In the last sentence of his History, completed in Rome in around 390, Ammianus Marcellinus declared he was writing 'as a former soldier and a Greek' (ut miles quondam et Graecus). Like his civilian fellow historians, Ammianus had moved among the empire's powerbrokers; unlike them, he tells us vividly about some of his personal experiences in the imperial service. As a member of the elite regiment of the protectores domestici he had taken part in an assassination mission against a usurper, spied in Persian territory, escaped from the sack of the city of Amida, and followed the emperor Julian's campaign into Persia. And while he shares many of the attitudes and interests of Victor, Eutropius, and Festus (all three of whom feature as actors in his history), he wrote on a quite different scale and level of detail, probably even in comparison to full-length lost Historia of Victor. 18 books of his history totalling over 125,000 words survive: they cover a quarter of a century beginning in 353 — the latter years of Constantius II's rule in tandem with his Caesars Gallus and Julian followed by the reigns of Julian, Jovian, Valentinian and Valens, climaxing in the latter's death at the catastrophic battle of Adrianople in 378. Long learned digressions and other historiographical features such as speeches and letters adorn the text. But the first 13 books of the history were lost: these covered, in much shorter compass but still presumably in considerable detail, the two and a half centuries from the accession of Nerva in 96 down to 353. This loss has made Ammianus seem a solely contemporary historian, and therefore more different from the other historians of our project than was perhaps the case. Ammianus' style is learned. flamboyant, and sometimes challenging, but enlivened by a brilliant eye for telling details and a talent for capturing character. He alludes constantly to historical examples and literary texts from across Graeco-Roman antiquity and flaunts his bilingualism and biculturalism.
There are clear signs that in the years following its completion Ammianus' work was known to readers as diverse as St Jerome in Bethlehem and the poet Claudian in Milan; over a century afterwards he was cited on a point of language by the Constantinople grammarian Priscian and later his narrative of the run up to the battle of Adrianople was a source for Jordanes' Getica. He was, however, all but unknown to the Middle Ages. A single damaged manuscript survived to be copied twice in swift succession in Germany in the early ninth century; one of these was rediscovered by Poggio Bracciolini in 1417 and taken to Italy, where it sired 14 descendants; the other was used selectively by an early editor, but then destroyed, but for eight pages, in the late sixteenth century. Since his rediscovery Ammianus has been widely admired as a great historian and (sometimes with reservations) as a literary artist. His portrayal of the pagan emperor Julian has been a particular inspiration to writers of both history and fiction.
Ammianus' tenuous transmission left the text in a poor state, although it received attention from many fine textual critics. The first properly critical edition to be based on a full understanding of the manuscript tradition was that of Charles Upson Clark (Berlin, 1910-15), which remains the best; it was also the first to recognise the importance of Ammianus' astonishingly regular prose rhythm. Since Clark's edition is out of print, however, many readers will need to turn to the overly conservative Teubner of Wolfgang Seyfarth et al. (1978). The Penguin translation by Walter Hamilton is accurate but only translates about two thirds of the work and deadens the style; J.C. Rolfe's Loeb (available via Loeb Classical Library online or Lacus Curtius) captures Ammianus' spirit better but is markedly less accurate.
The Last Historians of Rome project (September 2024-August 2029) is
funded by a Standard Grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council
(AHRC), and is led by scholars at the Universities of Edinburgh and Nottingham.
