The Roman emperors Valentinian and Valens in the historical narratives of Eunapius of Sardis and Ammianus Marcellinus

• Grant number: 25/01024-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• Start date: August 11, 2025
• End date: August 10, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Ancient and Medieval History
• Principal Investigator: Margarida Maria de Carvalho
• Grantee: Pedro Benedetti
• Supervisor: Gavin Kelly
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais (FCHS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Franca. Franca , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Edinburgh, Scotland
• Associated to the scholarship: 23/17698-2 - The image of the emperors Valentinian I and Valens in the historiographical narratives of Ammianus Marcellinus and Eunapius of Sardis (4th and 5th centuries AD), BP.PD

Abstract

The research I propose to carry out at the University of Edinburgh will deal with how Eunapius of Sardis (fl. ca. 400) and Ammianus Marcellinus (fl. ca. 390), two of the greatest classicizing historians of Late Antiquity, treated the reigns and characters of the Roman emperors Valentinian (r. 364-375) and Valens (r. 364-378) in their historical narratives. With the end of the Constantinian dynasty, Valentinian and later Valens were elevated as Augusti in a context of instability and uncertainty. Faced with the need to assert their legitimacy, the brothers sought to portray themselves in inscriptions and coins as "the hammer of the barbarians", protectors of the borders, guarantors of peace and redressers of order within the Empire. Both Eunapius of Sardis, whose fragments were preserved in the Excerpta Constantiniana and who was closely followed in the work of Zosimus (fl. ca. 500), and Ammianus Marcellinus wrote their narratives following a Greek tradition, albeit from very different perspectives. The former, a sophist, tends to see the imperial trajectory through a polis-centered prism and despairs in the future of an Empire which had abandoned the traditional cults. The latter, on the other hand, an admirer of the Stoic school, departs from an imperial perspective and shows relative optimism about the resilience of Rome after catastrophic events. Bearing this in mind, I will put side by side the similarities and differences between each author's discursive elaborations about Valentinian and Valens, and I will verify how those portraits were constructed to fulfill their didactic purposes, as well as measure the penetration of the "propagandistic" efforts of the imperial power under the first Valentinians into their historical narratives.