greco roman historiography essay

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Greco-Roman Historiography

Introduction, general overviews.

Reference Works
Modern Authors on the Writing of Ancient History
Ancient Authors on the Writing of History
Questions of Genre
History as Ethnography
Truth and Fiction
Exemplarity
Attitudes toward the Gods
Roman Imperial History and Late Antiquity
Hellenistic Jewish Historians
Greek Historians of Roman Empire

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Greco-Roman Historiography by Eric M. Orlin LAST REVIEWED: 26 January 2023 LAST MODIFIED: 11 January 2018 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195393361-0254

The practice of writing history in the ancient world differed markedly from the practices employed by historians today, in large measure because ancient historians conceived of their task differently. The term “history” derives from the Greek word historiê , which means “inquiry,” used by Herodotus to describe his work. This inquiry could take many forms, and the boundaries between history as we understand it and such genres as ethnography, geography, and biography were never clearly defined. To the extent that ancient historians did practice their craft in a way familiar to us, the choice of genre impacted the work that each has left to us. In addition, deep connections with other forms of writing, including prose genres such as oratory as well as poetic genres of epic and tragedy, contributed to the development of historical writing in ways not always recognizable to the modern practice of history. Most ancient histories were explicitly didactic in nature. They aimed to be useful to the reader either imparting practical knowledge on how to address certain situations or lessons for moral improvement through the provision of historical examples; sometimes they aimed at both at the same time. Even making sense of the past meant something different in a world where the gods might be considered to play active roles in human affairs. Modern scholars have therefore expended energy in exploring the ways that ancient historians approached issues that are central to our own notions of historical writing, including most prominently the truth value of a text, a historian’s use of sources, and his objectivity. These studies have made it abundantly clear that ancient writers aimed both to make sense of the past and to produce works of literary merit and that the boundaries between history and other genres always remained fluid. There is considerable disagreement among modern scholars over how far individual historians pushed the boundaries in balancing their aims with their understanding of their task, and modern readers must constantly work to be aware of the differences between ancient and modern historiography to make use of these texts in an appropriate fashion.

A number of texts provide an entry point into understanding the Greek and Roman historians. Duff 2003 provides a general introduction to the authors, while Kraus and Woodman 1997 focuses on historians writing in Latin. For historiography in particular, Pitcher 2009 offers an introduction to the overall topic, while Marincola 1997 offers a more scholarly approach to the question of how ancient historians conceived of their enterprise. Hornblower 1994 offers a collection of essays on Greek historiography while Mehl 2011 covers the topic for the Romans. Momigliano 1977 and Walbank 1985 provide collections of articles from two of the leading scholars of ancient historiography in the 20th century. Feldherr 2009 is an important recent collection on specific questions relating to the Roman historians only, while Marincola 2007 offers a comprehensive look at the field covering a range of topics in both Roman and Greek authors.

Duff, Timothy. The Greek and Roman Historians . London: Bristol Classical Press, 2003.

A brief introduction meant primarily for undergraduates. Covers the major historians and places them in their literary and historical contexts, with discussion of how historiography developed as a genre, with its roots growing out of Homeric epic.

Feldherr, Andrew, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians . Cambridge Companions to Literature. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

A collection organized by theme that is explicitly intended to stimulate new thinking as well as to highlight key aspects of history writing in the Roman world. Particularly good articles in the collection on rhetoric in Roman historiography, the use of exempla , and characterization, as well as an explicit chapter on religion in Roman historiography.

Hornblower, Simon, ed. Greek Historiography . Oxford: Clarendon, 1994.

An excellent collection of essays from leading scholars. Each approaches a different topic and often different authors, but all focus on the balance between rhetoric and reality found in historical writing and in different ways attempt to differentiate the genre of history from other genres in the ancient world.

Kraus, Christina S., and A. J. Woodman. Latin Historians . Greece and Rome New Surveys in the Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

An excellent blend of an introduction to the state of Roman historiography and critical discussion of emerging trends and so useful both for students and scholars. Primary focus is on the major historians (Sallust, Livy, Tacitus), but discussion of other authors also included.

Marincola, John. Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge, 1997.

DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511584831

Considers a series of questions across the range of ancient historians from Herodotus to Ammianus Marcellinus, including why they wrote, how they arrived at their facts and conclusions, how they presented themselves to their audiences, and how they managed discussion of their own participation in events. Particularly interesting is a concluding section on how ancient historians both set their work against predecessors by polemic and while also claiming continuity.

Marincola, John. A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography . 2 vols. Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007.

DOI: 10.1002/9781405185110

A comprehensive collection covering major topics in both Greek and Roman historiography. Sections focused on the major components of ancient historiography (origins, use of sources, speeches, characterization), on types of history (local, universal, memoir, war monograph), and on related genres (biography and ethnography but also epic, tragedy, and the novel) provide a good overview, while the middle section provides detailed readings of a wide range of texts.

