[Sidenote: Ammianus Marcellinus.] Ammianus Marcellinus (about 330-400 A. D.) was a Greek of Antioch, who became a soldier in the Roman army, served in Asia, in Gaul, and in the Persian campaign of the Emperor Julian, and was at some time in Egypt, but finally settled at Rome, where he wrote in Latin a continuation of Tacitus from Nerva to the death of Valens (96-378 A. D.). The entire work consisted of thirty-one books, thirteen of which are lost; but the extant books (XIV-XXXI), treating of the time from 353 to 378 A. D., and dealing with events in which the author took part, are especially valuable. Ammianus is an honest soldier, who, to use his own expression, never knowingly corrupts the truth by silence or falsehood, who has no liking and not much understanding for court intrigues, but is intent upon giving his readers a fair and unbiased account of events. His Latin is hard to understand, partly because he writes it as a foreigner, but still more because he wishes to write an ornate style and embellishes his work with many references to the Roman classics, sometimes quoting their exact words, oftener changing them a little, as if to show his perfect familiarity with the earlier literature. The geographical digressions introduced are not original descriptions of what Ammianus had himself seen, but are taken from Greek or Latin books. Although himself a pagan, Ammianus shows no hostility to Christianity, but his paganism is not very serious. He seems to believe that not all men think alike, and that on the whole it is well for each to believe as he can. His pictures of the life of the times are admirable, and bring before us in a clear light the corruption and degeneration of the age. Yet he does not seem to feel righteous indignation nor to understand that the greatness of the Roman empire is rapidly passing away. His history ends with the disastrous defeat of the Romans by the Goths at Hadrianople and the death of the Emperor Valens; but so accustomed was the world to the power of the Roman empire that even this terrible reverse was not recognized as portending the end of the ancient order of things. For a little while Theodosius was able to maintain the integrity of the empire, but the end was at hand. It is not unfitting that the last Roman historian, himself a Greek by birth, ends his work at a moment when more than ever before the Greek city of Constantinople was becoming the refuge of what remained of the old Roman civilization.