The Later Roman Empire

Ammianus Marcellinus was a fourth-century Roman historian and his work the Res Gestae, known in English as The Later Roman Empire, is one of the most important historical accounts to have survived from ancient Rome. Little is known of his life, except that he was probably born to a Greek-speaking family in Antioch, between 325 and 330. Marcellinus served as a soldier in the army of Constantius II and Julian in Gaul and Persia until he retired to Rome, where he wrote his history. His original work consisted of thirty-one books written in Latin, covering the accession of Nerva in 96 to the death of Valens in 378, however only the last eighteen books, from 353 to 378, have survived. This insightful and first-hand account of the Roman Empire, immediately before its collapse, has become extremely valuable as a clear, comprehensive, and generally impartial account of events of Roman Empire in the 4th century. Marcellinus was extremely skilled in rhetoric and uses his gifts to criticize a corrupt government, excessive taxation and war, and a society in morale and financial decline. The Later Roman Empire is an important and fascinating examination of an empire on the brink of ruin. This edition follows the translation of C. D. Yonge.