Ammianus Marcellinus (330-391) was a Greek from the fourth century who wrote a history of the Roman Empire in Latin. He picked up where Tacitus left off, but all that we have are the final books where he writes about his own time – roughly 350 to 375, when Augustine was a boy. What stands out most in his account are the Goths (who are strangely like Anglo-Americans in the 1800s, with covered wagons and everything), that horrible battle against them at Adrianople and his picture of Julian, the last man to rule the empire who believed in the old gods.
Ammianus himself was not a Christian, so what is striking is how much he has in common with Augustine, who was raised a generation later by a Christian mother.
For example:
- “The end is near.” Both believed that it was the virtue of the early Romans that made Rome great and that, for the same reason, the vice of the present generation will bring it to ruin.
- “This is the way things are meant to be.” Both believed in providence: that events are guided by God or gods and therefore are for the best.
- Both see sorcery as both real and evil.
- Both love Cicero and Virgil.
It is surprising how much of what seems “Christian” in Augustine’s world view really was not: it was just the received wisdom of the age. Yes, to a degree Christianity helped to form and inform the age (the “culture” as we would call it now), but I think there is more to it than that.
See also:
Abagond 
Yay! My namesake!
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