AMMIANO, MARCELLINO. — A pagan Latin historian of the fourth century, born in Antioch into a noble family. The year of his birth is unknown, but may be considered to have been around 335; likewise, we know nothing of his life until 353, when he was enrolled in the bodyguard of the protectores domestici, under the command of the master of the cavalry Ursicino, whom A. would faithfully follow until his dismissal. With Ursicino, in 353 he moved from Nisibi to Antioch, where the latter had been summoned by Caesar Gallo to preside over the trial of the city’s leading citizens; in 354 he went to Milan, where an order from the emperor Costanzo had instructed Ursicino to appear and answer for the suspicions weighing upon him. A. also followed Ursicino into Gaul, where he had been sent to suppress the revolt of the usurper Silvano, and then once again to the East when the Persians violated the Empire’s borders. A. took part in both campaigns.
Interesting is his description of the campaign against the Persians (books XIX-XX), particularly of the siege of Amida, where he had taken refuge (359). After the city was captured, A. and Ursicino escaped to Mitilene and then to Antioch, but the failure led to Ursicino’s dismissal (360).
In 363 we find A. once again in Persia, at the side of the emperor Giuliano, who on 26 July of that year died on the battlefield. After the peace concluded by Gioviano with the Persians, it seems that A. definitively abandoned military service and withdrew into private life, first in Antioch and then, after visiting various regions, including Egypt and Greece, in Rome, where he devoted himself to composing his great historical work, a continuation of the Historiae of Tacitus. That during this final period of his life he held some civil magistracy remains a conjecture, whereas it is certain that the scholar succeeded the soldier. Libanio (Epist. 983) still mentions him in Rome in 391, where he received the people’s acclaim for the public reading of his Rerum gestarum libri. After that year, no further information about him is available.
The complete Rerum gestarum libri comprised thirty-one books, almost all certainly written before 400. Only the last eighteen have come down to us. The chronological limits of the narrative are indicated by A. in the conclusion of the work: « Haec ut miles quandam et graecus, a principatu Caesaris Nervae exorsus ad usque Valentis interitum pro virium explicavi mensura » (book XXXI), that is, from the reign of Nerva, with which Tacitus’s narrative comes to an end, to the death of Valens (96–378).
The first thirteen lost books, together with the surviving portion of XIV, carried the narrative to the death of Caesar Gallo (354), treated rather briefly, since the subject was less familiar to A., and compiled for the most part from pre-existing documents. Books XV–XXV contain the events that occurred from Giuliano’s appointment as Caesar to the death of Gioviano (354–64). The remaining books are devoted to the events that followed
Of all the pagan historians, A. is certainly the only one to deal at length with Christianity, and his testimony is valuable for the history of the Church because it is contemporary with the events narrated, trustworthy in view of his intention to tell the truth, and all the more significant because the author is not a Christian. C. Chifflet’s assertion that A. was a Christian has no foundation, and his paganism is demonstrated by his entire work. A.’s religion, however, was not that of the ancient Greeks and Romans: he did not believe in the gods of Olympus, whose existence he denies, but believed in a God who is not a person but a force governing all things. In his religious conception he comes very close to the Neoplatonists, from whom he derived the religious freedom that permits each person to follow his own conscience. Indeed, he displayed benevolent tolerance toward all religions, nor did he attack Christianity, as the other pagan writers had done; on the contrary, he appreciated Christian doctrines and professed admiration for the heroism of the martyrs, going so far as to criticize the zeal of his hero Giuliano.
The Christian historians of antiquity and the Middle Ages, with due exceptions, generally ignored A. and his work solely because he was a pagan, whereas he deserves a distinguished place among the sources for the history of the ancient Church, of which he remains an impartial witness.
The surviving manuscripts of A.’s work are no earlier than the ninth or tenth century. The editio princeps appeared in Rome in 1474 and was due to A. Sabino. Among the later editions, those of E. de Valois (Paris 1636) and J. A. Wagner (Leipzig 1808) deserve mention for their valuable commentaries. The most recent edition is that of C. Clark (2 vols., Berlin 1910–15).