
Ammianus Marcellinus was the last great Roman historian & his writings rank alongside those of Livy & Tacitus. The Later Roman Empire chronicles a period of twenty-five years during Marcellinus' own lifetime covering the reigns of Constantius Julian Jovian Valentinian I & Valens & providing eyewitness accounts of significant military events including the Battle of Strasbourg & the Goth's Revolt. Portraying a time of rapid & dramatic change Marcellinus describes an Empire exhausted by excessive taxation corruption the financial ruin of the middle classes & the progressive decline in the morale of the army. In this magisterial depiction of the closing decades of the Roman Empire we can see the seeds of events that were to lead to the fall of the city just twenty years after Marcellinus' death.