The Roman History

...wrote. And he digresses further and more frequently from the subject at hand than is necessary; yet this is a fault from which even the greatest men suffer. Indeed, Posidonius a Greek Stoic philosopher and polymath noted this very thing severely in the works of Cicero himself. But Ammianus responds to this criticism—if not in the most elegant Latin, then at least appropriately enough for his purpose—in the following manner:

"As for the fact," he says, "that the text is a little more wordy, it will actually contribute to a full and complete knowledge. For anyone who strives for excessive brevity when describing unknown things does not look for what he might explain more clearly, but rather searches for what he ought to pass over in silence."

FRANÇOIS BAUDOUIN ON THE

Institution of History

Book I

A large decorative woodcut initial P features intricate floral and leaf scrollwork, typical of 16th-century scholarly printing. After the death of Constantine Emperor Constantine the Great, d. 337 AD, with the Empire partly divided and partly moved elsewhere, and with the legions led away to who-knows-where, a flood of barbarians began to pour in. Is it not a wonder that, despite this, history was still diligently written—and even more so, that what was written then has actually survived to reach us? The Emperor Valens Eastern Roman Emperor, r. 364–378 AD was throwing heaven and earth into confusion original: coelum terrae miscebat; a Latin idiom for causing total chaos or extreme upheaval both at home and abroad in the East; and yet, he still supported historians who, even though they were Greek, could set out for us in Latin the information we seek. Ammianus Marcellinus confesses in his thirty-first book that Valens had been educated in no liberal studies The "liberal arts" or "liberal studies" (studia liberalia) were the essential subjects for a free citizen, such as rhetoric, grammar, and philosophy; yet he commanded...