18 Facts About Ammianus Marcellinus

Ammianus Marcellinus began his career as a military officer in the Praetorian Guard, where he gained firsthand experience in various military campaigns.

Ammianus Marcellinus served as an officer in the army of the emperors Constantius II and Julian.

Ammianus Marcellinus served in Gaul and in the east.

Ammianus Marcellinus professes to have been "a former soldier and a Greek", and his enrollment among the elite protectors domestic shows that he was of the middle class or higher birth.

Consensus is that Ammianus Marcellinus probably came from a curial family, but it is possible that he was the son of a comes Orientis of the same family name.

Ammianus Marcellinus 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.

Ammianus Marcellinus traveled with Ursicinus to Italy in an expedition against Silvanus, an officer who had proclaimed himself emperor in Gaul.

Ammianus Marcellinus probably met Julian for the first time while serving on Ursicinus' staff in Gaul.

Ammianus Marcellinus returned with his commander to the East and again served Ursicinus as a staff officer.

Ammianus Marcellinus successfully located the Persian main body and reported his findings to Ursicinus.

The Persians besieged and eventually sacked Amida, and Ammianus Marcellinus barely escaped with his life.

When Ursicinus was dismissed from his military post by Constantius, Ammianus Marcellinus too seems to have retired from the military; however, reevaluation of his participation in Julian's Persian campaign has led modern scholarship to suggest that he continued his service but did not for some reason include the period in his history.

Ammianus Marcellinus accompanied Julian, for whom he expresses enthusiastic admiration, in his campaigns against the Alamanni and the Sassanids.

Ammianus Marcellinus was residing in Antioch in 372 when a certain Theodorus was thought to have been identified as the successor to the emperor Valens by divination.

Ammianus Marcellinus eventually settled in Rome and began the Res gestae.

Ammianus Marcellinus writes of Christianity as being a "plain and simple" religion that demands only what is just and mild, and when he condemns the actions of Christians, he does not do so based on their Christianity as such.

Ammianus Marcellinus's handling from his earliest printers was little better.

Ammianus Marcellinus's report describes accurately the characteristic sequence of earthquake, retreat of the sea, and sudden incoming giant wave.