SOURCE: Barnes, Timothy D. “The Impartial Historian” and “Reality and Its Representation.” In Ammianus Marcellinus and the Representation of Historical Reality, pp. 1-19. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998.

In the following excerpt, Barnes explores how reliable Ammianus is as an historian and discusses the divergent critical evaluations of his work.

At the close of his history, Ammianus Marcellinus described himself as “a soldier and a Greek” (31.16.9). He was born about 330 into the local aristocracy of one of the cities of Roman Syria or Phoenicia, and his father was probably a career soldier who rose to a position of some importance in the reign of the emperor Constantius, who ruled the East from 337 to 361 (Chapter VI). Ammianus entered the Roman army as an officer in an élite corps around 350 and first appears in his narrative as extant in the year 354 (14.9.1, 11.5). It is not known how long he served...