Ammianus Marcellinus, Peter de Jonge, and the Batavian Quadriga

The Interaction and Outcome

Bibliographic Data

ID20467005
AuthorsА С Козлов (0000-0002-9203-9169, Ural Federal University, Ekaterinburg, Russian Federation, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume53
Pages418–441
Publication date2025-12-30
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueАнтичная древность и средние века (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0320-4472 • E-ISSN: 2687-0398
PublisherUral Federal University (PUBLISHER • RU)
DOI10.15826/adsv.2025.53.023
OpenAlexW7115164512
LanguageEN
References cited28

This article analyses the methods applied in the multi-volume philological and historical commentary on the text of the Res Gestae by Ammianus Marcellinus, the greatest historian of Late Antiquity. Started in 1935 by the Dutch Peter de Jonge and continued in the 1980s by a respected team of experts, the project was completed in 2018. It reflected, on the one hand, the growing dynamics of the quality of interpretations of the textual and historical empirics of the Res Gestae, and on the other hand, the shortcomings of Western European methods of narrow specialized commentary on the classical text. While making, as a rule, highly accurate and thorough analyses of the verbal and event-factual particulars of Ammianus’ passages, the researchers did not raise the problem of the conceptual and ideological integrity of the document and did not make a serious attempt to determine its place in the evolution of ancient historicism. The commentary realised the growing flow of research on the Res Gestae and its age in Western humanities, reflecting the main patterns of classical research in Europe and America at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. At the same time, the contribution of the Dutch specialists to the study of both the textology of late antique historical prose and the analysis of historical empiricism presented by Ammianus should be highly valued. The applied significance of such a commentary is clearly long-term and will greatly contribute to the deepening of, first of all, source studies in the study of late Antiquity

Antique · Empiricism · Ideology · Philology · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Studies and Philology · Globalization, Historical Perspectives, and International Relations

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