Ammianus and Cicero

This passage has been frequently discussed, usually either as a methodological statement or in order to elicit hints about the historian and his opinions. In consequence, the first sentence has been the primary focus of attention.' Much of the older scholarly opinion on Ammianus, though it assigned to his History great value as a reliable source of information and assigned to the author some merit for his lively narrative and characterization, nevertheless dismissed him as an incompetent and derivative stylist. In the words of one of his critics, ... schreibt wie er kann, nicht wie er will.2 While over the past twenty-five years the complexity and skill of Ammianus as a writer have come to be better appreciated (and in parallel his manipulativeness as a historian has been much explored),3 the hangover of the older opinion persists in inhibiting a full recognition of his literary qualities. In this paper I propose to approach the epilogue as a purely literary statement in which Ammianus presents himself as a master historian who implicitly associates himself with his own masters, most especially Cicero. In consequence, the emphasis of the discussion will shift from the first to the second sentence

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