Ammien Marcellin (330-400) was a Roman historian of Greek descent and one of the last great historians of Rome. After a fairly significant eclipse in the 3rd century, the art of writing among the Romans found a new hour of glory when the Empire was reborn, from the reign of Diocletian (284-305). Indeed, Late Antiquity conceals very great authors who carry high the Roman know-how in literary matters. Thus, Aurelius Victor produced around 360 an abridgment of Roman History, Macrobius wrote The Saturnalia and Saint Augustine writes The City of God . Ammien Marcellin holds a rather atypical place among them, and we will try to best transcribe what were the specificities of his style and how his work fits into Latin literary production.
Ammien Marcellin, a Syrian in the Roman army
Ammianus Marcellinus was born around the year 330 in Syria and more precisely in Antioch. Son of an aristocrat, he embraced a military career as protector domesticus . A member of this prestigious private guard of emperors and high dignitaries of the Empire (the Jovian emperor left it directly at the time of his acclamation as Augustus), the young soldier he was then traveled the Roman world in all directions, and acquired an excellent knowledge of it. Attached to Urcisin, master of the cavalry of the East, by Emperor Constantius II, he found himself caught up in the turmoil of war and was nearly killed during the terrible siege of the city of Amida in Mesopotamia. The city falls after many adventures, and Ammien owes his salvation only to a postern which allows him, with some companions (Ursicin is not with him, they were separated by a Persian attack while they were riding to reconnoitre the enemy positions) to flee across the burning desert.
After finding the general, he goes to Gaul with him in order to settle the problem of the usurpation of Silvanus, the master of infantry and cavalry in the West , who had just adorned himself with the imperial purple, in a dark affair of struggles for influence in power groups. Ursicin and Ammien have him assassinated. In Gaul also, he meets the Emperor Julian (the winner of the Battle of Strasbourg) and he is at his side during his campaign against the Persians. He probably left the profession of arms around 375 and then settled in the vicinity of Rome and it was then that he began his literary work.
The work of Ammien Marcellin
Reclaiming Tacitus, he wishes to be its successor. His story therefore begins with the reign of Nerva and ends symbolically in 378. The first thirteen books have been lost, but they probably only represented a compendium of Roman history, as Late Antiquity produced so many of them. (Eutrope, Aurelius Victor...), because they retrace almost two hundred years of history there, while the following seventeen only cover the events from 353 to 378. From book XIV, he therefore tells us about the history of which he was able to be an active witness. Thus we meet Caesar Gallus, whom Constantius II appointed in the East and who is distinguished by great cruelty, so much so that Augustus decides on his assassination. His brother Julien is then placed at the head of Gaul, under close surveillance (Constance fears usurpations more than anything, because he had to fight against Magnentius, the assassin of his brother Constant), where he shows great warlike qualities .
And then it escalates and Julien seeks supreme power. Constance dies, leaving Julien as the sole heir. The apostate of the legend then launches against Persia, where he loses his life. Ammien gives on this occasion a vibrant description of the last moments of the mortally wounded emperor, much more convincing than that of Christian authors elsewhere. Then we witness the acclamation of Jovian who signs the disastrous treaty with the Persians to end the war, because he wishes to consolidate his new power in the Roman Empire. He died shortly after, and gave way to Valentinian I and his brother Valens, the future vanquished of Adrianople in 378. A story therefore rich in twists and turns of which we have transcribed only a meager substance here in comparison with the story by Ammien Marcellin.
Style
His writing is distinguished above all by a certain archaism, falling within a classical tradition, which recalls, in this period of doubt, the glorious ancients. Contrary to The Augustan History or to Suetonius, he never pours into purely defamatory or sordid commentary, but tries to be impartial as much as possible. Thus, he always traces the portrait of the emperors, and even those who find little favor in his eyes are not systematically criticized. Ammien always paints a picture of the qualities and faults of these men to balance his point. He thus takes a contrasting look at Julien for whom he nevertheless has enormous admiration. He criticizes in particular his lack of moderation in the sacrifices.
