Ammianus Marcellinus and Fourth-century Warfare

2003 ◽  
pp. 29-39
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Ammianus Marcellinus

Principes cum Tyrannis: Two Studies on the Kaisergeschichte and its Tradition

1993 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 491-500 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. W. Burgess
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Common Source ◽  
Single Source ◽  
Natural Assumption ◽  
Ammianus Marcellinus ◽  
The Third ◽  
Historia Augusta ◽  
Selection Of

The Kaisergeschichte (KG) was a set of short imperial biographies extending from Augustus to the death of Constantine, probably written between 337 and c. 340. It no longer exists but its existence can be deduced from other surviving works. Amongst the histories of the fourth century – Aurelius Victor, Eutropius, Festus, Jerome's Chronici canones, the Historia Augusta, the Epitome de Caesaribus, and, in places, even Ammianus Marcellinus and perhaps the Origo Constantini imperatoris (Anonymi Valesiani pars prior) – there is a common selection of facts and errors, and common wording and phrasing in their narratives between Augustus and the death of Constantine, especially in their accounts of the third century. A natural assumption is that later historians copied earlier ones, yet later historians include information not contained in earlier ones, and historians who could not have known each other's work share similarities. For example, it looks as though Aurelius Victor was copying Eutropius, yet Victor wrote before Eutropius, and Eutropius contains information not in Victor and does not reproduce Victor's peculiar style or personal biases, things which he could hardly have avoided. Therefore Eutropius cannot be copying Victor. Since neither could have copied the other, there must therefore have been a common source. In his Chronici canones Jerome appears at first to be simply copying Eutropius. Yet when he deviates from Eutropius, his deviations usually mirror other histories, such as Suetonius, Victor, Festus, even the Epitome and the Historia Augusta, two works that had not even been written when Jerome compiled his chronicle and that did not use, and would never have used, the Christian chronicle as a source. Jerome was hurriedly dictating to his secretary, he had no time to peruse four or five works at a time for his brief notices. There must have been a single source that contained both the Eutropian material and the deviations common to Jerome and the other works. That source was the KG. It is the purpose of this paper to add to the above list of authors who relied upon the KG two other writers whose work can be shown to have derived, either at first hand or later, from the KG: Polemius Silvius and Ausonius.

Was Alexandria (Egypt) Destroyed in A.D. 365? A Famous Historical Tsunami Revisited

2020 ◽  
Vol 91 (5) ◽  
pp. 2662-2673 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stathis C. Stiros
Keyword(s):  
Produced Water ◽  
Nile Delta ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Ammianus Marcellinus ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Historical Tsunami ◽  
Aegean Arc ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Evidence

Abstract Ammianus Marcellinus, a fourth-century writer, reported that after an earthquake, on 21 July 365, the sea retreated and then flooded numerous coasts, among them Alexandria (Egypt) and Methoni (southwest Greece). Several other ancient authors seem to mention this event as a “universal earthquake.” The inferred tsunami is usually assigned to reactivation of a fault in the Hellenic (Aegean) Arc, derived from an up to 9 m seismic uplift of Crete. Modeling of this uplift revealed an 8.5+ magnitude earthquake and a tsunami that affected most of the Eastern Mediterranean. For Alexandria, a flooding wave arrival is predicted, and marginal impacts are not excluded because of the topography of the ancient town. On the other hand, ancient sources lead to contradictory results, from no damage to devastation, but new historical evidence indicates that many of the historical reports of the critical period are biased by religious and political ideas, and the Ammianus description was questioned. Hence, for Alexandria there exist three scenarios: major destruction, marginal damage, and no damage by the 365 tsunami. To shed light to this debate (1) ancient sources were analyzed in view of new evidence for their significance, (2) possible impacts of a tsunami in the town’s infrastructure were discussed, and (3) possible impacts of a major destruction were investigated in the framework of the well-known ecclesiastical and civil history of Alexandria. The main conclusions of this study are that (1) no significant tsunami destruction is likely for Alexandria, in agreement with sedimentary evidence, and no major tsunami runup for Methoni; (2) a major earthquake in 365 is likely offshore Crete; and (3) it is inferred that Ammianus brings together two tsunamis, a local slump offshore that produced water retreat and then flooding and local denudation in the eastern Nile Delta, and a second tsunami generated by a fault offshore Crete or in the Ionian and the Adriatic Sea.

