SOURCE: Blockley, R. C. “Gallus: Dramatic and Moralizing History.” In Ammianus Marcellinus: A Study of His Historiography and Political Thought, pp. 18-29. Bruxelles, Belgium: Latomus, 1975.

In the following excerpt, Blockley argues that Ammianus wavers between the personae of objective historian and didactic moralist, using Ammianus's book on Constantius Gallus for illustration.

Much of book XIV, the first surviving book of Ammianus' History, describes the later part of the reign and the death of Constantius Gallus. Gallus, who, with his half-brother Julian, survived the massacre of the kinsmen of Constantine I carried out at the accession of his sons¹, was appointed Caesar in 351 a.d. by his cousin, the Emperor Constantius II, and left to guard the East against the Persians while the Emperor went West to face the usurper Magnentius². In 354, after the defeat of the usurper, Gallus was summoned to the West, deposed and put to death...