ABSTRACT
Running intermittently at first, then increasingly sustainedly, Ammianus’ narrative of the career of Julian spans ten of the eighteen extant books of the Res Gestae.2 Even allowing for punctuating digressions within the stretches of text at issue, no other emperor is granted such lengthy treatment in the work as it survives. How much space was allotted to Constantine’s thirty-year reign in the lost earlier books we cannot know; but given that the starting-point of Ammianus’ work was AD 96, the scale of treatment is unlikely to have matched that devoted to Julian’s much briefer career. In one sense or another, Ammianus’ narrative of Julian plainly must count as the centre-piece of the entire work.