scholarly journals The Murder of George of Cappadocia and the Violent Pagan Image in Ammianus Marcellinus

Scrinium ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-77
Author(s):  
Shunsuke Kosaka
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Ammianus Marcellinus ◽  
The People

This paper focused on three main issues regarding the brutal murder of George of Cappadocia on 24 December 361 CE in Alexandria and the question of whether the “pagans” attempted to prevent the cult of the martyr. First, an examination of the sources regarding the murderers of George found that the Alexandrian crowd did not only consist of pagans. Instead, everyone who had suffered from the tyranny of George could be possible assailants. Second, Ammianus’ report that the intention of the people was to defile the victims’ remains is highly contested. Regarding fourth-century Alexandria, it is impossible to find any evidence that refers to such an attempt. Third, his text exposed a somewhat ruthless image of pagans as presented by Christian authors such as Prudentius. Despite Ammianus being not a Christian himself, his account reflects the images of the cruel pagans fabricated by Christians, thus allowing us to acknowledge the Christianised view of pagans in the work of the last great Latin historian.


Physiognomics in Imperial Latin Biography

2010 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Rohrbacher
Keyword(s):  
Distinctive Feature ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Ammianus Marcellinus ◽  
Historia Augusta ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

A distinctive feature of the biographies of Suetonius is his methodical and detailed description of the physical appearances of the emperors. This feature was adopted by two fourth-century Latin writers, Ammianus Marcellinus and the anonymous author of the Historia Augusta. This study will explore how ancient theories of the relationship between appearance and character intersect with the physical descriptions of emperors the authors provide. These authors reveal themselves to be engaged with contemporary approaches to the question without being bound by any one theory, and thus presuppose a readership for whom physiognomic questions were both interesting and debatable. The approaches of the authors to this minor feature in their work also offer broader insight into their biographical style and purpose.

The Mausoleum of Augustus

1927 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 23-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. A. Cordingley ◽  
I. A. Richmond
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
Ammianus Marcellinus ◽  
History Of ◽  
Short Time ◽  
Classical History

The early history of the Augusteo, as the Mausoleum of Augustus is now called, wins little space in contemporary literature. Among classical writers first Strabo and then Suetonius tell us that Augustus built for himself and his family, between the Via Flaminia and the Tiber, this huge circular tumulus, crowned with evergreens, surmounted by his own effigy in bronze, and retained by a lofty base of white stone. And these accounts supplement one another in detail, Suetonius noting that the work was done in 28 B.C, and thereby causing one to wonder whether Antony's fate and the conspiracy of Lepidus set Augustus about building his own last resting-place; while Strabo mentions that anustrinum of similar stone, with an iron railing in a circle round it, stood not far away. The building was ready by 23 B.C, when Vergil spoke 4 of it as new. Many people— we know of fourteen great ones— lay within; but the last Emperor to be buried there was Nerva, and then the tomb, entrusted to a procurator's care, was only opened for a short time to house, in the part allotted to Lucius and Gaius, the remains of Julia Domna. In the fourth century it found a place in the list of City monuments, and Ammianus Marcellinus pauses to state that two obelisks in front of it were later additions. After that classical history tells no more of the building or of its fate.

scholarly journals Santa Costanza at Rome and the House of Constantine

1970 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 55-70
Author(s):  
W. Eugene Kleinbauer
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Ammianus Marcellinus ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
Constantius Ii ◽  
Written Sources

This paper investigates the written documentary sources concerning the patronage or matronage of the exedra basilica associated with Saint Agnes on the Via Nomentana in Rome, next to which the present church of Santa Costanza was erected. The written sources suggest two possible women as the matrons of the basilica, both said to be daughters of the emperor Constantine the Great: Constantia and Constantina. The first tradition was established by an entry in the life of Bishop Sylvester in the Liber Pontificalis, the second by both Ammianus Marcellinus and an acrostic poem connected with the basilica. These documents are examined for their authenticity and historical veracity. This examination leads to a survey of imperial matronage in the fourth century, and while it is argued that the most likely matron of the women is Constantina, who married Gallus Caesar in 351, neither of these ladies can be shown to have erected the present Santa Costanza. Rather, construction of the latter, it will be posited, was most likely ordered by the emperor Constantius II (337-361), the brother of Constantina, to serve as an imperial dynastic mausoleum.

