Ammianus Marcellinus Ammianus Marcellinus ( 325 / 330 – after 391 ) was a fourth - century Roman historian . He wrote the penultimate major historical account surviving from Antiquity ( the last was written by Procopius ) . His work chronicled in Latin the history of Rome from 96 to 378 , although only the sections covering the period 353 – 378 are extant . Biography . Ammianus was born between 325 and 330 in the Greek - speaking East , possibly at Antioch on the Orontes . The surviving books of his history , the " Res Gestae " , cover the years 353 to 378 . Ammianus served as a soldier in the army of Constantius II ( and possibly Julian ) in Gaul and Persia . He was " a former soldier and a Greek " ( " miles quondam et graecus " ) , he tells us , and his enrollment among the elite " protectores domestici " ( household guards ) shows that he was of noble birth . He entered the army at an early age , when Constantius II was emperor of the East , and was sent to serve under Ursicinus , governor of Nisibis in Mesopotamia , and " magister militum " . He returned to Italy with Ursicinus , when he was recalled by Constantius , and accompanied him on the expedition against Claudius Silvanus , who had been forced by the allegedly unjust accusations of his enemies into proclaiming himself emperor in Gaul . With Ursicinus he went twice to the East . On one occasion he was separated from Ursicinus and took refuge in Amida during the siege of the city , which was then attacked by the Sassanid king Shapur II ; he barely escaped with his life . When Ursicinus lost his office and the favour of Constantius , Ammianus seems to have shared his fall from grace , but under Julian , Constantius ' s successor , he regained his position . He accompanied this emperor , for whom he expresses enthusiastic admiration , in his campaigns against the Alamanni and the Sassanids . After the death of Julian , he took part in the retreat of Jovian as far as Antioch . He was residing in Antioch in 372 when one Theodorus was thought to have been identified by divination as a new Emperor , the successor to Valens . Making it clear that he is speaking as an eyewitness , Marcellinus tells us , in his history , of how Theodorus and several others were made to confess their deceit through the use of torture , and cruelly punished . He eventually settled in Rome , where his History would be written . The precise year of his death is unknown , but scholarly consensus places it somewhere between 392 and , at the latest , 400 . Modern authors generally describe him as a pagan who was tolerant of Christianity . Marcellinus writes of Christianity as being a pure and simple religion that demands only what is just and mild , and when he condemns the actions of Christians , he does not do so on the basis of their Christianity as such . His lifetime was marked by lengthy outbreaks of sectarian and dogmatic strife within the new state - backed faith , often with violent consequences ( especially the Arian controversy ) and these conflicts sometimes appeared unworthy to him , though it was territory where he could not risk going very far in criticism , due to the growing and volatile political connections between the church and imperial power . He was not blind to the faults of Christians or of pagans ; he observed in his " Res Gestae " that " no wild beasts are so deadly to humans as most Christians are to each other . " and he condemns his hero Julianus for excessive attachment to ( pagan ) sacrifice , and for his edict effectively barring Christians from teaching posts . Work . At Rome , he wrote in Latin a history of the Roman empire from the accession of Nerva ( 96 ) to the death of Valens at the Battle of Adrianople ( 378 ) , in effect writing a continuation of the history of Tacitus . He presumably completed the work before 391 , since at 22 . 16 . 12 he praises the Serapeum in Egypt as the glory of the empire , and the temple was destroyed by Christians at the end of that year . " Res Gestae " ( " Rerum gestarum Libri XXXI " ) was originally in thirty - one books , but the first thirteen are lost ( modern historian T . D . Barnes argues that the original was actually thirty - six books , which would mean that eighteen books had been lost ) . The surviving eighteen books cover the period from 353 to 378 . As a whole it has been considered extremely valuable , being a clear , comprehensive and in general impartial account of events by a contemporary . Like many ancient historians , Ammianus had a strong political and religious agenda to pursue , however , and he contrasted Constantius II with Julian to the former ' s constant disadvantage ; like all ancient writers he was skilled in rhetoric , and this shows in his work . His work has suffered terribly from the manuscript transmission . Aside from the loss of the first thirteen books , the remaining eighteen are in many places corrupt and lacunose . The sole surviving manuscript from which almost every other is derived is a ninth - century Carolingian text , Vatican lat . 1873 ( " V " ) , produced in Fulda from an insular exemplar . The only independent textual source for Ammianus lies in Fragmenta Marbugensia ( " M " ) , another ninth - century Frankish codex which was taken apart to provide covers for account - books during the fifteenth century . Only six leaves of " M " survive ; however , before this manuscript was dismantled the Abbot of Hersfeld lent the manuscript to Sigismund Gelenius , who used it in preparing the text of the second Froben edition ( " G " ) . The dates and relationship of V and M were long disputed until 1936 when R . P . Robinson demonstrated persuasively that V was copied from M . As L . D . Reynolds summarizes , " M is thus a fragment of the archetype ; symptoms of an insular pre - archetype are evident . " His handling from his earliest printers was little better . The " editio princeps " was printed in 1474 in Rome by Georg Sachsel and Bartholomaeus Golsch from " the worst of the " recentiores " " , which broke off at the end of Book 26 . The next edition ( Bologna , 1517 ) suffered from its editor ' s " monstrously bad conjectures " upon the poor text of the 1474 edition ; the 1474 edition was pirated for the first Froben edition ( Basle , 1518 ) . It wasn ' t until 1533 that the last five books of Ammianus ' history was put into print by Silvanus Otmar and edited by Mariangelus Accurius . The first modern edition was produced by C . U . Clark ( Berlin , 1910 - 1913 ) . The first English translations were by Philemon Holland in 1609 , and later by C . D . Yonge in 1862 . Critique . Edward Gibbon judged Ammianus " an accurate and faithful guide , who composed the history of his own times without indulging the prejudices and passions which usually affect the mind of a contemporary . " But he also condemned Ammianus for lack of literary flair : " The coarse and undistinguishing pencil of Ammianus has delineated his bloody figures with tedious and disgusting accuracy . " Austrian historian praised Ammianus as " the greatest literary genius that the world produced between Tacitus and Dante " . According to Kimberly Kagan , his accounts of battles emphasize the experience of the soldiers but at the cost of ignoring the bigger picture . As a result it is difficult for the reader to understand why the battles he describes had the outcome they did . Scholars have often believed that Ammianus ' work was intended for public recitation for two reasons : the overwhelming presence of accentual clausula e , which implies that it was intended to be read aloud ; and epistle 1063 of Libanius to a Marcellinus of Rome which refers to public recitations . However , virtually all major works of Greek and Latin prose possessed such clausulae ; and some scholars have rejected the identification of Libanius ' Marcellinus with Ammianus , since Marcellinus was a very common name and the tone suggests Libanius was addressing a man much younger than himself ( Ammianus was his contemporary ) . It is a striking fact that Ammianus , though a professional soldier , gives excellent pictures of social and economic problems , and in his attitude to the non - Roman peoples of the empire he is far more broad - minded than writers like Livy and Tacitus ; his digressions on the various countries he had visited are particularly interesting . Ammianus ' work contains a detailed description of the tsunami in Alexandria which devastated the metropolis and the shores of the eastern Mediterranean on 21 July 365 . His report describes accurately the characteristic sequence of earthquake , retreat of the sea and sudden giant wave .