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Ammianus Marcellinus
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The Later Roman Empire: (a.D. 354-378) Paperback – 1 September 1986

by Ammianus Marcellinus (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars 125
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The historical account of the end of the Roman Empire

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.
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  1. Print length
    512 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Penguin
  4. Publication date
    1 September 1986
  5. Dimensions
    12.83 x 2.21 x 19.79 cm
  6. ISBN-10
    9780140444063
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0140444063
  8. See all details
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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.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0140444068
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin; 1st edition (1 September 1986)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 512 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780140444063
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0140444063
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 12.83 x 2.21 x 19.79 cm
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 out of 5 stars 125

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Ammianus Marcellinus

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Luc REYNAERT
5.0 out of 5 stars 'The task of history is to deal with prominent events', with the latter being 'a theatre of cruelty'
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 June 2019
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A moralist in a wicked world
Ammianus Marcellinus was a sincere moralist: 'for, as philosophy tells us, the goal of a just reign should be the safety and welfare of its subjects'. But, what he sees around him is 'the wrath of Mars, which raged everywhere with unusual fury'.

Main characters in a theatre of cruelty
The main character of this bitter play is emperor Julianus, Lesser players are other emperors (like Constantine, Valens or Valentinian), usurpers, governors and generals, surrounded by secret agents, greedy eunuchs, merciless tax-collectors, corrupt judges and slave-traders,
His history is a story of bloody despotism and manipulations (e.g., of grain prices), revealing 'the arrogance of the powerful', which results in 'acts of robbery … through the criminal collusion of judges and advocates, who sold the interests of the poor to military commanders or persons of influence in the palace'.
It is a relentless series, at large, of battles against barbarian invasions and of campaigns for conquering new provinces and tributes, and, at home in Rome, of infighting between greedy senators while controlling a rioutious and violent mob.
High(Low)lights are the deaths of Julianus and Valens, the siege of Amida, the battle of Strasbourg.and the invasion of the Huns.

Inhuman scenes of war and its sequels, like famine
A few examples: 'Here a man of good birth … was dragged like a wild beast, railing at the cruelty and blindness of Fortune, which … placed him at the mercy of a brutal conqueror either to be torn limb from limb or to endure the blows and tortures of slavery''.
'The barbarians were distressed by want of food.... the loathsome generals collected all the dogs … and exchanged each of them for a slave, and among these slaves were some sons of leading men.'

Divination
For the Romans, divination was an essential part of history since it revealed the actual will of the gods. People used divination for all sort of things, like detecting favourable omens for the outcome of their actions or to 'know' the future. It was taken very seriously: a divination seeking to 'discover the name of (emperor) Valens' successor' ended in a bloodbath.

Ammianus Marcellinus, the writer
Ammianus Marcellinus was a well-read intellectual, who knew his Roman and Greek masters (Cicero, Thucidydes et al.).
He had perspicuous insights into military tactics and world population movements (the Huns chasing the Goths into the Roman empire). He was a fine psychologist and saw the main mobiles behind human behaviour (searh for power and domination leading to a master/slave relation at personal and tribal levels).
His style is direct by using raw decriptions of brutal facts, but not without poetic or figurative elements ('He was like a lion of huge size and grim aspect which does not dare to go to the rescue of its trapped whelps because it has lost its claws and teeth').

This book, with an excellent introduction by A. Wallace-Hadrill, will mostly appeal to all fans of Roman history and classical texts.
3 people found this helpful
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Kalyan Ray
5.0 out of 5 stars Great read.
Reviewed in India on 12 March 2019
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For all lovers of Roman history.
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Patrick Sullivan
5.0 out of 5 stars An Empire In Deep Decline
Reviewed in Canada on 25 March 2017
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Marcellinus details the events of the later Roman Empire. The Empire itself is crushing under the weight of; government corruption, heavy taxation, endless civil wars, and nearby invading tribes. Yet through it all, there is no sense of impending doom. The author and the population at large, have full confidence in Roman supremacy.

The modern reader can not help finding, exact parallels with out current society. Government offcials that enrich themselves and their toadies, at the expense of the general population. Never ending increases in taxation. The ever wider gap, between the elite richest segment of the population and the rest of society. Meanwhile, the lower classes spend all their time, gambling on chariot races, drinking, and or eating in a gluttonous binge.

This book will hit the reader on two fronts. First, the general interest in the events of the later Roman Empire. Second, the striking similarities between the later Roman Empire and our current western lifestyle. At times the only difference appears to be, the names of the people involved in the events.

This is a very interesting book. The contrasts with the Roman Republic and early Roman Empire, makes for a stunning read.
One person found this helpful
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Amazon Kunde
5.0 out of 5 stars DER Geschichtsschreiber der Spätantike!
Reviewed in Germany on 20 April 2016
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Interessantes Werk, auch wenn die vorliegende Ausgabe um ca. 1/5 gekürzt wurde, steht alles Essentielle drin, sogar die Kritik an der faulen römischen Stadtbevölkerung. Kaiser Julian Apostata ist klar der Held des guten Ammianus. Nach der desaströsen Niederlage von Hadrianopel 378 war der Gute so verstört, dass er das Schreiben sein liess, wollte vielleicht auch nicht den gerade Herrschenden zu nahe treten, wie Wallace-Hadrill im Vorwort vermutet. Nichtdestotrotz bleibt Ammianus Marcellinus unsere Hauptquelle, die loszulassen schon Edward Gibbon seine liebe Not hatte!
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jeffergray
5.0 out of 5 stars A Vivid and Memorable History that Should be Better Known
Reviewed in the United States on 16 November 2002
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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.
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