Title page of the 1533 Augsburg edition of Ammianus Marcellinus. Source · Public domain
About Ammianus Marcellinus
Ammianus Marcellinus (c. 330-c. 395) was a Greek-speaking Roman officer, traditionally said to come from Antioch, who served as a protector domesticus on the staff of the general Ursicinus. He was in the besieged city of Amida in 359 and took part in Julian's Persian expedition of 363. He later settled in Rome and wrote in Latin a history from Nerva to the death of Valens in 378. He held to the old Roman religion and wrote of Christians with notable restraint.
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“Thus have I, a Greek by birth, and formerly a soldier, related all the events from the accession of Nerva to the death of Valens, to the best of my abilities; professing above all things to tell the truth, which, as I believe, I have never knowingly perverted, either by silence or by falsehood.”
Ammianus Marcellinus wrote his history in thirty-one books, beginning with the accession of Nerva in AD 96, where Tacitus had stopped, and ending with the Gothic victory at Adrianople in 378. The first thirteen books are lost.
