Ammianus Marcellinus on the Battle of Strasburg: Art and Analysis in the "History"

Abstract

AIMMIANUS MARCELLINUS' ACCOUNT of the battle of Strasburg (16.12), in which his hero, the Emperor Julian, decisively defeated a considerably larger Alemannic army, is one of the more impressive parts of his history. Since the historian was writing within the classical, politico-military tradition of historiography, battles and sieges naturally play an important part in his narrative. Not all battles and sieges are treated equally, and decisions whether or not to include accounts of them and how much weight to lay upon them arise out of the writer's historical perspective and are an indication of it.' All battles described in the history are regarded as important, but to Ammianus two of the battles which he describes, those at Strasburg in A.D. 357 and at Adrianople in A.D. 378, have an importance of a higher degree. Their climactic nature is indicated by direct comments,2 and also by the length of the accounts, by their positions in the history,3 and by the care and artistry lavished upon them. Scholars have devoted much attention to the battle of Strasburg. The older ones, especially in Germany, were mostly concerned to identify the ultimate sources of the various accounts of the battle, to establish its exact site, and to elucidate the progress of the fighting (list in Pighi, 70-71). Later Pighi produced a general analysis and clarification of Ammianus' narrative; and, more recently, Rosen has considered Ammianus' account in the light of his historical and literary aims. These two studies, together with Naude's general paper on battles and sieges in Ammianus, are the most important background to the present paper, the purpose of which is to show how some literary aspects of Ammianus' narrative serve also as vehicles for the writer's historical analysis.