Ammianus Marcellinus

Without their aid, his task would have been very heavy, and with it, the difficulty was removed.

The author does not claim to have grappled with all the chroniclers of the Eastern realm, but thinks that some acquaintance with Ammianus, Procopius, Maurice's Strategicon, Leo the Deacon, Leo the Wise, Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Anna Comnena, and Nicetas may justify his having undertaken the task he has essayed.

Oxford, February 1892.

End of preface.

It was not till forty thousand men had fallen that the thinning of the ranks enabled the survivors to break out and follow their cavalry in a headlong flight.

They left behind them, dead on the field, the emperor, the grand masters of the infantry and cavalry, the count of the palace, and thirty-five commanders of different corps.

The battle of Adrianople was the most fearful defeat suffered by a Roman army since Cannae, a slaughter to which it is aptly compared by the contemporary historian Ammianus Marcellinus.

The army of the East was almost annihilated, and was never reorganized again on the old Roman lines.

The Carmen Apologeticum, written in two five nine, is a collection of instructions twisted into acrostics in popular hexameters, with caesuras introduced according to the heroic verse style, composed without regard to quantity or hiatus, and often accompanied by such rhymes as the Church Latin would later supply in such abundance.

These somber, tortuous, gamey verses, crammed with terms of ordinary speech, with words diverted from their primitive meaning, claimed and interested him even more than the soft and already green style of the historians Ammianus Marcellinus and Aurelius Victoris, Symmachus the letter writer, and Macrobius the grammarian and compiler.

Them he even preferred to the genuinely scanned lines, the spotted and superb language of Claudian, Rutilius, and Ausonius.

They were then the masters of art.

So my favourite sieges, there's several, and I might have mentioned a couple of them already.

My favourite sieges are Ameda, because Ammianus Marcellinus is an eyewitness, and therefore the detail we get of the siege of Ameda and the falling of Ameda with the...

Again, and the wall is breached in that case, and the towers come in, and there's this desperate fighting.

There's a secret... passageway into the city, which a group of Persian archers get to and the defending siege engines have to turn on a tower within the city itself.

Both of them stopped at the end of the Flavian dynasty and so did not cover Nerva's reign.

Furthermore, while other historians later decided to pick up where Suetonius and Tacitus ended, In the case of two such works, the res gestae of Ammianus Marcellinus and the anonymously authored Historia Augusta, the sections dealing with the reign of Nerva have not survived down to the present day.

Therefore, our best source for Nerva's reign is the Historia Romana of Cassius Dio, a Greco-Roman historian who was writing over a century after Nerva's reign and who was far from a contemporary witness of the events he described.

In terms of ancient historical writers, there are some other snippets on Nerva's reign to be found, such as a minor entry by the 4th century historian Aurelius Victus de Caesaribus.

Magnentius's defeat was followed by savage reprisals in Britain, where he had enjoyed support.

The contemporary soldier-historian Ammianus Marcellinus wrote that Constantius's notoriously cruel representative, Paulus Catena, Paul the Chain, descended like a sudden torrent upon persons and estates, whether guilty or not.

There was a critical moment in the decline of Rome's influence in Britain.

Catena's violent intervention seems to have triggered a transfer of confiscated property to overseas magnates, which may explain why so many villas became derelict.

The Carmen Apologeticum, written in 259, is a collection of instructions twisted into acrostics in popular hexameters, with caesuras introduced according to the heroic verse style, composed without regard to quantity or hiatus, and often accompanied by such rhymes as the church Latin would later supply in such abundance.

These somber, tortuous, gamey verses, crammed with terms of ordinary speech, with words diverted from their primitive meaning, claimed and interested him even more than the soft and already green style of the historians Ammianus Marcellinus and Aurelius Victoris, Symmachus the letter-writer, and Macrobius the grammarian and compiler.

Them he even preferred to the genuinely scanned lines, the spotted and superb language of Claudian, Rutilius, and Ausonius.

They were then the masters of art.

Four centuries later, the Germanic Visigoths sacked Rome.

The Huns, Ammianus Marcellinus, says, were a race savage beyond all parallel.

He described them in distinctly unfavorable terms, quoting, they are certainly in the shape of men however uncouth and are so hardy that they require neither fire nor well-flavored food but live on the roots of such herbs as they get in the fields or on the half raw flesh of any animal which they merely warm rapidly by placing it between their own thighs and the back of their horses They never shelter themselves under roofed houses, nor is there even to be found among them a cabin thatched with reeds.