Mehl, Andreas. Roman Historiography: An Introduction to Its Basic Aspects and Development . Translated by Hans-Friedrich Mueller. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

A comprehensive study of almost every Roman historian, from the 3rd century BCE annalists through Christian historians and up to Procopius in the 6th century CE . The influence of both Greek historical precedents and the Roman traditions of family accounts is discussed, and context is provided to trace development over the centuries. A short concluding chapter on “The Basic Principles of Ancient Historical Thought” is a well worth a read.

Momigliano, Arnaldo. Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography . Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1977.

Presents twenty-one essays from one of the foremost scholars of ancient historiography of the 20th century. Essays treat key themes such as time in ancient historiography or the place of tradition, and the volume reprints an important article comparing pagan and Christian historiography in the fourth century CE .

Pitcher, Luke. Writing Ancient History: An Introduction to Classical Historiography . London: I. B. Tauris, 2009.

Aimed primarily at undergraduates, this book tries to suggest that ancient historians aimed both to tell what happened and to create a work of artistic merit and analyzes the choices they made to do so. Methodology, including the use or omission of evidence and speeches, is a key focus. Suggests that ancient historians, at least in their aims, were not as different from modern historians as often believed.

Walbank, Frank W. Selected Papers: Studies in Greek and Roman History and Historiography . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

A collection of twenty-one previously published papers, including eight specifically on historiographical issues. Of these, several focus on Polybius, but there is a seminal article on speeches in Greek historians as well as an important article on history and tragedy.

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Roman Historiography

By louisa schoeller, edited by karli montoya.

Roman historians, like Livy , and Tacitus were heavily influenced by greek historians like Herodutus and Thucydides whom you read about in Greek Historiography . Their approaches to history would eventually ‘evolve’ into national histories, as a majority of their Roman historical works emphasized the Romans’ superiority in relation to the rest of the world. The inclusion of fables and myths would create new challenges as it would be harder to determine what is the ‘truth’ that they are setting out to find and what is the ‘fictional’ or unimportant details.

Roman historians faced a major challenge as they worked on their writings since most of Roman history was transmitted through oral traditions. These oral histories were passed down from generation to generation, so it’s almost impossible to differentiate between myth and historical truth. Oral histories not only expressed the Roman historians limited number of written sources at their disposal, but also the complication of having to determine what is fact and what is myth in a specific account.

Roman Historiography would have been something that remained limited to the upper classes of Roman society. During the time of the Roman Empire, only the elite would have had access to upper levels of education and possessed the ability to read and write. This gave only a small percentage of the population the opportunity to focus their history on reflecting themselves and their ancestors, while leaving out the majority of the population. The fact that historical writing remained a privilege of the upper class might allude to the propagandist tendencies and the nationalist approach by which Roman historians have been characterized. The ruling class would want to maintain their power, and what better way to do that than by writing themselves into the history and even into thedevelopment of the Roman Empire itself?

All of these aspects impacted Roman Historiography in their own ways, some reaching far beyond the time of the Romans. This essay will focus on Roman historiography in terms of national histories and religion, as both held importance in Roman history.

National Histories

The Romans are well-known for their military expeditions whcih would expand their empire’s borders, wealth, and influence across the Mediterranean world. Polybius wrote several works that emphasized the Romans’ role in the world as they knew it. He would not use rhetoric due to the fear that it would inhibit him conveying the truth as he had set out to do. (Sorek, 2012, 81) Polybius studied and wrote his histories with the aim of trying to understand what elements or values could explain Rome’s success. Were these elements: economic, political, military,or possibly social? He focused specifically on Roman history and chose not to include outside societies or the lower classes in his works as they were considered “less noble.” (Sorek, 2012, 80) Roman historians that followed Polybius, like Livy, Julius Caesar, and Ammianus Marcellnius, would officially create the genre of national histories . National histories can be defined as “the story of a single political community over an extended period of time.” (Popkin, 2016, 32) In terms of the Romans, this would be the emphasis of the events of the past in relation to the Roman’s imperial success.

The goal of national histories was to place importance upon themselves above the rest of the world. The world the Romans lived in resembled their success as one of the most powerful empires in Antiquity; which they wanted to be conveyed through their histories. This would also include the histories of their families and what they had contributed to Rome’s success. “They were proud of their traditions - what had begun as family memories became over the centuries a collective national mystique.” (Mellor, 2013, xvi) The Romans wanted to remain true to their past. They did so by writing national histories where they kept their ancestors and their own actions alive.

Julius Caesar was a historian who promoted propaganda, although, his works did follow in the tradition of a national history as he did promote the things he had already done and wanted to continue to do for Rome. He had come from an elite family in the Roman Empire that had gone back several generations; his dad and grandfather held public offices during their lives, just as Caesar had (Sorek, 2012, 91). He is known for his military successes than for his contribution to Roman Historiography. Two of his most notable works are the The Civil War , a memoir in which he describes in detail his conflict with Pompey the Great, and the Gallic Wars , a memoir that details his military campaigns in the Germanic lands across the Rhine. (Sorek, 2012, 93) Susan Sorek, in Ancient Historians A Student Handbook , argues that both of these works were written as propaganda that not only emphasized Caesar himself but also the success of the empire. His version of Roman historiography had then, taken on a persuasive rhetoric that could be used on the lower classes of their society when Julius needed to round up support. He wanted to explain why his military expeditions were necessary and why the people should remain supportive of these causes. In order for him to have conquered the lands he had, he needed to have the support of Rome.

