ABSTRACT
As compared with the preceding and following ages, the period from the accession of Diocletian in 284 to the death of Phocas in 610 is well documented. In the first place, historiography was a popular form of literature in the Greek East, and a series of authors wrote histories of their own times. If all of them had survived we should be very well informed, but though most have perished the works of a few outstanding historians have survived and from the rest there are summaries and fragments. The first historian of the age whose work has been preserved in bulk is Ammianus Marcellinus, a Greek of Antioch who, in order to bring his writings to the notice of the senatorial aristocracy of Rome, wrote in Latin. He was an admirer of Tacitus and took up his tale where Tacitus stopped, at the death of Domitian. The surviving books of his work begin with A.D. 351 and he closes with the battle of Adrianople in 378. Ammianus is not so great a stylist as Tacitus, but he is one of the greatest of Roman historians. He knew the empire well, having served as a protector or officer cadet on the staff of Ursicinus, master of the soldiers on the eastern front, moved with his chief to the imperial court, and subsequently served under Julian in Gaul and in Persia. He was a remarkably fair-minded man, a pagan who could appreciate the virtues of the Christian clergy and criticize his hero Julian. His narrative is full and vivid and his character sketches of the emperors and their ministers are penetrating.
