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EspañolAMMIANUS MARCELLINUS
'Ammianus Marcellinus' (325/330-after 391) was an Ancient Greek Robert Burton: The Anatomy of Melancholy Volume VI, Robert Burton, John Bernard Bamborough, Oxford University Press, p.303 The History of Scotland, George Buchanan, James Aikman, 1827 Blackie, Fullarton, p.31 historian. He was the last major historian from the Roman period; his work detailed the history of the later Roman Empire to 378. [1]
He was born between 325 and 330 to an educated family of Greek descentIllustrated Encyclopedia of the Classical World, Israel Shatzman, Michael Avi-Yonah, 1975 Harper and Row, p.37, ISBN 0060101784 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 [2]Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes, Cambridge University Press, p. lxvii [1], 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" ''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, 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. 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, 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 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.
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. 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 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".[4]
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 —the exhaustion produced by excessive taxation, the financial ruin of the middle classes, the progressive decline in the morale of the army— we find an explanation of Rome's fall to the Goths twenty years after his death.
1. Encyclopædia Britannica Online - Ammianus Marcellinus
2. University of California Publications in Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley, 1943 University of California Press, p.3
3. Encyclopædia Britannica Online - Ammianus Marcellinus
4. E. Stein, Geschichte des spätrömischen Reiches, Vienna 1928
★ 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).
★ 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.
★
★ Ammianus Marcellinus on-line project
★ Ammianus Marcellinus' works in Latin at the Latin Library
★ Ammianus Marcellinus' works in English at the Tertullian Project with introduction on the manuscripts
★ Ammianus Marcellinus’s Use of Exempla
| Contents |
| Biography |
| Work |
| Notes |
| References and further reading |
| External links |
Biography
He was born between 325 and 330 to an educated family of Greek descentIllustrated Encyclopedia of the Classical World, Israel Shatzman, Michael Avi-Yonah, 1975 Harper and Row, p.37, ISBN 0060101784 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 [2]Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes, Cambridge University Press, p. lxvii [1], 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" ''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, 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. 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, 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 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 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 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".[4]
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 —the exhaustion produced by excessive taxation, the financial ruin of the middle classes, the progressive decline in the morale of the army— we find an explanation of Rome's fall to the Goths twenty years after his death.
Notes
1. Encyclopædia Britannica Online - Ammianus Marcellinus
2. University of California Publications in Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley, 1943 University of California Press, p.3
3. Encyclopædia Britannica Online - Ammianus Marcellinus
4. E. Stein, Geschichte des spätrömischen Reiches, Vienna 1928
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).
★ 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.
★
External links
★ Ammianus Marcellinus on-line project
★ Ammianus Marcellinus' works in Latin at the Latin Library
★ Ammianus Marcellinus' works in English at the Tertullian Project with introduction on the manuscripts
★ Ammianus Marcellinus’s Use of Exempla
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