Books about Marcellinus from Amazon.com

Athanasius: The Life of Antony and The Letter to Marcellinus Translation and introduction by Robert c. Gregg Preface by William A. Clebsch

"And it seems to me that these words become like a mirror to the persons singing them, so that he might perceive himself and the emotions of his soul, and thus affected, he might recite them. For in fact he who hears the one reading receives the song that is recited as being about him, and either, when he is convicted by his conscience, being pierced, he will repent, or hearing of the hope that resides in God, and of the succor available to believers-how this kind of grace exists for him-he exults and begins to give thanks to God." Athanasius (c. 295-373)

Athanasius was a major figure of 14th-century Christendom. As the Bishop of Alexandria, spiritual master and theologian, he led the Church in its battle against the Arian heresy. Athanasius' The Life of Antony is one of the foremost classics of Christian asceticism. It tells the spiritual story of St. Antony, the founder of Christian monasticism. Written at the request of the desert monks of Egypt to provide "an ideal pattern of the ascetical life," it immediately became astonishingly popular. This work contributed greatly to the establishment of monastic life in Western Christianity. From a literary perspective, it created a new Christian genre for the lives of saints.

The Letter to Marcellinus is an introduction to the spiritual sense of the Psalms. The Psalms are presented as a variety of attitudes which coexist in a truly harmonious and whole sense of prayer.

William A. Clebsch of Stanford University, President of the American Academy of Religion, in his Preface to this volume, says, "This translator's fidelity to the texts ensures that the reader receives in these works Athanasius' meaning, so far as feasible in the order of his thoughts and in the equivalence of his words.".
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Ammianus Marcellinus was the last great Roman historian, and his writings rank alongside those of Livy and 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, and Valens, and providing eyewitness accounts of significant military events including the Battle of Strasbourg and the Goth's Revolt. Portraying a time of rapid and dramatic change, Marcellinus describes an Empire exhausted by excessive taxation, corruption, the financial ruin of the middle classes and 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..
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Ammianus Marcellinus, ca. 325–ca. 395 CE, a Greek of Antioch, joined the army when still young and served under the governor Ursicinus and the emperor of the East Constantius II, and later under the emperor Julian, whom he admired and accompanied against the Alamanni and the Persians. He subsequently settled in Rome, where he wrote in Latin a history of the Roman empire in the period 96–378 CE, entitled Rerum Gestarum Libri XXXI. Of these 31 books only 14–31 (353–378 CE) survive, a remarkably accurate and impartial record of his own times. Soldier though he was, he includes economic and social affairs. He was broadminded towards non-Romans and towards Christianity. We get from him clear indications of causes of the fall of the Roman empire. His style indicates that his prose was intended for recitation.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Ammianus Marcellinus is in three volumes.

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Price: $21.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Ammianus Marcellinus, ca. 325–ca. 395 CE, a Greek of Antioch, joined the army when still young and served under the governor Ursicinus and the emperor of the East Constantius II, and later under the emperor Julian, whom he admired and accompanied against the Alamanni and the Persians. He subsequently settled in Rome, where he wrote in Latin a history of the Roman empire in the period 96–378 CE, entitled Rerum Gestarum Libri XXXI. Of these 31 books only 14–31 (353–378 CE) survive, a remarkably accurate and impartial record of his own times. Soldier though he was, he includes economic and social affairs. He was broadminded towards non-Romans and towards Christianity. We get from him clear indications of causes of the fall of the Roman empire. His style indicates that his prose was intended for recitation.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Ammianus Marcellinus is in three volumes.

.
Price: $21.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Published in 1976, Sir John Keegan's "The Face of Battle" was a ground-breaking work in military history studies, providing narrative techniques that served as a model for countless subsequent scholarly and popular military histories. Keegan's approach to understanding battles stressed the importance of small unit actions and personal heroism, an approach exemplified in the narratives produced by reporters embedded with American combat troops in Iraq. Challenging Keegan's seminal work, Kimberly Kagan's "The Eye of Command" offers a new approach to studying and narrating battles, based upon an analysis of the works of the Roman military authors Julius Caesar and Ammianus Marcellinus. Kagan argues that historians cannot explain a battle's outcome solely on the basis of soldiers' accounts of small-unit actions. A commander's view, however, helps explain the significance of a battle's major events, how they relate to one another, and how they lead to a battle's outcome. The "eye of command" approach also answers fundamental questions about the way commanders perceive battles as they fight them - questions modern military historians have largely ignored..
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Count Marcellinus and his Chronicle constitutes the first comprehensive study of Marcellinus, a courtier of the emperor Justinian, and his chronicle covering the eastern Roman world from AD 379 to 534. Brian Croke casts new light on the career of Marcellinus and develops a case for understanding his Latin chronicle as an essentially Byzantine document written by an educated imperial official. This book also enriches our understanding of society and politics in the imperial capital and raises broader questions about Christian life, liturgy, and culture in the sixth century, particularly the central role of imperial and religious ceremonial in Byzantine public life..
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This book comprises a collection of papers analyzing Ammianus's writings from a variety of perspectives, including Ammianus as historian of, and participant in, Julian's Persian campaign, his identification with traditional religious attitudes and values in Rome and his view of the Persian Magi. The contributors engage especially with the concept of self-identification. They address the tension of Ammianus' dual role as both "outside" external narrator and at the same time and "insider" to the contemporary experiences and events that make up his surviving history..
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Ammianus Marcellinus is usually regarded as our most important source for the history of the second half of the fourth century AD, while his literary qualities are neglected. This book demonstrates what a subtle and manipulative writer Ammianus is; attention is paid particularly to his rich and variegated intertextuality with earlier classical literature and history. Questioning the prevailing interest in the historian's life as the key to his work, Dr Kelly re-evaluates the historiographical function of the vivid and thrilling autobiographical passages. The range of Ammianus' allusions is surveyed, including his use of classical examples, his relationship with historical source-texts and the workings of internal echoes within the history. His interactions with other texts are seen as carefully controlled and meaningful; and both his allusive techniques and writing in general, it is argued, are better viewed as reflecting a classical, rather than a late antique, aesthetic..
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