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 the Apostate) 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 downfall; 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. Marcellinus documented that Theodorus was, with many others, implicated by the use of torture, and cruelly punished.
Though pagan, Marcellinus was mostly tolerant of Christians.
Read more about this topic: Ammianus Marcellinus
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