Livy did not have any military or political experience as Julius Caesar did, he came from an intellectual background and approached his writings by looking into “Roman history from a moral standpoint.” (Sorek, 2012, 106) He attempted to understand the impact of morals or the impact of the lack of morals had on the success of the empire, as he does in his account of the Second Punic War (218-201 BCE), where he discusses the moral choice that one of the figures had to make: to stand with Rome or against Rome. (Sorek, 2012, 106-107) While the Romans had ‘respected’ the Greeks and all of their cultural innovations (such as, written histories); the Romans worked to distinguish themselves from the Greeks. It’s almost as if the Romans ‘cherry-picked’ the aspects of Greek culture that they felt amplified Roman values and used them to their advantage. Livy would talk about other cultures that surrounded the Romans, such as the Carthaginians in his Second Punic War account as well; but only to make the distinction of the superiority of the Romans to those who are not Roman (Sorek, 2012, 108-109). Again, it appears that the approach of national histories allowed Livy to distinguish the Romans from those surrounding them. Could this be considered propaganda? Sure it can, as it paints the Romans in a superior manner, whether or not the Romans were actually superior to those around them. However, it can be argued that the use of national histories was the Romans’ version of propaganda since the histories written by some historians seemed to have only been written with the goal of promoting a cause or war like Julius Caesar.

Both Livy and Julius Caesar take on this national history form in order to convey the greatness of the empire. No matter if the historian focused on the military history or the complete history of the empire, both Livy and Julius Caesar take on a superior tone in their writings that emphasize the Romans in a brighter light when compared to other races or civilizations of the time.

Roman Religion, Christianity, and Historiography

Early Roman civilization is known to be polytheistic, meaning a society that believes in more than one God. Their deities include Jupiter (better known as Zeus in Greek Mythology), Venus (Aphrodite), and Mars (Ares). The Romans believed that every aspect of their lives, their actions, and their successes were dependent upon the happiness of their gods. They believed that the gods and goddesses played a significant role in the course of their lives and the success of the empire. Their religious beliefs and superstitions would have carried over into their political and military lives/decisions, so why would their religion not impact their history? Roman religion believed in and placed value on the idea of omens or hints from the heavens when trying to make any big decisions as they were seen a guidance from the deities above. Considering how important and central their religion was to the Romans, it can be surprising that it is not one of the focused upon or emphasized themes in their historical writings.

Ammianus Marcellinus was a Roman historian who worked to maintain the traditional practice of Roman religion in a Christian influenced society. Christianity was legalized by Constantine in 313 CE. It is unclear how he felt towards Christians and Christianity, as he never completely goes into a discussion surrounding their religion. In his work, Res Gestae , he explores a Roman world that had come into contact with a different religion. As he remained true to his religious traditions, he also stayed true to Roman historiographical traditions, which meant not placing an importance on the societies, people, and ideas that fall outside of the Roman sense of the topic (Hunt, 1985, 193). Christians were not a primary focus of his writing, nor did he want them to be but living under Christian emperors, a subject of discussion for him. Ammianus might not have had a problem with Christianity itself, but rather its intrusive nature in the political realm of the empire. (Hunt, 1985)

The clash between the two different religions towards the end of the empire illuminates the Romans emphasis on their own traditions and themselves. “ Among the exceptions was that cruel one which forbade Christian masters of rhetoric and grammar to teach unless they came over to the worship of the heathen gods ” (Mellor, 571). If one wanted to be a Roman, one had to believe in the various deities in Roman religion; not in a single God. By leaving Christians out of his writings, he left them out of his version of Roman history. Ammianus remained devoted to emphasizing the greatness of Rome, even though the empire had begun to crumble during his life. Ammianus Marcellinus is one of the few Roman historians who touched on religion in his writings. However, he never gave Christians predominant presence in his writings as they were not meant to be his focus; Rome was his focus.

Roman Historiography had been influenced by the writings and styles of Herodotus and Thucydides but had developed in its own way. The emphasis on the empire and its success is apparent through multiple Roman historians’ writings and something that was characteristically Roman at this time. They wrote about the world in the way they understood it: with them being at the center.

The creation of the national history genre allowed them to write their history with a complete focus on the Empire, its success, and those who brought about that success (the elite class/families). Polybius’s, Livy’s, and Julius Caesar’s works all highlight the emphasis on the superiority of the Romans, although, they are all done in very different ways. Ammianus Marcellius’s writings also fit into this model as he stuck to the national history form but included limited discussions on the Roman and Christian religions. Roman historiography will extend into future generations of historical writing as Roman historians provided new models, focuses, and genres of history that will be used throughout time. We can even see now that this genre of historical writing extends well past the life of the Romans, as more recent historical figures have used their national histories with the same goal of promoting propaganda.

Bibliography

Hunt, E.D. “Christians and Christianity in Ammianus Marcellinus”. The Classical Quarterly , Vol. 35, No. 1 (1985): 186-200. http://jstor.org/stable/638815.

