When to say when: wine and drunkenness in Roman society
Not surprisingly, different people offered different opinions on the use of alcohol and the acceptability of drunkenness in Roman society. What certain people said on the subject – and the context they said it in – reveals inherent biases in the authors and the effect of those biases on social structure.
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.