 | The Later Roman Empire: A.D. 354-378 (Penguin Classics) By Ammianus Marcellinus
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Product Description
Ammianus Marcellinus was the last great Roman historian, and his writings rank alongside those of Livy and Tacitus. The Later Roman Empire chronicles a period of twenty-five years during Marcellinus' own lifetime, covering the reigns of Constantius, Julian, Jovian, Valentinian I, and Valens, and providing eyewitness accounts of significant military events including the Battle of Strasbourg and the Goth's Revolt. Portraying a time of rapid and dramatic change, Marcellinus describes an Empire exhausted by excessive taxation, corruption, the financial ruin of the middle classes and the progressive decline in the morale of the army. In this magisterial depiction of the closing decades of the Roman Empire, we can see the seeds of events that were to lead to the fall of the city, just twenty years after Marcellinus' death.
- Amazon Sales Rank: #23630 in Books
- Published on: 1986-08-05
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: .77 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 512 pages
Language Notes
Text: English, Latin (translation)
About the Author
Ammianus Marcellinus was the last great Roman historian, continuing the histories of Tacitus from AD 96 down to his own day. The first thirteen of his thirty-one books are lost: the remainder describe AD 354 - 378. Walter Hamilton translated Plato's Symposium, the Gorgias, Phaedrus and Letters VII and VIII for Penguin Classics. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill is Professor of Classics at Reading University. His books include Suetonius: the Scholar and his Caesars.
Most helpful customer reviews
49 of 49 people found the following review helpful.
A Vivid and Memorable History that Should be Better Known
By jeffergray
Even the most confirmed buffs of ancient or medieval history generally take a while to get around to reading Ammianus. Part of the problem may be that his history falls into the transition period between the ancient and medieval worlds, and thus lies outside the principal sphere of interest for dedicated students of either period. Another problem is that of the the four Roman emperors who dominate this history - Constantius II, Julian, Valentinian I and Valens - only the second is a particularly sympathetic character. No matter. This history covers a fascinating epoch - the hinge between the ancient and medieval worlds - and it is full of both intriguing details and unforgettably vivid set pieces, many of which are derived from the author's own personal experience.
Ammianus Marcellinus was an emblematic figure of these transitional times - a Greek army officer who wrote his history in Latin; a man of the east, born in Antioch, who spent most of his military career facing the Persians along the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire, but who finished his life as a man of letters in Rome itself; and a pagan who viewed the rise of Christianity with detached objectivity.
The quarter century covered by the surviving books of his history - the years 354 to 378 A.D. - begins with the Roman Empire in its late antique heyday. The Empire is still the greatest military power of its time, but is wasting its strength in massive civil wars. At the beginning of Ammianus's narrative, the Empire's main external enemy is still Persia, but his history covers the critical years in which the Roman frontier defenses in the west first began to show signs of cracking under the pressure of the German tribes east of the Rhine. His history recounts the final years of the competent, but superstitious and insecure, emperor Constantius II, the last surviving son of Constantine the Great; the rise in the west of Julian ("the Apostate"), who succeeds his cousin Constantius in 361 and launches two quixotic and ill-starred enterprises -- his attempt to restore paganism as the official faith of the Empire and a massive invasion of Persia that ends with his own death; and the beginning of the divided rule of the Empire under the two brothers Valentinian I and Valens. Ammianus's history closes on a night of blood and fire with the appalling Roman defeat by the Visigoths and Ostrogoths on the plains of Thrace near Adrianople - a portentous event that would lead, in less than a third of a century, to the fall of Rome itself.
For the first ten years covered by his history, Ammianus was serving as an intelligence officer on the general staff of the Roman Army of the East. He was an interesting personality: a military man with an intellectually curious and wide-ranging mind; an unsentimental realist about human nature, but intensely loyal to those he respected; and a man who could pay appropriate tribute to those whom politics or international rivalries made his enemies. These qualities come through in his account (from 355 A.D.) of a chillingly effective covert operation in which he and a small group of officers were sent by Constantius to find a way to eliminate the commander of the Roman Army of the Rhine, who had been forced to declare himself emperor. The mission was a success: they bribed some of the commander's German auxiliaries, who as Ammianus recounts, "made their way into the palace, dragged Silvanus, who was on his way to a Christian service, from the shrine in which the panic-stricken man had taken refuge, and butchered him with repeated sword-thrusts." Then he eulogizes his victim: "Such was the end of a commander of no small merit, who was driven by fear of the slanders in which a hostile clique [at the court of Constantius] had ensnared him in his absence to adopt extreme measures of self-defense."
As an example of the vivid first-person accounts that make this book so memorable, I offer the following passage, in which Ammianus describes his adventures in 359 A.D. as the undermanned Roman outposts west of the Tigris brace for the onslaught of an immense Persian army:
"[We] marched in haste to make ready for the defense of Nisibis, fearing that the Persians might disguise their intention to besiege it and then fall upon it unaware. While the necessary measures were being pushed on inside the walls, smoky fires were seen flickering from the direction of the Tigris past the Moors' Fort and Sisara and the rest of the country in an unbroken chain right up to the city, in such unusual numbers that it was clear that the enemy's raiding parties had broken through and crossed the river. We hurried on at full speed in case the roads should be blocked, but when we were two miles from the city we came upon a child crying in the middle of the road. He was a fine boy, apparently about eight years old, and was wearing a neck ornament. He told us that he was the son of a man of good family, and that his mother, panic-stricken at the approach of the enemy, had abandoned him because he was an impediment to her flight. Our general pitied him, and on his orders I set the boy before me on my horse and took him back to the city, but I found the walls already invested and enemy parties scouring the neighborhood.