Mellor, Ronald. The Historians of Ancient Rome An Anthology of the Major Writings . US; Canada: Taylor and Francis Group, 2013.

Popkins, Jeremy D. From Herodotus to H-Net: The Story of Historiography . New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Sorek, Susan. Ancient Historians A Student Handbook . New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2012.

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In What respect does Greco-Roman Historiography inspire Modern History?

The Greco-Roman historiography had inspire the modern history to greater extent in the sense that many techniques which including referencing sources ,research ,interviews , multi disciplinary use of sources ,local history to universal history and to be able to transfer war from

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Roman historiography

Quick reference.

Presentation of the Roman past was firmly rooted in the Roman present. Historians proclaimed a desire to help and inspire contemporary readers in their public life, and the past was often moulded to provide antecedents for contemporary events or rephrased in contemporary terms, sometimes for tendentious reasons, sometimes just to make the story more excitingly familiar. Roman writers were also more often public men than their Greek counterparts (e.g. Porcius Cato, Sallust, Asinius Pollio, Tacitus ), and their contemporary narrative told of events in which they had played a part: the result was an emphasis on this recent history, which usually comprised the bulk even of those works which covered Rome's history from its foundation ( ab urbe conditā ).

Still, historiography was not simply a masked version of the memoir. It aspired to tell the story of the Roman state, not just of an individual's experiences. At first this usually involved an outline of Rome's history from its beginnings, with special emphasis on the inspiring foundation stories. The result was an hourglass structure, with most space given to the beginnings and the present, and a sketchier account of the period in between: that is already visible in Fabius Pictor, traditionally the earliest Roman historian, and survives in most of his ab urbe condita successors (including Ennius, who did much to shape the Roman view of history). Another aspect, as Cicero ruefully observed, was the evocation of traditional Roman annals. Writers may only rarely have consulted the annales maximi themselves, but the texture of such material—bare lists of omens, magistrates, triumphs, etc.—was still familiar. The annalistic structure, organizing material in a year‐by‐year fashion, also became regular.

Sallust's War with Catiline and War with Jugurtha abandoned annalistic form and developed the monograph, using these two episodes to illustrate themes of wider significance, esp. that of moral decline. The analysis is schematic, but is carried through with concentration and structural deftness; and Sallust moulded an appropriate style, concise, epigrammatic, rugged, and abrupt. Meanwhile Caesar had written a different sort of monograph in his commentaries; their form (see commentarii) leaves them outside the main stream. Asinius Pollio wrote of the Civil War (between Caesar and Pompey) and its antecedents, beginning with 60 bc. His incisive and independent analysis influenced the later Greek versions of Appian and Plutarch.

Pollio was less influential in Rome itself, largely because Livy's 142‐book ab urbe condita came to dominate the field. A great Roman history had been written at last. Livy offered something new, with a more even treatment of past and present: the great bulk of his history was pre‐contemporary, partly, as he explains in the preface, because decline was relatively recent, and the best ethical examples were to be found in the earlier centuries. His moralizing is, however, more than Roman bias; it is also a form of explanation, isolating the strengths which carried Rome to its success, and might yet prove her salvation. The preface suggests that his contemporary books may have projected a less rosy view of Rome's morality, with degeneration explaining the less happy developments of the last century.

From: historiography, Roman in Oxford Dictionary of the Classical World »

Subjects: Classical studies

A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography (2 vols.). Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World

John bauschatz , university of arizona. [email protected].

Table of Contents

A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography is the latest entry in Blackwell’s Companions to the Ancient World series. According to the publisher, the series “provides sophisticated and authoritative overviews of periods of ancient history, genres of classical literature, and the most important themes in ancient culture,” with essays “designed for an international audience of scholars, students, and general readers.” For the most part, the series has been received favorably, to judge from the many positive reviews of individual volumes. 1 Seventeen volumes have been published so far, and ten others are currently in preparation.

I will state up front that I very much enjoyed this Companion . John Marincola has done a fine job as editor of this thick volume—of these two thick volumes, rather—and his contributors have likewise acquitted themselves of their tasks very admirably. On the whole, the book satisfies the dictates of the companion genre and the aims of the series to which it belongs. That it does not quite succeed in every aspect is to be expected of a work of such breadth and should not be held against it.

In what follows I will provide a brief outline of the individual sections of the book and the purpose / success of each section. Given the sheer size of the text—there are fifty-seven chapters in all—I will restrict myself to commenting on those contributions that are somehow noteworthy. I will ask the reader to take it on faith that, in general, the quality of individual contributions is very high, and also will beg pardon of those contributors passed over with only a name check (or less).

A few preliminary remarks about the format of the book: each of the contributions runs to around 10-15 pages in length; most are divided into subsections; most have conclusions and suggestions for further reading at the end; footnotes are avoided, in favor of (sometimes very lengthy) parentheses; for the most part, (transliterated) Greek and Latin quotations are accompanied by English translations.

