The portrayal and role of anger in the Res Gestae of Ammianus Marcellinus.

Abstract

The hypothesis for this research project is: Ammianus’ treatment of the emotion of anger reveals as much, if not more, about his education, values, beliefs, personality, than it does about the people he writes about and that he sees in emotion a major causative factor. This research contained within aims to contribute to a greater depth of understanding of the role of the key emotion of anger within the individual and collective lives of the characters as portrayed by Ammianus Marcellinus and how he uses them to influence the reader and colour his narrative. Scholars now tend to examine Ammianus to discern or evaluate the historical reliability of his authorship. Thus there is scope for examining how Ammianus shapes his narrative and tries to influence the reader by his portraits of individuals and collective characters. Although this approach seems an obvious one, the particular value of this thesis and of its contribution to late Roman historiography is that no one has hitherto done this in an extended and thorough way. While we welcome the importance Ammianus gives to emotions as historical agents, his treatment and representations of them have idiosyncratic features that crucially affect any assessment of him as a subjective observer and reporter of Rome and its past. Making the study keyword based reduces the need to make (possibly erroneous) inferences about whether it is really anger or some related emotion that we are dealing with. This has then lead to the compilation of lists of relevant anger words in Latin that relate to the individuals and groups who are the basis for my study.1 Following this analysis of the use of anger by Ammianus Marcellinus through a careful study of his Res Gestae and the characterisations he incorporated within it is hoped that we can better understand the discourse of Ammianus, by unearthing the bias, the propagandist elements and the general trends of his portrayals, through keywords that refer directly to anger. In this way it is anticipated that we can better understand the purpose behind many of these representations.