Ammianus Marcellinus

Ammianus Marcellinus (c. 330–c. 395) was a Roman soldier and historian, the last great historian of the empire to write in Latin. A Greek from Antioch, he served as an officer of the imperial guard under the general Ursicinus, fought at Amida in 359 and in Julian's Persian expedition of 363, and later settled in Rome, where he wrote his Res Gestae, a history from the accession of Nerva in 96 to the battle of Adrianople in 378. The first thirteen books are lost; the surviving eighteen cover 353 to 378 and are valued for their eyewitness detail and their vivid portraits of Julian, Valentinian and the Huns.