ABSTRACT
There is an abundant supply of source material for the dominate, but the information given by these sources is not always complete or reliable.1 Important historians who wrote about this period of Roman history were Ammianus Marcellinus (fourth century) and Procopius (sixth century). The only part of Marcellinus’ work that has survived is his report on the period 359-378 in which he puts special emphasis on the reign of Emperor Julian (361-363), an emperor for whom he had great admiration. Julian is known as the ‘Apostate’ because he opposed Christianity and tried to restore the old Roman traditions. Procopius described the wars that Emperor Justinian waged against the Persians, the Visigoths and the Vandals between 529 and 553; in addition, in one of his works, which was probably not published officially, he denounced the private lives of several important persons, including Justinian.