"Dreading to find myself involved in the miseries of a siege, I put the boy in the shelter of a postern gate that was not entirely shut, and galloped back half dead with fear to rejoin our column, but I only just avoided capture."
The informative and often puckishly witty notes accompanying this volume by Andrew Wallace-Hadrill also merit commendation.
38 of 40 people found the following review helpful."To be Placed in a Class with the Greatest"
By Johannes Platonicus
Ammianus Marcellinus handles the vicissitudes of the later Roman Empire with an eloquence and timeless lore that matches that of his predecessors Livy, Suetonius, and Tacitus. He is not unfamiliar to those who study the ancient world of late antiquity because of the priceless information he provides and the fact that he is one of the few to actually encounter and document facts as they occurred either through personal experience or by the testimonies of his contemporaries. Ammianus was a Greek by descent yet born in Syria, and later became somewhat of an influence in the Roman military. His account of the incursions with the barbarians and persians is very detailed, elaborate, and laced with irony - traits that the great historians were all accustomed to. Ammianus' treatment of the Caesar's: Gallus, Constantius, Julian, Jovian, Valentinian, and Valen's is fair and nearly free from partialty - there is speculation as to whether or not he came in contact with any of the Caesar's. He was a pagan and of course an admirer of the pagan Emperor Julian - this left an impression upon the great historian Edward Gibbon whose prose and sentiments complement Ammianus' in so many fashions. Ammianus never penetrates into the intestinal matters of ecclesiastical affairs, but only mentions Christianity a few times, and this is practically free from bias. Overall as a source to gain a better understanding of the later Roman world with its valiant emperors, frequent internal disasters, military prowess and defeat, and decaying social strata in general, Ammianus Marcellinus' history is the most reliable...the value of this history must not be underestimated.
28 of 29 people found the following review helpful.Rome on the Ropes
By R. A Forczyk
There are very few Western accounts that cover the final decades of the Roman Empire, but Ammianus Marcellinus provides modern-day readers with a gem from the late 4th Century AD. Marcellinus, an ethnic Greek who served as a staff officer in the Roman army, attempted to pick up where Tacitus left off in writing a comprehensive history of the Roman Empire. Unfortunately, only the sections of his work that covers the years 354-378 AD has survived. However, even the remaining account provides vibrant insight into the declining years of the Roman Empire. .... Marcellinus vividly describes the bitter realities of unlimited warfare to the death. He also participated in Julian's campaigns in Germany and the invasion of Persia in 363.
Marcellinus' account is not for the faint of heart and it is readily apparent that his world was a very violent place, between foreign wars and civil strife. In typical passages, an unruly general in Germany is "butchered with repeated sword thrusts," while after a Roman victory over the German tribes the author notes a "discolored river, foaming with barbarian blood." Rome punishes barbarian aggression with Vietnam-style search & destroy missions in Germany, where Marcellinus notes that a typical raid entails "firing the frail homes in which they [Germans] sheltered, putting a host of people to the sword, enjoying the spectacle of numbers falling and others begging for mercy…" War against the Persians is even more brutal, where Marcellinus notes in one case where "we burned a lofty temple which crowned the citadel, and killed a few women whom we found there." Later, he calls a 'glorious achievement' whereby "a great and populous city was destroyed by the strength of Roman arms and reduced to dust and ruins. Inside the Roman Empire, Marcellinus notes the frequent trials and witch-hunts, which result in seemingly arbitrary executions. The cruelty of some Roman city magistrates is highlighted by their brutal dispensation of drumhead justice; for example, "when there was nothing of Diogenes left to torture he was burnt alive."
Although Marcellinus is a conservative and appears to favor Pagan traditionalism, he waffles on the subject of religion. In one passage he claims that the "eternal providence of God was on our side" then later refers to "the goddess who controls the fortunes of the Roman world." Since Marcellinus served under both Pagan and Christian commanders, he probably courted both viewpoints. On the subject of government, Marcellinus does hold with the fairly modern view that, "sovereign power is nothing if it does not care for the welfare of others and it is the task of a good ruler to keep his power in check."
The Emperor Julian, who only ruled briefly in 361-363 AD is clearly the hero of Marcellinus' account. Julian was a successful military leader against the Germans and initially against the Persians, which probably gave an officer such as Marcellinus much to admire. However the author does note Julian's obsessive pre-occupation with fortune-tellers and superstitions. A careful reading of Marcellinus' description of the disastrous invasion of Persia in 363 indicates that the author probably exaggerated Julian's military talents. Later sections highlight the rising threat of the Goths and the Huns to the Roman Empire, providing rich detail on these savage foes.
... Nevertheless, Ammianus Marcellinus' account is indispensable for anyone interested in the final death throes of the Roman Empire.
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