The fate of the Magister Equitum Marcellus
Ammianus provides a detailed account of the activities of Julian Caesar in Gaul in A.D. 357 as well as of the activity of a second force of troops which had been dispatched from the imperial court to Gaul under the command of the magister peditum Barbatio.
Attire in Ammianus and Gregory of Tours
Ammianus (c. 330–c. 395) and Gregory of Tours (538–594) both wrote large-scale histories and, as a soldier and a bishop respectively, had first hand experience of many of the persons and events they wrote of. But they lived in very different worlds, the splendid Indian summer of the Roman Empire on the one hand, and the fragmented, perpetually feuding Germanic kingdoms of sixth century, sub-Roman, Merovingian Gaul on the other, where not only bodily coverings and adornments themselves changed but some attitudes towards them did too.