Ammianus Marcellinus

Ammianus Marcellinus was born around AD 330 in Antioch, a Greek-speaking Syrian who chose to write in Latin — a remarkable decision, and one that places him in the tradition of Rome's greatest historians. He served as a military officer under the general Ursicinus and then under Julian the Apostate, experiencing war at first hand in Gaul, Mesopotamia, and Persia. He survived the catastrophic siege of Amida in 359, escaping through a postern gate as the city fell to the Persians, and later participated in Julian's doomed Persian campaign of 363.

After retiring from military service, he settled in Rome and wrote his Res Gestae in 31 books, covering Roman history from the accession of Nerva in AD 96 to the Battle of Adrianople in 378. The first thirteen books are lost; what survives (Books 14–31) covers the years 353–378 with extraordinary detail. Ammianus intended his work as a continuation of Tacitus, and he deserves the comparison. His Latin is dense and sometimes ungainly — he writes like a man thinking in Greek — but his judgement is fair, his descriptions of military operations are precise, and his character portraits are devastating.

He is the last great historian of the Roman world. After Ammianus, the tradition of continuous Latin historiography effectively ends.