Latin writers]]
[[Category:Roman-era Greeks]]
[[Category:Roman era historians]]
[[Category:4th century births]]
[[Category:Year of death unknown]]

{{Link FA|de}}

[[als:Ammianus Marcellinus]]
[[bn:আম্মিয়ানুস মারকেল্লিনুস]]
[[bg:Амиан Марцелин]]
[[ca:Ammià Marcel·lí]]
[[cs:Ammianus Marcellinus]]
[[cy:Ammianus Marcellinus]]
[[da:Ammianus Marcellinus]]
[[de:Ammianus Marcellinus]]
[[es:Amiano Marcelino]]
[[fr:Ammien Marcellin]]
[[fy:Ammianus Marsellinus]]
[[gl:Ammiano Marcelino]]
[[it:Ammiano Marcellino]]
[[la:Ammianus Marcellinus]]
[[hu:Ammianus Marcellinus]]
[[nl:Ammianus Marcellinus]]
[[ja:マルケリヌス・アンミアヌス]]
[[no:Ammianus Marcellinus]]
[[pl:Ammianus Marcellinus]]
[[pt:Amiano Marcelino]]
[[ro:Ammianus Marcellinus]]
[[ru:Аммиан Марцеллин]]
[[sr:Амијан Марцелин]]
[[fi:Ammianus Marcellinus]]
[[sv:Ammianus Marcellinus]]
[[tr:Ammianus Marcellinus]]
[[uk:Амміан Марцеллін]]
[[zh:阿米阿努斯·馬爾切利努斯]]