After the usual front matter (the Contents [pp. vii-xi], a list of Contributors [pp. xii-xix], a Preface [pp. xx-xxi], some Acknowledgements [pp. xxii-xxiii] and lists of Abbreviations for both Ancient Authors [pp. xxiv-xxxvi] and Reference Works [pp. xxxvii-xli]) we find Marincola’s Introduction (pp. 1-9). Marincola avoids painting a big picture of the history of Greco-Roman historiography, and instead provides a general overview of the book’s purpose and the issues it will tackle. The overall message is that the subject of Greek and Roman historiography is a complicated one; that the (ancient) writers of Greek and Roman history, as well as their works, were products of a number of different influences; and that ancient historiography as a genre is not easily reduced to generalizations (p. 8). Marincola’s very accurate characterization of the subject sets the scene quite nicely and more than adequately prepares the reader for the discussions that will follow.

In Part I: Contexts (pp. 11-144), the reader finds ten chapters that consider the most common ingredients in Greek and Roman historiography. The essays collected here treat the use of sources (documents, oral tradition, speeches, etc.) in Greek and Roman historians (Marincola, chapter 9; Rhodes, chapter 4; Saïd, chapter 6), conceptions of history and historiography in the ancient world (Nicolai, chapter 1; Schepens, chapter 3), the origins of historiography in Greece and Rome (Darbo-Peschanski, chapter 2; Wiseman, chapter 5), the expressed and unexpressed aims of the writers of ancient histories (Dewald, chapter 7; Pitcher, chapter 8) and the ability (or inability) of ancient and modern readers alike to digest and fully appreciate ancient historical texts (Woodman, chapter 10). These ten well-balanced essays provide the reader with a solid sketch of the components of Greek and Roman historiography, with—to my mind, at least—no notable omissions or superfluities. One essay deserves special mention: that of Woodman (chapter 10, “Readers and Reception: A Text Case”), in which the author argues in favor of reading ancient history in the original language. Via a careful examination of Tacitus, Annals 2.53, Woodman makes a strong case that it is pointless to hope to capture, in a translation, the full range of meanings in—and the many nuances of—a text like Tacitus’, which engages the reader on so many different levels. I think he argues too vehemently in favor of the necessity of teaching classical texts in the original language and condemns too strongly the proliferation of classics courses taught in translation. All the same, his piece was an undeniably fun and invigorating read.

Part II: Surveys (pp. 145-311) will likely prove the section of the Companion most useful to readers over the long run. Here one finds fifteen chapters containing detailed descriptions of the many different varieties of ancient historiography. Five chapters treat subgenres: continuous history (Tuplin, chapter 12), local history (Harding, chapter 14), memoir and autobiography (Riggsby, chapter 22), universal history (Marincola, chapter 13) and war monographs (Rood, chapter 11). The reader who initially objects that this collection of subgenres is too restricted in scope will likely be pleased to find that a number of genres with close affinities to historiography—biography, epic, tragedy, etc.—are treated in a later section of the book (Part IV; see below). Also collected here are five essays on Greek historians who wrote on regions of the ancient Mediterranean outside the Greek mainland, including Judaea (Sterling, chapter 19), Magna Graecia (Vattuone, chapter 15), the Near East (Dillery, chapter 18), Persia (Lenfant, chapter 16) and Rome (Pelling, chapter 20). Most of these essays provide information on lesser- (or little-) known historians, many of whom are but names to us now. At times, these five chapters read like only slightly expanded OCD entries, but given the often scant evidence for their subjects, this can be forgiven. Rounding out Part II are four chapters on historiography during different periods in the history of Rome—the early (Beck, chapter 21) and late Republic (Levene, chapter 23), the imperial period (Matthews, chapter 24) and Late Antiquity (Banchich, chapter 25)—and an essay on the historians of Alexander the Great (Zambrini, chapter 17). Again, thoroughness is the rule. The reader who makes his or her way through this section of the Companion will emerge with a rich understanding of the temporal, geographic and stylistic scope of Greek and Roman historiography.

Part III: Readings (pp. 313-480) opens volume two, after reprints of the Contents (pp. v-ix) and the lists of Abbreviations for Ancient Authors (pp. x-xxii) and Reference Works (pp. xxiii-xxvii) from volume one. The reader finds here a series of twenty-four essays, each of which focuses in on a very specific author, theme and (often) passage of text. The ancient authors treated in Part III run the chronological gamut from Herodotus to Ammianus Marcellinus, and the individual essays differ widely in scope and style. As one might imagine, not everything here will appeal to every reader, and not every reader will have the expertise necessary to fully appreciate every offering. For instance, the reader excited to discover the chapter on the literary merits of book one of Appian’s Civil Wars (Bucher, chapter 46) may also find stimulating the essay on the transition from republic to principate in Velleius Paterculus (Gowing, chapter 40), but not the treatment of agôn in Thucydides (Lateiner, chapter 29) or the discussion of Ammianus Marcellinus’ intended audience (Rohrbacher, chapter 48). In the end, the reader will likely find some things to like, but more to ignore. As I read through the uniformly excellent essays collected here, I wondered about the reasons behind the inclusion of a section like this—filled with such narrow studies—in a companion designed for a broad audience. One might make the argument that it is only by engaging with an ancient author at close range that one truly gains an appreciation for his or her style, preoccupations and similarities to and differences from other authors. I would agree, but I would also argue that such close examination is not the responsibility of a companion volume, especially as many, if not most of its intended readers will not have the Greek and/or Latin skills necessary to fully appreciate the text(s) being dissected. In the end, I could not shake the suspicion that this section had been included largely to boost the size of the Companion to two volumes and correspondingly to boost the price to a wallet-sapping $349.99.

