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convincingly, that this increase in books would remove a “very real difficulty,” that “Ammianus cannot have compressed his history of the Roman empire from 96 to 353 into a mere thirteen books” (1998: 28). Under Barnes’ more elegant arrangement of books, however, the first six still cover Roman history at the rapid rate of thirty-five years per book. The part of the Res Gestae which Ammianus wrote without the benefit of living sources must have been superficial under any arrangement. A parallel may perhaps be seen in the extremely rapid survey of three centuries of history which begins the New History of the Greek historian Zosimus (Blockley 1975: 12).
    Although we regrettably lack the preface to the entire work, Ammianus has provided us with two prefaces to smaller sections of his work, at the beginning of the fifteenth and the twenty-sixth books. The first of these serves to introduce the ten books of the history in which Julian plays a part (15.1.1). In it, Ammianus describes his historical method: he has put the events in order, and has related what he himself witnessed and what he learned from careful questioning of those who were involved in the events. This method will not change, but his presentation will. He promises to write both more carefully and more expansively, and dismisses in advance the complaints of those who might claim that he is being long-winded or tedious.
    The preface to book 26 (26.1.1–2) is also concerned with presentation rather than method. Whereas previously Ammianus had defended his decision to include more detail than the audience might want, as he turns away from Julian and toward more recent history, he defends his omission of information for whichhis audience might clamor (Fornara 1990). His explanation for limiting detail in the last six books is twofold. First is a glancing reference to avoiding “the dangers which often touch upon the truth,” perhaps invoking the political or social dangers which accurate reporting about the near past could stimulate. Ammianus expresses more concern, however, about the danger of inviting the grievances of contemporaries who complain of neglect if even the most trivial details are omitted. He lists the emperor’s dinner conversation, the punishment of some common soldiers, the names of some minor forts, and the names of those who greeted the urban praetor, as examples of the kind of trivial matters whose omission draws complaints, and claims that Cicero (in a letter no longer extant) suggested that these sorts of complaints explain why many historians have not published accounts of their own day.
    The last three sentences of the work (31.16.9) form an epilogue, beginning with this important sentence: “I, a soldier once, and a Greek, have presented these events, from the principate of Nerva up to the death of Valens, so far as I was able, never knowingly having dared to corrupt a work professing the truth by omission or by falsehood.” Ammianus then encourages younger and more learned men to pick up where his history has concluded, suggesting that, if they should do so, they should write in “higher style,” a reference perhaps to panegyric and perhaps simply to his own classicizing style of history, in contrast to breviaria , biographies, and chronicles (Blockley 1998).
    “A soldier once, and a Greek,” are words which have lent themselves to many interpretations (Barnes 1998: 65–78; Matthews 1989: 452–72; Classen 1972; Tränkle 1972; Heyen 1968; Stoian 1967). Ammianus’ reference to himself as a soldier has been taken apologetically, as a “mere” soldier who dared to create such a rhetorically elaborate and learned history. But it is probably best understood as a proud statement, which underscores his first-hand knowledge of events and places him firmly in the tradition of the great Roman historians for whom participation in political life and public affairs was a necessary source of their authority as writers. Despite his