Synopses & Reviews
Greek and Roman Historiography is a collection of important articles from the last thirty years which treat the ways in which the ancient Greeks and Romans thought about and wrote their histories. Six of these articles have been translated into English for the first time. Avoiding issues such as sources and reliability which were the concern of earlier scholarship, the contributors focus much more on how the ancients themselves engaged with their past: the relationship between myth and history; the role of memory and oral tradition as they shaped both Greek and Roman notions of the past; the role of the historian in giving form and meaning to his history; and the different notions of historical truth and falsehood. A specially written introduction places the essays in the larger context of earlier and more recent trends in the study of Greek and Roman historiography.
Review
"This collection of Oxford Readings will furnish a valuable resource for both students and specialists of classical historiography, especially as it makes available several foreign language articles in English for the first time that have not received the attention they clearly deserve."--David Driscoll, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
About the Author
John Marincola is Leon Golden Professor of Classics, Florida State University
Table of Contents
Introduction
I. Constructing the Past: Myth, Memory and History
1. Thucydides is Not a Colleague, Nicole Loraux
2. Myth, History, Politics - Ancient and Modern, Hans-Joachim Gehrke
3. Genealogy and the Genealogists, Rosalind Thomas
4. Some Aspects of Source Theory in Greek Historiography, Guido Schepens
5. The Tradition about Early Rome and Oral History, Jurgen von Ungern-Sternberg
6. Memoria and Historiography at Rome, Dieter Timpe
7. Etruscan Historiography, T. J. Cornell
II. Rhetoric, Truth, and Falsehood
8. Cicero and Historiography, P. A. Brunt
9. Cicero and the Writing of History, A. J. Woodman
10. Ancient Views on the Causes of Bias in Historical Writing, T. J. Luce
11. Lying Historians: Seven Types of Mendacity, T. P. Wiseman
12. True History and False History in Classical Antiquity, Emilio Gabba
III. History and Poetry
13. The Historical 'Cycle', Luciano Canfora
14. History and Tragedy, F. W. Walbank
15. Poetry and Historiography, Hermann Funke