My previous post on the dormouse was sparked off by Gibbon's description of life in Rome, which he places just before Alaric's sack of the city. As Gibbon himself makes explicit (scroll up to the end of the preceding paragraph), this is based on two celebrated passages in Ammianus Marcellinus:
I shall produce an authentic state of Rome and its inhabitants which is more peculiarly applicable to the period of the Gothic invasion. Ammianus Marcellinus, who prudently chose the capital of the empire as the residence the best adapted to the historian of his own times, has mixed with the narrative of public events a lively representation of the scenes with which he was familiarly conversant. The judicious reader will not always approve the asperity of censure, the choice of circumstances, or the style of expression; he will perhaps detect the latent prejudices and personal resentments which soured the temper of Ammianus himself; but he will surely observe, with philosophic curiosity, the interesting and original picture of the manners of Rome.(34)
Note 034 It is incumbent on me to explain the liberties which I have taken with the text of Ammianus.
1. I have melted down into one piece the sixth chapter of the fourteenth and the fourth of the twenty-eighth book.
2. I have given order and connection to the confused mass of materials.
3. I have softened some extravagant hyperboles and pared away some superfluities of the original.
4. I have developed some observations which were insinuated rather than expressed.
With these allowances my version will be found, not literal indeed, but faithful and exact.
I have added links to Gibbon's footnote so that those who are interested can compare a translation of Ammianus Marcellinus' text to see how exactly Gibbon has used it.