Direct involvement
The story told by Ammien is also punctually his own. Thus, as we have seen above, he attends the siege of Amida from the inside and thus gives us an edifying chronicle of the event. Step by step, we can follow the progress of the hostilities and measure the courage of the cornered Roman fighters, but also the horror of the war, of the diseases spread by the putrefaction of the bodies. As he flees, one clearly has the visual sensation of the march of Ammianus and his companions in the burning sands of the Orient. They find in their wanderings a well from which they draw water using strips of their torn tunic, attached to a protective hat that one of the men wore under his helmet and which is used here in the manner a sponge so they can quench their thirst.
This is also the work of Ammien; moments of everyday life, far from the hustle and bustle of politics and war. He likes to take us with him to the lowest levels of society and in particular to the side of the soldiers, of whom he also gives us here a contrasting, but very often human portrait. Between alcoholism and bravery, between gluttony and sobriety, he paints a striking picture of these men who spend a large part of their lives in the service of Rome, often in appalling conditions.
A moralizer
On the other hand, he hated the depraved and idle life that he attributes to the inhabitants of Rome (and that he denounces in a particularly acid tirade), as much as members of the imperial court of Constantinople and in particular of the eunuchs, Eusebius at the head. A great moralizer, Ammianus is an ardent defender of the traditional values of Rome. Throughout his work, we also come across amusing descriptions of the different peoples of the time, from the Gauls to the Huns, which he does by following the traditional canons of Roman ethnography and therefore with relatively little discernment as he makes extensive use of received ideas. But this is one of the rare negative points of his work. Very well informed about the events, of which he is sometimes a direct witness, he even has the honesty to cite his sources, which he scrupulously copies.
Thus, during the break between Julian and Constance, letters are exchanged by the two emperors. Ammien tells us about it and we can therefore compare it with the version given by Julien himself in his work; they are identical. During the exchange of letters, Ammien even informs us that other much less official letters were exchanged, undoubtedly more "flowery", and that he was not authorized to consult them, which sheds some light on his working method. Besides that, Ammien liked to get lost in digressions and thus gives us a clear vision of the knowledge of a scholar of that time. He thus explains his view of earthquakes.
The goal of History in Ammien Marcellin
Like any ancient historian, Ammien writes with a goal in mind, a key idea that structures his subject. For him it is the inexorable march to the catastrophe of 378, where the Romans were defeated at Adrianople by the Goths, and where the Emperor Valens fell in battle. He describes the battle, particularly bitter, which was engaged before the reinforcements sent from the west had joined the forces of Augustus from the east. Here, he clearly imputes the responsibility for the disaster to Valens, who, in his pride, preferred to fight in haste. But Ammian does not simply point to this defeat as the cause of future misfortunes; for him the decisive event is the crossing of the Danube by the Goths in 376, under pressure from the Huns.
Indeed, defeated, the Goths seek asylum in Valens, who agrees to settle them in Thrace. There, starved by the state, they end up revolting, and once victorious, they create an uncontrollable political and military force on Roman territory. From then on Rome was under a permanent threat. Ammianus probably died around the year 400, shortly before the first fall of Rome in 410 before the Goths of Alaric. He remains one of the greatest Roman historians, and undoubtedly the most atypical in terms of his military commitment and his exceptional existence.
Bibliography
- P.-M. Camus, Ammien Marcellin witness to cultural and religious currents at the end of the 4th century, Paris, 1967.
- G. Sabbah, The method of Ammien Marcellin. Research on the construction of historical discourse in the Res Gestae, Paris, 1978.
- From Ammien Marcellin, Histoires, tome 1, books XIV-XVI. Beautiful Letters, 1979.
- From Ammian Marcellin, History of Rome:Volume 1, Years 353 to 359, Constantius II, Emperor. Paleo, 2007.