Ammianus Marcellinus

Born in Antioch in the 4th century, Ammianus Marcellinus was a Greek-speaking Roman historian and a former military officer. He served under the general Ursicinus and traveled widely through the empire, experiences that later gave his history unusual immediacy and detail.

He is best known for the Res Gestae, a history of Rome that originally covered a long span of imperial history, though only the later books survive. Those surviving sections are especially valuable for their account of the years 353 to 378, including the reign of Julian and the Battle of Adrianople.

Readers still turn to Ammianus because he wrote with the eye of both a participant and an observer. His work blends battlefield reporting, court politics, geography, and character sketches, making him one of the most important sources for the final centuries of the Roman Empire.