The Historians of Late Antiquity Read Online Free PDF Page A

Corduene he claims to have seen the massive Persian army on the move (18.6.20–3). After determining the course of the army, Ammianus returned to Roman territory and made his report. Orders came down to remove peasants from their land and to burn the fields to limit the enemies’ fodder (18.7.1–3). As Ammianus and his party quickly destroyed several bridges to prevent the enemy from crossing, the carelessness of certain Roman cavalrymen allowed a Persian contingent to attack. Ammianus narrowly escapedand took refuge in Amida, which was filled with refugees and with farmers who had been participating in an annual fair nearby (18.8).
    Ammianus was then shut up inside the walls of Amida for seventy-three days while the Persian king Shapur besieged the city. Ammianus’ account of the siege (19.2–8) “is one of the high points of his narrative and a classic passage in Roman historical narrative,” according to Matthews (1989: 58). The city finally fell to Shapur, but the delay forced by the protracted siege left the Persians unable to capitalize on the victory. Ammianus himself slipped out of a gate with two companions when he recognized that the fall was imminent (19.8.5). Their escape was not without incident, but eventually, with the help of a captured runaway horse, they made their way to the Armenian town of Melitina, where they met up with a general whom they accompanied to Antioch (19.8.6–12).
    The fall of Amida had repercussions for Ursicinus’ career, and, one must imagine, for Ammianus’ as well. An investigation at court into the reasons for the fall led to intrigue against the general, who from frustration blamed his troubles on the emperor’s excessive deference to the palace eunuchs (20.2). As a result, Ursicinus was forced into retirement, and Ammianus disappears as an actor in his history for several years. He may have left the military when his sponsor did, or performed more mundane duties. A letter from Libanius to former students in Tarsus, written in 360, could possibly refer to Ammianus. In Barnes’ translation (1998: 61), Libanius writes, “to judge from the dress [of the man bearing this letter] he is enlisted in the army, but in fact he is enrolled among philosophers; he has imitated Socrates despite having gainful employment – the fine Ammianus” ( ep . 233).
    After the revolt of Julian and the death of Constantius, the new emperor headed east to prepare for a renewed Persian campaign. Ammianus frequently discusses Julian’s recruitment of personnel for his new administration, and presumably Ammianus himself came out of retirement to rejoin the military when the emperor arrived at Antioch in 363. Ammianus reappears in the narrative just before the Roman army invaded Persian territory. He describes the crossing of the river Abora and then includes himself among the men who saw, ominously, the tomb of the third-century emperor Gordian, a military hero who was treacherously killed (23.5.7). The invasion of Persia was a dreadful failure, and Julian was killed. Ammianus records the difficult and dangerous retreat of the army, and the cession of the city of Nisibis to the Persians by the new emperor, Jovian. Ammianus’ last use of thefirst person occurs at 25.10.1 (“we came to Antioch”), and this suggests that he did not proceed on to Constantinople with Jovian (Matthews 1989: 13).
    During the next twenty years Ammianus must have traveled to gather information for his history and continued to compose his work. He claims personal familiarity with a few places which he must have visited during this time: Greece (26.10.19), Egypt (22.15.1), and the Black Sea (22.8.1), for example. He was in Antioch during the treason trials which Valens held in 370 and 371, and he describes the terror that gripped the city in book 29 of the work. Material for the earlier books of the Res Gestae could most easily be collected in the east, but proper coverage of Valentinian’s reign required the historian to