Five-minute digest
The Roman History
Summary
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. The surviving Books XIV-XXXI cover only about twenty-five years, 353 to 378, which Ammianus had largely lived through, and they are the fullest narrative of the fourth-century empire. Book XIV opens with the harsh rule of the Caesar Gallus at Antioch and his execution in 354. Ammianus then follows his own commander, Ursicinus, to Gaul, where they put down the usurper Silvanus at Cologne in 355. Constantius II appoints his cousin Julian as Caesar in Gaul; Books XVI-XVIII narrate Julian's campaigns against the Alamanni, including the victory at Strasbourg in 357, alongside Constantius's state visit to Rome. In the East the Persian king Shapur II invades, and in 359 Ammianus is inside Amida during its siege and fall, escaping by night. Book XX tells how the Gallic troops proclaim Julian Augustus at Paris in 360; civil war is averted only by Constantius's death from fever in Cilicia in 361. Books XXII-XXV are the centre of the work. Julian, sole emperor, reforms the court, restores the temples and sacrifices, recalls exiled bishops of every party, tries to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem, and quarrels with the people of Antioch. In 363 he invades Persia, reaches Ctesiphon, burns his fleet, and is mortally wounded by a spear in a skirmish during the retreat; Ammianus records his dying conversation on the soul and a long assessment of his virtues and faults. His successor Jovian makes a humiliating peace, surrendering Nisibis, and dies within months. Books XXVI-XXX treat the brothers Valentinian in the West and Valens in the East: the usurpation of Procopius, wars on the Rhine and Danube, the great barbarian raids on Britain and their repulse by the elder Theodosius, the revolt of Firmus in Africa, treason and magic trials at Rome and Antioch, and Valentinian's death from a burst blood vessel in a fit of rage in 375. Book XXXI describes the Huns and Alans, the Goths' flight across the Danube in 376, their mistreatment by Roman officials, the war in Thrace, and the battle near Adrianople on 9 August 378, where Valens and much of his army are killed. The history closes with Ammianus's farewell, signed as a Greek and a former soldier. Digressions on Rome's vices, Egypt, Persia, earthquakes, eclipses, obelisks and plague give the work an encyclopedic range. C. D. Yonge's translation was first published in Bohn's Classical Library in 1862; the library text is a later Bell reprint.
Top Lessons
A soldier writes what he saw
Ammianus was at Cologne in 355, inside Amida in 359 and on the Persian march of 363, and he moves between his own experience and the larger narrative. His eyewitness chapters are among the most vivid in ancient historiography. Students can see how participation gives a historian both authority and a point of view.
Julian measured in full
Ammianus admired Julian and shared his religion, yet he criticizes Julian's superstition, his love of popularity and his law barring Christian teachers. His assessment in Book XXV lists virtues and faults side by side. The portrait shows how a historian can honour a hero without hiding his errors.
Disaster from mismanagement
Book XXXI shows that the Goths' crossing in 376 became a war because Roman officials exploited the hungry refugees, and that Valens fought at Adrianople without waiting for his nephew Gratian. Ammianus treats the defeat as the result of human choices as well as fortune.
Religion in a divided age
Ammianus writes as a believer in the traditional gods during the decades when Christianity became the faith of the court. He records Julian's sharp judgment on quarrelling sects and the bloodshed at the election of Damasus, but also praises sober provincial bishops and calls Julian's ban on Christian teachers cruel.
Verified Quotes
Frequently cited
“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.”
“Both philosophers and skilful physicians agree that excess of cold, or of heat, or of moisture, or of drought, all cause pestilences;”
Frequently cited
“no wild beasts are so hostile to men as Christian sects in general are to one another.”
“But his forbidding masters of rhetoric and grammar to instruct Christians was a cruel action, and one deserving to be buried in everlasting silence.”
“a cavalry spear, grazing the skin of his arm, pierced his side, and fixed itself in the bottom of his liver.”
“live in imitation of some of the priests in the provinces, whom the most rigid abstinence in eating and drinking, and plainness of apparel, and eyes always cast on the ground, recommend to the everlasting Deity and his true worshippers as pure and sober-minded men.”
“They never shelter themselves under roofed houses, but avoid them as people ordinarily avoid sepulchres as things not fitted for common use.”
Frequently cited
“Nor, except the battle of Cannæ, is so destructive a slaughter recorded in our annals;”
Medical Lens
Ammianus is a rich source for late-Roman ideas of disease and for the deaths of emperors. His digression on pestilence at Amida (XIX.4) summarizes the inherited theory that extremes of heat, cold, moisture and drought, or air corrupted by corpses, cause epidemics, and sorts plagues into pandemic, epidemic and a fast-killing third kind; he cites Homer and Thucydides and says the garrison's sickness lifted after rain. Julian's spear wound to the liver, the physician's attempt to help him and his death by blood loss (XXV.3) form a detailed battlefield case. Constantius dies of fever (XXI.15); Jovian dies suddenly at Dadastana, and Ammianus reports competing explanations, including fumes from a newly plastered room and indigestion (XXV.10). Valentinian's fatal attack while shouting at envoys (XXX.6), with loss of speech, convulsions and death, is described closely; it is often read as a stroke, a hedged modern interpretation. The sorcery and poisoning trials at Rome and Antioch (XXVIII-XXIX) show how fear of magic and poison shaped prosecutions. Famine among the Goths in Thrace (XXXI.4) and Julian's visions before his death (XX.5, XXV.2) round out the material.
- Book XIX, ch. 4
Unburied dead at Amida breed pestilence; Ammianus explains the causes and three kinds of plague and the garrison's recovery after rain.
- Book XXI, ch. 15
Constantius II falls ill with fever on the march and dies at Mopsucrenae in Cilicia.
- Book XXV, ch. 3
Julian is speared through the side, cuts his fingers trying to pull out the weapon, is treated by a physician, and dies after losing blood while discussing the soul.
- Book XXV, ch. 10
Jovian dies suddenly at Dadastana; Ammianus gives the explanations current at the time, among them noxious fumes and overeating.
- Books XXVIII, ch. 1 and XXIX, ch. 1-2
Prosecutions at Rome and Antioch for sorcery and poisoning spread through the senatorial class.
- Book XXX, ch. 6
Valentinian, enraged at the Quadic envoys, loses his voice, is seized by convulsions and dies at Brigetio.
- Book XXXI, ch. 4
Starving Gothic refugees on the Danube are forced by Roman officers to trade for food on ruinous terms.
- Book XX, ch. 5 and Book XXV, ch. 2
Julian sees the Genius of the State in a vision at Paris and again, departing in grief, before his death.