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By Root 359 0

the inhabitants of the frontier provinces were the greatest losers. Just as it had in the third century, the defence of the frontiers took second place to the prosecution of internal disputes, and thus the outbursts of civil war during the 340s and 350s encouraged barbarian incursions. Along the lower Danube, the peace of 332 continued to hold, the Tervingi honouring its terms and providing soldiers for the military ventures of the emperor Constantius. The Rhine frontier, by contrast, posed almost continuous difficulties. It was there that Constans had faced the revolt of Magnentius, and thence that Magnentius had drained troops in order to prosecute his war against Constantius. The connection between usurpation and barbarian invasion is made explicit in a speech attributed to the emperor Constantius, just before he appointed his cousin Julian as caesar and gave him the unwelcome task of restoring the Rhineland.[94]

Our Most Important Source: Ammianus Marcellinus

The source for this speech is Ammianus Marcellinus, one of the greatest historians of all antiquity and our main source for later fourth-century history, including the relationship between the Goths and the empire: without Ammianus, this and the next chapter could hardly be written. Given his importance to our understanding of the Goths, we must take a few moments to look at Ammianus himself before moving on. Ammianus was a Greek from one of the great cities of Syria, probably Antioch. He came from a good family which had been excused from its obligation to serve in the local town council and was instead closely linked to the larger imperial administration. As a young man, Ammianus served as protector domesticus, part of an elite group of soldiers who carried out a variety of special functions and often operated in the close vicinity of the emperor himself. Protectores frequently went on to command units of active-service troops in later life: the institution can be seen as a sort of officer training academy and more than one protector went on to become emperor. Ammianus found himself personally involved in a number of high-profile missions, and ultimately joined the invasion of Persia launched in 363 by the pagan emperor Julian, cousin and heir of Constantius. Unlike his Christian cousins and his uncle Constantine, Julian (r. 361–363) had repudiated Christianity, probably in reaction to the Christian piety of Constantine and his sons, who had murdered all but one of Julian’s close relations. Julian’s reign saw a determined attempt to undo Constantine’s Christianization of the empire, an attempt that fizzled out immediately upon Julian’s premature death on campaign. Julian, however, was Ammianus’ hero, and Ammianus may even have been an apostate from Christianity just as Julian was. Certainly his promising career came to a sudden halt with Julian’s death in 363 and it may be that Julian’s more committed pagan followers found their prospects stymied in the Christian reaction against the dead emperor.

Ammianus, his career prospects finished, devoted himself to research and, eventually, to writing the history of the Roman empire. We know that he travelled widely, and that he had moved from his native Greek East to Rome by 384. He wrote much of his history in Rome, perhaps under the patronage of one of the great senatorial families who dominated that city. His work liberally intermixes a political history of the empire with scholarly asides and Ammianus’ personal reminiscences. It was probably finished within a year or so of 390 and Ammianus may have died soon afterwards, for we know nothing more of him thereafter. The title he gave his history was Res Gestae, literally ‘deeds done’, and it indicates that the political history of the period it covers – from the reign of the emperor Nerva (r. 96–97) to that of Valens (r. 364–378) – was its primary concern. The surviving version of the text, unfortunately, begins with the start of book 14 and relates the events of summer 353 onwards, before ending, with book 31, just after the death of Valens at the battle of