The Audience of Ammianus Marcellinus and the Circulation of Books in the Late Roman World

Abstract

Since the late nineteenth century, studies of Ammianus’ audience have reached widely divergent conclusions. Research has focused on two opposed theses: while some scholars have seen the pagan senatorial aristocracy as the audience of the Res Gestae, others have assigned that role to the imperial bureaucracy. However, in thinking that a work could reach—or target—exclusively the members of a specific social group, the prevalent views on Ammianus’ audience contradict what we know about the circulation of books in the late Roman world. In contrast to previous research, this study proposes a new approach based on an analysis of the information available on book circulation in Ammianus’ time. This analysis shows that the audience of the Res Gestae was most likely socially diverse.

Onde Mundoand pseudo‐Aristotle, a geoarchaeological analysis

“…The fundamental reason is that ancient texts, mainly since the 1st century AD, may reflect local legends or manipulated information to serve political, ideological, religious, or other needs (see Stiros, 2020; Stiros, 2022). In addition, they may have been corrupted by repeated copying during millennia (Sánchez Vendramini, 2018) and by modern editing, as is the case with the text of Eratosthenes (Section 4.7.3). This means that ancient texts should first be evaluated concerning their reliability, then “decoded,” and only then can they be used in modern archaeological and geological studies.…”

“…The text “Eratosthenes who saw the site says …” should be corrected to “ people say that Eratosthenes saw the site…,” indicating a local tradition, a rumor. The difference between the two versions in Greek is minimal, just a shift between a single alphabet letter, “η” and “α” (“φησι” to “φασι”), which is entirely possible in the style of ancient manuscripts (Figure 7b) expected to have occurred during repeated copying of Geographica during a millennium (see Sánchez Vendramini, 2018).…”