Ammianus Marcellinus and His Descriptions of the Foreign Tribes in His History
Öz
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.
Anahtar Kelimeler
Kaynakça
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