Customer Reviews

Ammianus Marcellinus and the Representation of Historical Reality (Cornell Studies in Classical Philology)

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This is a rather biased work. I love it for that. I used it as a straw dog once for a paper on Ammianus. His chapter on Ammianus and Christianity is subtly hilarious. He believes that Ammianus was a religious fanatic on the level of Libanius or Zosimus. Anyone who's read either of those should know how serious that accusation is and how impossible to support. The basic argument is that Ammianus has criticized Christians on occasion, therefore this is done because of their religion. All Christians whom he doesn't criticize must have their stories analyzed to find the secret criticisms which must be hidden beneath the surface. The fact that he doesn't mention church councils (in the same way that all classical historians avoid mentioning them) shows that he is subtly trying to make Christians seem minor players in the Roman Empire. There is also some linguistic evidence that depends on certain words being the same as Greek words which are occasionally used harshly. Any differences between what Ammianus says and what Christian ecclesiastics say is an indication of his overpowering bias, never theirs.

The purpose of the book is to argue that Ammianus is hopelessly biased because the vision he held of the Roman Empire is not the same as that held by Christian writers. Not being Christian is a sure sign of bias. Later historians are completely oblivious to his radicalness. One of Barnes' real obsessions is with order and structure. He uses it as proof that Ammianus' books were misnumbered. His first surviving book is 14 (xiiii) which Barnes believes is really 18 (xviii) because that way it is halfway through his work. His vision of structure is unfortunately not in keeping with other contemporary authors who did exactly what Ammianus appears to have done. They wrote a brief summary of history in one or two books followed by a more thorough look at the main era they were covering. Which doesn't prove anything but shows how inconclusive an analysis of the structure can be, especially when almost half the work is missing. Without even an introduction explaining the intention of the work any assumptions about the structure are entirely guesswork. Assuming that because he is a good writer he will structure the book in the same way you would (which was a fairly uncommon way for the period) is entirely lacking in support.

I don't understand why Barnes felt such a need to write a book analyzing an author he clearly hated. I suppose he felt a desire to "correct" what other authors have said but this book takes the argument way too far. He actually accuses Ammianus of being a novelist more than a historian. The portions of the work which do not deal with bias are fairly solid, but there are very few of them. Barnes maintains an admirable focus on his main point. It's simply unfortunate that he didn't choose a better one.