Julian's Persian Expedition in Ammianus and Zosimus

Abstract

The nature of the bond connecting the work of Ammianus Marcellinus with the now fragmentary history of Eunapius of Sardis or with Zosimus' Νέα Ἱστορία is an old and intriguing problem rather more notable for the multiplicity than for the finality of its hypothetical solutions. The question arises out of the perception that Ammianus and Zosimus provide coincidental material in their accounts of Julian's Persian expedition. Eunapius figures in the equation because, as we generally assume, it was he whom Zosimus followed. Since all scholars but Dillemann are satisfied that these correspondences indubitably require some hypothesis of literary affiliation, all of the formal possibilities have one by one been tried. Sudhaus, whose investigation of the similarities proved influential, denied that Ammianus could have been used either by Zosimus or by his source (Eunapius); he affirmed instead that Ammianus and Eunapius must have been linked by their own use of a common source, namely, Oribasius, the physician of Julian and his companion on the Persian expedition.