Since the late nineteenth century, studies of Ammianus’ audience have reached widely divergent conclusions. Research has focused on two opposed theses: while some scholars have seen the pagan senatorial aristocracy as the audience of the Res Gestae, others have assigned that role to the imperial bureaucracy. However, in thinking that a work could reach—or target—exclusively the members of a specific social group, the prevalent views on Ammianus’ audience contradict what we know about the circulation of books in the late Roman world. In contrast to previous research, this study proposes a new approach based on an analysis of the information available on book circulation in Ammianus’ time. This analysis shows that the audience of the Res Gestae was most likely socially diverse.

In this paper, I want to focus on a specific set of numismatic images of Alexander the Great, which has received less attention than comparable ones: the depictions on the Late Roman medallions known as contorniates. First, in two introductory sections, I connect the tradition of Alexander's numismatic imagery with the contorniates and present the general characteristics of these medallions. Next, I offer a detailed analysis of the different depictions of Alexander on contorniates. Thirdly, I briefly summarise the discussion of the functions of the contorniates and, on this basis, question the interpretations of them as pagan symbols and amulets proposed by Alföldi and Mittag. Finally, based on the critique of these interpretations, I argue that the Alexander contorniates reflect an interest in the historical figure of the great conqueror and the quasi-fictional hero of the Alexander Romance. If this Alexander was a symbol, it was of Greco-Roman patriotism and the empire's ability to prevail over its barbarian enemies.

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La investigación especializada ha producido, en los últimos ciento veinte años, una casi inabarcable literatura sobre el Dialogus de oratoribus 1. La