Part IV: Neighbors (pp. 481-564) marks a return to good companion-style form. In this section the chapters concern literary genres that overlap to varying degrees with historiography: antiquarian literature (Bravo, chapter 53), biography (Stadter, chapter 54), ethnography (Dench, chapter 51), epic (Leigh, chapter 50), geography (Engels, chapter 55), the novel (Morgan, chapter 56) and tragedy (Rutherford, chapter 52). Ancient generic boundaries were quite permeable, so the discussions offered in this section are apt. All are quite good, as well. Readers interested in ancient history but unfamiliar with the full length and breadth of classical literature will, in Part IV, find many new avenues for exploration.

Finally, in Part V: Transition (pp. 565-581) the Nachleben of Greco-Roman historiography is considered. This is a worthwhile pursuit, to be sure; but oddly, this entire Part consists of only one essay, Croke’s “Late Antique Historiography, 250-650 CE” (chapter 57). One wonders why a new Part was necessary, and why this useful discussion could not have been more appropriately slotted in at the end of Part II (before or after the last chapter [25]: Banchich, “The Epitomizing Tradition in Late Antiquity”). Granted, it might have seemed odd to end the companion abruptly after Part IV: Neighbors; and indeed, the current solution does provide something of an epilogue for the work. Still, why not call it an epilogue? Or, better yet, why not add a few more chapters to this part of the text, concerning (e.g.) the eventual rebirth of historiography after the Middle Ages, or the traces of Greco-Roman historiographical practice detectable in modern historiography?

Following Part V, the reader will find the Bibliography (pp. 582-641), the Index Locorum (pp. 642-676) and the General Index (pp. 677-705).

I will add here a few comments on what I perceive as the general deficiencies of the volume before I conclude. As noted above, the text admirably covers a broad swath of subject matter and contains precious few holes in content. One area which I thought deserving of at least brief treatment—perhaps in the introduction—was the history of modern work on Greco-Roman historiography. Not everyone who reads this book will know who Arnaldo Momigliano was, or why Felix Jacoby is cited so frequently in its essays. A chapter on the various theoretical lenses through which ancient history and its writers have been viewed over the years might also have been useful. I have already commented on the questionable placement in the text of Part V and the questionable inclusion in the text of Part III. The length and formatting of the individual chapters of the book is generally very uniform, though a few of the essays seem unfinished for one reason or another. For instance, chapter 4, “Documents and the Greek Historians” (Rhodes), provides an excellent survey but ends abruptly with no Conclusion or, more frustratingly, any suggestions for Further Reading. Some of the essays show side effects of translation from an original version that contained formatting incompatible with that of the Companion as a whole. The first chapter (Nicolai, “The Place of History in the Ancient World”) is an example of one such essay: it is overburdened with long parenthetical remarks—likely the vestiges of footnotes—that slow the reader’s pace considerably. There is also a noticeable difference in the presentation of source material in Greek and source material in Latin: while a number of essays contain long block quotes of Latin, followed by translations, there are no long block quotations of Greek, simply translations; and where brief Greek quotations are employed, transliteration is the rule. I imagine that this was mandated by the publisher, not the editor or his contributors. Still, it is unfortunate to see such an imbalance in the presentation of original language text, especially given that the great majority of surviving Greco-Roman historiographical material is in Greek. 2

That said, it should be stressed that A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography is a fine, if imperfect, addition to the exploding ranks of handbooks on classical antiquity. It is perhaps too big, too expensive and (at times) too narrowly focused a book to truly serve as a companion for the “general” reader sought by the publisher; but as it also offers the most thorough, vigorous and up-to-date treatment of the subject of ancient historiography available today, it should find a place on the shelves of scholars and students of antiquity alike.

1 . See (e.g.) the overall positive BMCR reviews of the Companion to Ancient Epic by Antonia Syson (BMCR 2007.09.41 ) and the Companion to Greek Rhetoric by Øivind Andersen (BMCR 2008.02.15 ). On the other hand, Geoffrey Summers returns a somewhat mixed verdict on the Companion to the Ancient Near East (BMCR 2005.05.58 ; see also the response of Gonzalo Rubio in BMCR 2005.06.19 .

2 . On a more positive note, the book is virtually free of typos. I caught the following: volume 1, p. xiv, column 1: “Agesilaus” is not italicized; volume 1, p. xxix and volume 2, p. xv: Fronto’s dates are “ca. 95-166”, not “ca. 95-116”; p. 278, paragraph 2: dittography of “their”; p. 366, paragraph 2: there is no “)” to correspond with the “(” in “(dealing”; p. 517, paragraph 1: “Dionysius” should end in an apostrophe; p. 702: under the entry for Tacitus, “Aeneid” is not italicized.

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Transitions to Empire: Essays in Greco-Roman History 360-146 B.C. in honor of E. Badian

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Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

The rediscovery of classical antiquity.