But they wander about, roaming over the mountains and the woods and accustom themselves to bear frost and hunger and thirst from their very cradles.

The largest obelisk now at Rome, and perhaps the largest in the world, is that which stands in front of the Lateran Church.

It was originally erected by the Emperor Constantius, see Ammianus Marcellinus, 17-4, in the Circus Maximus, by the means of a most cumbrous machinery of woodwork and ropes, after having been brought from Egypt in a ship built expressly for the purpose and manned with three hundred rowers.

Pope Sixtus V set it up in its present place in 1588, after it had lain on the ground broken in three pieces for several centuries.

Though the shaft has sustained some damage at the base, it is still one hundred and five feet long, and the width of the two larger sides at the base is nine feet, eight and three-fifths inches, and of the smaller, nine feet.

Sometimes they sailed in their painted yachts from the Lucrine Lake.

on the coast of puteoli and thought when they had done it that they had performed an exploit which might rival the expeditions of either alexander or caesar their tables were covered with the rarest delicacies and the pleasures of the feast occupied no small share of their time and conversation musical concerts and visiting the baths the theatres and other places of amusement absorbed nearly all the rest great was the change since the days of cincinnatus roman simplicity had been succeeded by oriental magnificence cloaks of laconian wool and purple tables of thurga with claws of silver and ivory services of plate set with precious stones furniture of the costliest materials and most elegant workmanship banqueting halls of florid architecture baths of marble and villas surrounded by enchanting gardens were now the signs of greatness instead of wisdom in the cabinet or valour in the field the second class of roman society consisted of the plebeian citizens numbers of whom neglecting all industrious employments lived upon the public distribution of bread bacon oil and wine which from the time of augustus had been made for the relief of the indigent among the people these idlers spent their time chiefly in baths and taverns and in witnessing those public amusements in the circus and the theatre which their corrupt magistrates and great men from the emperor downwards were accustomed to provide as a means of securing and maintaining popularity some says ammianus passed the night in taverns and other under the awnings of the theatres They occupied their time in playing at dice or, which was a more favourite employment, in sitting from morning till evening in the sun or the rain, enjoying the amusements of the circus and discussing the excellences or the defects of the horses and the charioteers.

It was truly surprising to see an innumerable concourse of people with the most ardent minds watching the event of a chariot race.

The third portion of Roman society consisted of slaves.

the vice and profligacy of the roman people under the latest of the emperors can furnish no materials for any just reflection upon the social tendencies of the christian system considered in itself in an age of social corruption and licentiousness it would be vain to expect the cultivation of a pure taste in matters of art or any noble efforts of the human intellect in the departments of literature the imagination and judgment of mankind feel the moral contagion and the intellectual energies in general become enfeebled and depressed hence the artistic civilization of rome at the period before us displayed a most vitiated taste the studious imitation of classic beauty as expressed in Grecian works of art, characterized the early cultivation of artistical skill among the Romans and led them to produce buildings and statues which might bear comparison with their admired models.

But now, a taste for the really elegant had been superseded by a passion for oriental magnificence and luxury.

Colossal magnitude and profuse ornaments excited admiration rather than symmetry of proportion and chasteness of decoration as to literature it was either neglected altogether or cultivated according to the prevailing taste the causes of this decay observes ammianus are not difficult to be traced they are the dissipation of our young men the inattention of parents the ignorance of those who pretend to give instruction and the total neglect of ancient discipline the mischief began at rome it has overrun italy and is now with rapid strides spreading through the provinces the same author also distinctly notices in his sketch of the state of rome the prevalent ignorance and corrupt tastes of the higher classes observing that musical performers were preferred to philosophers and that jugglers had taken the place of orators while libraries were closed and deserted like sepulchres of the dead from this slight review of well-attested facts it must be evident to the reader that roman civilization immediately before the fall of the empire was thoroughly corrupt every one will discern in that corruption enough to account for the prostration of the proud imperial city beneath the power of barbarians but the Christian mind will further recognize, in the facts of this memorable case, the operations of one of the established laws of divine providence.

The full punishment of individual men for their transgressions in this life is reserved for a future state of being, but as nations in their collective capacity will have no existence hereafter, the punishment of their sins is sure to be inflicted upon them sooner or later in the present world.