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HISTORY
malicious character study (27.11.1—7). But it is above all the emperors whose
appearance and character are described at length, often in formal set-pieces
composed in accordance with the precepts of the rhetoricians: Julian (25.4.1—22),
Jovian (21.6.4), Valentinian (30.7.1—30.9.6), Valens (31.14.1—9), Gratian
(31.10.18—19), the usurper Silvanus (15.5.32—3). This interest in the personalities
of rulers reflects the confusion of history and biography in late antiquity. There
are only seventeen speeches in the surviving eighteen books, and most of these
are addresses by emperors to their troops. Speeches in the Senate were no longer
of significance. That the existing speeches are in general constructed in accordance
with the handbooks does not mean that they are not true to life. Generals
haranguing their soldiers rarely express original ideas.
The descriptions of military operations, of which there are many, are usually
clear when Ammianus speaks as an eye-witness, but often obscure when he
relies on the evidence of others. His unwillingness, in accordance with the
precepts of rhetoric, to use technical terms often contributes to the obscurity of
such passages. He owes little to the emotion-charged style of the traditional
'battle-piece', the roots of which go back to the pupils of Isocrates.
There are many digressions, usually formally marked as such, dealing with
geography and ethnology, with physical matters such as earthquakes, eclipses,
comets or the origin of pearls, with philosophical or religious topics like fate,
prophecy or tutelary deities, and with aspects of the society of his time, such as
life in Rome, the moral corruption of Roman society, or the shortcomings of
lawyers. Many of those excursuses are explicitly intended to provide background
to Ammianus' narrative: examples are those on the city of Amida (18.9.1—4),
on Thrace and the regions bordering the Black Sea (22.8.1—48), on the history,
geography and demography of the Persian empire (23.6.1—88), and on the Huns
(31.2.1—12). Other digressions of the same type were evidently intended to
provide similar background information. Others, like the long moralizing note
on the decadence of Roman society (14.6.2—26) were connected with the author's
overall view of the process of Roman history. Many of the scientific digressions
were from the point of view of the ancient reader legitimate comment on the
events narrated. They were also a display of the author's wide knowledge.
Ammianus had read a great deal, was in his rather disorganized way a learned
man, and had a deep respect for erudition in others. The next group of digressions,
such as those on Egyptian hieroglyphic writing (17.4.1—23), on foreknowledge
and augury (21.1.8—14), on the tragedian Phrynichus (28.1.3—4), are
best understood as gratuitous displays of erudition which would give pleasure
to like-minded readers. Finally there are those which are expressions of the
author's own experience and judgement, such as that on the Roman nobility
(28.4.6) or that on the legal profession (30.4.3—22). Occasionally we can hazard
a guess at the sources used by Ammianus in his excursuses; in most cases they
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