Terracotta statuette of Nike, the personification of victory

Marble statue of a woman

Marble funerary statues of a maiden and a little girl

Terracotta bowl

Signed by Perennius Tigranus as owner

Ten marble fragments of the Great Eleusinian Relief

Marble relief with a dancing maenad

Adaptation of work attributed to Kallimachos

Marble statue of Eirene (the personification of peace)

Roman copy of Greek original by Kephisodotos

Fragments of a marble statue of the Diadoumenos (youth tying a fillet around his head)

Copy of work attributed to Polykleitos

Marble statue of a togatus (man wearing a toga)

Rosso antico torso of a centaur

Marble statue of a wounded Amazon

Marble statue of Herakles seated on a rock

Intaglio with Saint Theodore Teron Slaying a Many-Headed Dragon

Iphicles Saved from a Serpent by his Brother Hercules

The Birth of the Virgin

Fra Carnevale (Bartolomeo di Giovanni Corradini)

Bacchanal with a Wine Vat

Andrea Mantegna

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

Francesco Colonna

Adam and Eve

Albrecht Dürer

The Apollo Belvedere from the Vatican his left hand resting on the tree trunk around which coils a python

Marcantonio Raimondi

Antico (Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi)

Ornament Panel

Attributed to Agostino Veneziano (Agostino dei Musi)

Composite of Corinthian and Ionic, from "Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae"

Monogrammist G.A. & the Caltrop

Giambologna

The Farnese Hercules, from "Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae"

The Colosseum, from "Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae"

Anonymous , Italian, 16th century

Villa Almerico (Villa Rotunda), from I quattro libri dell'architettura di Andrea Palladio (Book 2, page 19)

Andrea Palladio

Farnese Hercules

Hendrick Goltzius

The Octagonal Room in the Small Baths at the Villa of Hadrian (Tivoli)

Giovanni Battista Piranesi

Department of European Paintings , The Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 2002

The remains of Greco-Roman antiquity—coins, gems , sculpture , buildings , and the classics of Greek and Latin literature —fascinated the thinking men and women of the Italian Renaissance. The arts and the humanities, they reasoned, had declined during the “middle ages” that stretched between the end of antiquity and their own time, but by emulating the exemplary works of the ancients, even striving to surpass them, contemporary artists and writers might restore the arts and letters to their former grandeur. In Renaissance Italy, the desire to know and to match the excellence of the ancients often engendered passionate endeavor. The Florentine author Niccolò Machiavelli, for example, described his nightly retreats into his library in these memorable words: “At the door I take off my muddy everyday clothes. I dress myself as though I were about to appear before a royal court as a Florentine envoy. Then decently attired I enter the antique courts of the great men of antiquity. They receive me with friendship; from them I derive the nourishment which alone is mine and for which I was born. Without false shame I talk with them and ask them the causes of the actions; and their humanity is so great they answer me. For four long and happy hours I lose myself in them. I forget all my troubles; I am not afraid of poverty or death. I transform myself entirely in their likeness.” Artists likewise worked to transform their art by studying, measuring, drawing , and imitating admired examples of classical sculpture and architecture, and this is reflected in many of the greatest works in The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Fra Carnevale’s Birth of the Virgin ( 35.121 ), part of an altarpiece completed in 1467 for the Church of Santa Maria della Bella in Urbino, places the narrative in a loggia accessed through classical arches, while the upper story of the building is decorated with reliefs that allude to Roman sculpture and gems and cameos. Similar attention to antiquity is revealed in the monumental Adam of ca. 1490–95 by the Venetian sculptor Tullio Lombardo ( 36.163 ). Originally part of the tomb of Doge Andrea Vendramin (died 1478) now in the Venetian Church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, the Adam was one of eighteen classically inspired marbles decorating the monument. Giambologna’s Triton ( 14.40.689 ), a bronze statuette of 1560–70, illustrates the Flemish sculptor’s attraction to the serpentine forms of later Hellenistic art , examples of which he saw and copied during his 1550 trip to Rome .

In the sixteenth century, antique sculpture and architecture became popular subject matter for prints that eventually helped generate interest in classical art far beyond the reaches of the former Roman empire . An early example is Andrea Mantegna’s Bacchanal with a Wine Vat ( 1986.1159 ), an engraving produced shortly after the artist’s 1488–90 sojourn in Rome. The frieze-like composition and figural types derive from antique Bacchic sarcophagi Mantegna saw in Roman churches and private collections. His pendant engraving Bacchanal with Silenus attracted the interest of artist Albrecht Dürer , who copied it during his visit to Venice in 1494–95, the first of two trips the German master would make to Italy to study Italian Renaissance and classical art. The fruits of this study are seen in Dürer’s 1504 engraving Adam and Eve ( 19.73.1 ), in which the pose of Adam is derived from the famous Apollo Belvedere , excavated near Rome in the late fifteenth century. The statue was immediately recognized as a masterpiece, and Dürer may have known it from a drawing. By 1509, Pope Julius II had placed the marble in the Vatican collection , and its fame was spread through drawings and prints, including an engraving of around 1510–27 by Marcantonio Raimondi ( 49.97.114 ). The artist has taken care to draw the statue from an angle that shows the head in strict profile, an allusion to antique portrait medals.

