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Updated: June 22, 2025


The sentiments of a judicious stranger, who has impartially considered the progress of civil or ecclesiastical discord, are always entitled to our notice; and a short passage of Ammianus, who served in the armies, and studied the character of Constantius, is perhaps of more value than many pages of theological invectives.

If the geographical accuracy of Ammianus had been fortunately bestowed on the British exploits of Theodosius, we should have traced, with eager curiosity, the distinct and domestic footsteps of his march.

On the wives, widows, and daughters of men of this stamp and not half their effeminacy and baseness, as the honest rough old soldier Ammianus Marcellinus describes it, has been told here the news brought from Egypt worked with wondrous potency. Women of the highest rank awoke suddenly to the discovery that life was given them for nobler purposes than that of frivolous enjoyment and tawdry vanity.

Carmana, however, which is mentioned by Ptolemy and Ammianus as the capital of those parts, seems to have been a place of considerable importance. It may be identified with the modern Kerman, which lies in lat. 39° 55', long. 56° 13', and is still one of the chief cities of Persia.

Some, too, may recollect the sketch of the primeval Hun, as he first appeared to the astonished and disgusted old Roman soldier Ammianus Marcellinus; the visages "more like cakes than faces;" the "figures like those which are hewn out with an axe on the poles at bridge-ends;" the rat-skin coats, which they wore till they rotted off their limbs; their steaks of meat cooked between the saddle and the thigh; the little horses on which "they eat and drink, buy and sell, and sleep lying forward along his narrow neck, and indulging in every variety of dream."

Now, the very fact that Ammianus Marcellinus speaks of this Salustius is the very reason why he should have been selected to be the corrector of the forged MS.; we have already said more than once, and it cannot be too often impressed upon the reader, that Bracciolini found the historical books of Ammianus Marcellinus; to all appearances, he had most carefully studied them: it was therefore, from his being quite familiar with the pages of Marcellinus, that he had Salustius suggested to him as the best individual to write the note.

Ammianus Marcellinus classes this magnificent temple with the Capitoline Temple, the Flavian Amphitheatre, and the Pantheon. The next greatest work of Hadrian was the Mausoleum, which is now converted into the Castle of St. Angelo, built on a platform of which each side was two hundred and fifty-three feet in length.

Among them, pagans or Christians, he looks like a colossus. From what a height he crushes, not only the professors who had been his colleagues, such as Nectarius of Guelma or Maximus of Madaura, but the most celebrated writers of his time Symmachus, for instance, and Ammianus Marcellinus. After reading a treatise of Augustin's, one is astounded by the intellectual meagreness of these last pagans.

When Tacitus describes the deaths of the innocent and illustrious Romans, who were sacrificed to the cruelty of the first Cæsars, the art of the historian, or the merit of the sufferers, excites in our breast the most lively sensations of terror, of admiration, and of pity. The coarse and undistinguishing pencil of Ammianus has delineated his bloody figures with tedious and disgusting accuracy.

'For my part, says Ammianus, 'when I see the magnificence in which the Bishops live in Rome, I am not surprised that those who covet the dignity should use force and cunning to obtain it.

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