The geographical digressions in the Res Gestae of Ammianus Marcellinus will never be regarded as the finest examples of classical geography. While Ammianus the historian has been justly celebrated as a fundamental source on the later empire, even his most vociferous modern champions have proved unable to muster much enthusiasm for his varied asides on geography and ethnography. At least until recently. Over the last decade, the elementary howlers which pepper the digressions, and Ammianus' often baffling fusion of autopsy and literary deference have earned the increasing attention of scholars anxious to unpick the contradictory impulses within the text, and in classical geographical writing more generally. In the present volume, F. provides a full text and Italian translation of the extant digressions, along with admirably full notes and a substantial concluding discussion. This complements F.'s earlier work on Ammianus' Persian geography,Footnote ¹ and should prove an invaluable crib for scholars of classical geography and late-antique historiography.

F. focusses on eight digressions of varying length: on the Eastern Provinces (14.7.21–8); the Rhine and Lake Constance (15.4.1–6); Gaul (15.9–12); Amida (18.9.1–2); the Pass of Succi (21.10.2–4); the Black Sea (22.8.1–48); Egypt (22.15–16); and Thrace (27.4). Extensive reference is also made to the two long ethnographic discussions within the work, on the Saracens at 14.4 and the Huns and Alans at 31.2. As F. notes, these passages often bear little more than a tangential relationship to Ammianus' historical narrative, but the geographical digression had a long tradition in both Greek and Latin historiography – a legacy of which the Antiochene was clearly acutely aware. Consequently, these passages need to be read within the wider context of Ammianus' literary performance, rather than as discrete descriptions in isolation.

F.'s analysis of Ammianus' source use is particularly helpful. Analysis of explicit and implicit borrowings reveal a historian who was heavily indebted to the synthetic summaries of Rufius Festus and Solinus, but who was willing to supplement this material with judicious borrowing from Pliny, Ptolemy (especially on the geography of Persia) and the Latin historians where appropriate. F. rightly dismisses assumptions that Ammianus drew uncritically upon a single geographical compilation and highlights the surprising diversity of his different geographical passages.

One or two assumptions do raise eyebrows, not least the discussion of Ammianus' supposed dependence upon a map at pp. 414–15. This relates, of course, to a crucial debate in modern studies of ancient geography: if it could be demonstrated beyond question that Ammianus had easy access to cartographic sources, and could expect his audience to share this frame of reference, this would be a remarkable breakthrough. Ammianus' allusion to Persia utque geographici stili formarunt (23.6.13) promises much, and F.'s demonstration that the historian drew upon the works of Ptolemy in some form is also tremendously important, but the supporting evidence for widespread familiarity with maps remains slim. Ammianus' statements that the Propontis was shaped like a phi (22.8.4), that Media was rectangular (23.6.28) or Thracia shaped like a theatre (27.4.5) were familiar enough mnemonic devices and need not indicate map use, as P. Janni argued some time ago. Indeed, the famously garbled comparison of the Black Sea to a Scythian Bow (22.8.11) almost certainly betrays the fact that Ammianus took the image from a textual source, rather than from a map. Ammianus clearly drew upon a wide range of geographical sources – as F. demonstrates – but it is far from clear that there was a map among them. Nevertheless, this study will be of great value to students both of Ammianus and of classical geographical thought more generally.