Ammianus Marcellinus and His Descriptions of the Foreign Tribes in His History

Year 2003, Issue: 2, 127 - 137, 01.09.2003

Bedia Demiriş

Abstract

Ammianus Marcellinus (AD 330-395) was the last of the great Roman historians and as Mellor claims, was the last outstanding pagan writer of classical antiquity (Mellor 1998: 7). As we learn from the closing paragraph of his historical work, Ammianus was a native Greek (Amm. 31.16.9). By traditional account, he was born in Antioch near the Syrian coast, towards the end of the reign of Constantinus. He describes Antioch as “the crown of the East” (Amm, 22.9.14: Antiochiam orlentis apicem). In fact, this city was cone of the four major cities of the Roman empite and was important both as cultural and as an administrative centre. Ammianus has mentioned the city in his work repeatedly (Amm. 14.7.9; 22.9-12; 29.1-2). The city was ruled by a Greekspeaking elite of landowners, while the poor farmers were speaking Syriac; the richer families were obliged to accept the financial burdens of membership of the city council. Ammianus’ prosperous Greek family must have belonged to this curial class (Grant 1995: 23). On this matter, we have no details, although we know a good deal about the life of Ammianus, which he has frequently mentioned in his own history. But it can be taken that, Ammianus was a member of the upper middle class and had comparatively little of financial worries (Thompson 1969: 2). As a Syrian Greek Ammianus served in the emperor Julian's army. Because of his good birth, he was no ordinary soldier; when he was made one of the protectores domestici, he was in his twenties.

Keywords

Roman , historian , Ammianus Marcellinus

Ammiannus Marcellinus ve Tarih Eserindeki Yabancı Kavimlerle İlgili Betimleri

Abstract

References

• Browning, R. 1983. “History,” The Cambridge History of Classical Literature. The Later Principate, Vol. II, Part 5, Cambridge.
• Drivers, J. W. 1999. “Ammianus Marcellinus’ Image of Arsaces and Early Parthian History,” in J. W. Drivers – D. Hunt (eds.), The Late Roman World and its Historian. Interpreting Ammianus Marcellinus, London and New York, 193–206.
• Ensslin, W. 1963. Zur Geschichtsschreibung und Weltanschauung des Ammianus Marcellinus, Klio Beiheft XVI, Wiesbaden.
• Grant, M. 1995. Greek and Roman Historians. Information and Misinformation, London and New York.
• Laistner, M. L. W. 1963 (2). The Greater Roman Historians, Berkeley and Los Angeles.
• Mellor, R. 1998. The Historians of Ancient Rome. An Anthology of the Major Writings, New York and London. 1999. The Roman Historians, London and New York.
• Reynolds, L. D. 1983. Texts and Transmission. A Survey of the Latin Classics, Oxford.
• Rohrbacher, D. 2002. The Historians of Late Antiquity, London and New York.
• Rolfe, J. C. 1982 (rep.). tr. Ammianus Marcellinus, Vol. I, Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge. 1986a (rep.). tr. Ammianus Marcellinus, Vol. II, Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge. 1986b (rep.). tr. Ammianus Marcellinus, Vol. III, Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge.
• Sundwall, G. A. 1996. “Ammianus Geographicus,” American Journal of Philology, Vol. 117, No. 4: 619–643.
• Thompson, E. A. 1969 (rep.). The Historical Work of Ammianus Marcellinus, Groningen.
• Usher, S. 1997 (rep.). The Historians of Greece and Rome, London.