Continuing the series of philological and historical commentaries on Ammianus' Res Gestae this volume deals with Book 26, in which the beginning of the reign of Valentinian and Valens is described and the rise and fall of the usurper Procopius.

Continuing the series of philological and historical commentaries on Ammianus' "Res Gestae" this volume deals with Book 26, in which the beginning of the reign of Valentinian and Valens is described and the rise and fall of the usurper Procopius.

Continuing the series of philological and historical commentaries on Ammianus' Res Gestae this volume deals with Book 28, which is devoted primarily to the deplorable events in Rome during the reign of Valentinian and his defense of the Rhine frontier.

Book 27 deals with events between 365 and 370. Military operations in the western and eastern half of the Empire take up a large part of the available space. Apart from military matters Ammianus deals with internal affairs. He discusses the terms of office of four Roman urban prefects and paints a picture of Petronius Probus, the mightiest civil official of the period. The most striking part of the book contains a portrait of the emperor Valentinian. This passage forms the centre of the book, which therefore has the structure of a triptych: of the two outer parts each contains military affairs in the West and the East and reports on some notable non-military events, whilst in the central panel Valentinian takes pride of place.

Continuing the series of philological and historical commentaries on Ammianus' Res Gestae this volume deals with Book 27, in which the author deals with military operations and internal affairs. In the central part of the book the emperor Valentinian is portrayed.

Ammianus Marcellinus' Res Gestae holds a prominent position in modern studies of the emperor Julian as the fullest extant narrative of the reign of the last "pagan" emperor. Ammianus' Julian: Narrative and Genre in the Res Gestae offers a major reinterpretation of the work, which is one of the main narrative sources for the political history of the later Roman Empire, and argues for a re-examination of Ammianus' agenda and methods in narrating the reign of Julian. Building on recent developments in the application of literary approaches and critical theories to historical texts, Ammianus' presentation of Julian is evaluated by considering the Res Gestae within three interrelated contexts: as a work of Latin historiography, which consciously sets itself within a classical and classicizing generic tradition; in a more immediate literary and political context, as the final contribution by a member of an "eyewitness" generation to a quarter century of intense debate over Julian's legacy by several authors who had lived through his reign and had been in varying degrees of proximity to Julian himself; and as a narrative text, in which narratorial authority is closely associated with the persona of the narrator, both as an external narrating agent and an occasional participant in the events he relates. This is complemented by a literary survey and a re-analysis of Ammianus' depiction of several key moments in Julian's reign, such as his appointment as Caesar, the battle of Strasbourg in 357 AD, his acclamation as Augustus, and the disastrous invasion of Persia in 363 AD. It suggests that the Res Gestae presents a Latin-speaking, western audience with an idiosyncratic and "Romanized" depiction of the philhellene emperor and that, consciously exploiting his position as a Greek writing in Latin and as a contemporary of Julian, Ammianus wished his work to be considered a culminating and definitive account of the man and his life.

Ammianus Marcellinus was a soldier and an author. This book explores how his experience of 4th-century military life affected his writing of history and conversely how his knowledge of literature influenced his writing about the Roman army.