The Danube frontier of the Roman empire in Ammianus Marcellinus' "Res Gestae"
In this article, the author applies the method of discourse analysis to «Res gestae» by Ammianus Marcellinus to characterize the language practices that describe the Danube border of the Roman Empire before and after the migration of the Goths to the imperial territory in 376. The study of specific situations given by the ancient author when describing the Gothic war allows to determine whether a late- historian considers the Danube as the imperial border after 376. The ambiguity of the river's vision within the framework of the picture presented by Ammianus Marcellinus has been revealed. If to determine the status of the river through the events described by the late-antiquity author, the border of the Eastern Roman Empire had moved south and became related to the active parts of the army, that were trying to localize the Gothic movement. According to the Marcellinus's vocabulary, the river retains its status as a psychological frontier that separated Roman civilization from the barbarians.