Ammianus Marcellinus

This chapter reviews the work of Ammianus Marcellinus, which offers the most sensationalistic of all ancient portrayals of mountain peoples and mountain warfare. Ammianus' Res Gestae covers the period 353 to 378 CE and is based in part on his involvement in fighting against the Persians and of being besieged in the city of Amida. It covers detailed accounts of campaigning in mountainous country and other kinds of difficult terrain both there and in many other border territories. The chapter considers Ammianus as similar to Strabo and to many other ancient history writers in seeing a strong distinction between the civilised centre of the Roman Empire and the barbarian territories outside it. It describes mountain tribes that threaten the security of the empire and some of the most extreme surviving examples of ancient denigration of mountain populations.

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