Roger Blockley, “Ammianus Marcellinus and his Classical Background - Changing Perspectives,” IJCT 2 (1995-1996), pp. 455-466.

The History of Ammianus Marcellinus, like most literary works of late antiquity, has always been judged against its classical background, of which Ammianus makes constant use and to which he makes constant reference. It is against this background that the evaluation of the History was formed and has changed; and it has changed greatly over time. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Ammianus was regarded as an estimable and reliable source, and he was of enormous importance to Edward Gibbon for both facts and judgments. From the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century, however, Ammianus’ reputation fell. The close examination of his language and its classical antecedents led to the conclusion that he was an incompetent writer, whose main value lay in his uncritical preservation of historical material. More recently, since the Second World War, Ammianus has regained and surpassed his former reputation, and is now generally regarded as one of the outstanding writers of antiquity, complex, subtle, and manipulative, and, therefore, to be handled very warily as a source of historical fact.