Constantine and Jerusalem

1997 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 405-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. D. Hunt
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Public Works ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Ammianus Marcellinus ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Century Development

On 27 November 395, shortly after the remains of Theodosius had been interred beside the tombs of Constantine and his successors in Constantinople, the eastern praetorian prefect Fl. Rufinus was murdered by troops outside the capital. Zosimus' narrative of the incident, deriving from Eunapius, adds that Rufinus' widow and daughter escaped with a safe conduct to sail to Jerusalem, ‘which had once been the dwelling of the Jews, but from the reign of Constantine had been embellished with buildings by the Christians’. As the only glimpse of the fourth-century development of Jerusalem from outside the Christian tradition, Zosimus' passing remark is not without interest – even if no more than a casual and seemingly unpartisan aside. We cannot unfortunately make comparisons with what, if anything, Eunapius' contemporary Ammianus Marcellinus had said on the subject in his lost narrative of Constantine; but to judge from the Constantinian back-references in the surviving books it is unlikely to have been sympathetic – certainly no more so than his lukewarm endorsement of Julian's later attempt at restoring the Jewish Temple to Jerusalem, which Ammianus attributed merely to a desire ‘to perpetuate the memory of his reign with great public works’.

Ammianus Marcellinus and Fourth Century History

Phoenix ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joachim Szidat ◽  
T. G. Elliott
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Ammianus Marcellinus

Authoritarianism, Autonomy and Ammianus Marcellinus

Ramus ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-63
Author(s):  
R F. Newbold
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Roman History ◽  
Ammianus Marcellinus ◽  
Military Performance ◽  
The Third ◽  
Senior Officers ◽  
Detailed Record

According to Ammianus, it was envy of the exploits of Gratian and anxiety to equal them that drove Valens to engage the Goths at Adrianople in 378 before Gratian could arrive. The quality of the intelligence Valens received about the numbers of the Gothic forces was poor but he was inclined to believe it because it suited his wish. At a meeting with senior officers he sided with those who argued against waiting for Gratian's army, encouraged, it is said, by courtiers who pandered to his desire to monopolise ttye glory of victory. Weakened by hunger, fatigue and heat, and incompetentfy led, the Roman soldiers mostly fought with courage and tenacity until overwhelmed and massacred by the barbarians. They were victims, apparently, of their leader's irrationality, vanity and insecurity.Norman Dixon has adduced authoritarianism as a major factor in military incompetence. Ammianus, product of an overwhelmingly authoritarian society, provides a detailed record of Roman history in the third quarter of the fourth century. Understanding of Rome's civil and military performance in that age and of the author could be enhanced by examination of the authoritarian syndrome.

scholarly journals A.4. Attire in Ammianus and Gregory of Tours

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ron F. Newbold
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
High Rank ◽  
Striking Feature ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Ammianus Marcellinus ◽  
Spiritual Commitment ◽  
Ongoing Concern

The fourth century historian of the Roman Empire, Ammianus Marcellinus, focuses on attire and accessories that signify high rank, status and authority. In his narrative there are a number of cases where clothing and insignia feature in illegitimate or dangerous aspirations to power, and brought destruction upon the aspirants, or threatened to. An ongoing concern for Ammianus is how appropriately attired people are. He scorns the pretentious clothing of Roman nobles and bishops, took pleasure in retailing the reaction of the emperor Julian to his overdressed barber, and considered the craven Epigonius to be a philosopher only in his attire. Gallus Caesar's forced change from high to low status clothing portended his imminent execution. In his ethnographic excurses, Ammianus uses the attire of foreign peoples to define their otherness. The sixth century historian of Merovingian Gaul, Gregory of Tours, is largely oblivious to fine apparel unless it is the shining vestments of saints and angels. Humble and harsh clothing, such as skins and hair shirts denote spiritual commitment or reorientation, a change of "habit", a declaration that can be stripped away by enemies and persecutors while leaving the faith itself intact. Real ascetics eschew footwear in winter. The most striking feature of clothing in Gregory is the magical powers, to heal or punish, that it can absorb from the bodies of holy wearers. In both authors, clothes and character may be mismatched but Ammianus does not share Gregory's fondness for simple and uncomfortable attire, and certainly not his belief that a few threads from the clothing of someone long dead can work miracles.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document