Prints served the important function of allowing interested parties to study a work of art when financial considerations or the location of the object precluded firsthand inspection. Additionally, prints were popular collector’s items, relatively affordable and easy to transport. The antique marble known as the Farnese Hercules was excavated from the Baths of Caracalla in 1546 and placed in the palace of Alessandro Farnese (Pope Paul III), an avid collector of antique art. In 1562, Jacob Bos, a Flemish engraver active in Rome, recorded the statue’s appearance in an engraving ( 41.72[2.63] ) available for inclusion in the Speculum Romanae magnificentiae (Mirror of Roman Magnificence), a kind of open-ended collector’s album comprised of prints featuring views and maps of Rome. By publishing a title page with this name in 1575, the print publisher Antonio Lafreri encouraged collectors and antiquarians to purchase prints from the selection of 107 different views offered by his Roman shop. Architecture figured prominently in the Speculum ; a print depicting a composite capital ( 41.72[2.24] ) shows various components of the architectural element being measured by plumb lines ending in lead weights, confirming the Renaissance interest in proportions of classical architecture. Views of Roman buildings showed them either reconstructed or in a ruinous state, the latter exemplified by Lafreri’s print of the Colosseum ( 41.72[1.59] ), the grandeur of the venerable old theater undiminished by its crumbling and weed-strewn appearance.

Department of European Paintings. “The Rediscovery of Classical Antiquity.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/clan/hd_clan.htm (October 2002)

Additional Essays by Department of European Paintings

Department of European Paintings. “ Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) .” (originally published October 2004, last revised March 2010)
Department of European Paintings. “ Architecture in Renaissance Italy .” (October 2002)
Department of European Paintings. “ Titian (ca. 1485/90?–1576) .” (October 2003)
Department of European Paintings. “ The Papacy and the Vatican Palace .” (October 2002)

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9.8: Greco-Roman Culture

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Christopher Brooks
Portland Community College

The Romans had been in contact with Greek culture for centuries, ever since the Etruscans struck up their trading relationship with the Greek poleis of southern Italy. Initially, the Etruscans formed a conduit for trade and cultural exchange, but soon the Romans were trading directly with the Greeks as well as the various Greek colonies all over the Mediterranean. By the time the Romans finally conquered Greece itself, they had already spent hundreds of years absorbing Greek ideas and culture, modeling their architecture on the great buildings of the Greek Classical Era and studying Greek ideas.

Despite their admiration for Greek culture, there was a paradox in that Roman elites had their own self-proclaimed “Roman” virtues, virtues that they attributed to the Roman past, which were quite distinct from Greek ideas. Roman virtues revolved around the idea that a Roman was strong, honest, straightforward, and powerful, while the Greeks were (supposedly) shifty, untrustworthy, and incapable of effective political organization. The simple fact that the Greeks had been unable to forge an empire except during the brief period of Alexander’s conquests seemed to the Romans as proof that they did not possess an equivalent degree of virtue.

The Romans summed up their own virtues with the term Romanitas , which meant to be civilized, to be strong, to be honest, to be a great public speaker, to be a great fighter, and to work within the political structure in alliance with other civilized Romans. There was also a powerful theme of self-sacrifice associated with Romanitas - the ideal Roman would sacrifice himself for the greater good of Rome without hesitation. In some ways, Romanitas was the Romans' spin on the old Greek combination of arete and civic virtue.

One example of Romanitas in action was the role of dictator. A Roman dictator, even more so than a consul, was expected to embody Romanitas, leading Rome through a period of crisis but then willingly giving up power . Since the Romans were convinced that anything resembling monarchy was politically repulsive, a dictator was expected to serve for the greater good of Rome and then step aside when peace was restored. Indeed, until the first century CE, dictators duly stepped down once their respective crises were addressed.

Romanitas was profoundly compatible with Greek Stoicism (which came of age in the Hellenistic monarchies just as Rome itself was expanding). Stoicism celebrated self-sacrifice, strength, political service, and the rejection of frivolous luxuries; these were all ideas that seemed laudable to Romans. By the first century BCE, Stoicism was the Greek philosophy of choice among many aristocratic Romans (a later Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, was even a stoic philosopher in his own right).

The implications of Romanitas for political and military loyalty and morale are obvious. One less obvious expression of Romanitas, however, was in public building and celebrations. One way for elite (rich) Romans to express their Romanitas was to fund the construction of temples, forums, arenas, or practical public works like roads and aqueducts. Likewise, elite Romans would often pay for huge games and contests with free food and drink, sometimes for entire cities. This practice was not just in the name of showing off; it was an expression of one's loyalty to the Roman people and their shared Roman culture. The creation of numerous Roman buildings (some of which survive) is the result of this form of Romanitas.

Despite their tremendous pride in Roman culture, the Romans still found much to admire about Greek intellectual achievements. By about 230 BCE, Romans started taking an active interest in Greek literature. Some Greek slaves were true intellectuals who found an important place in Roman society; one status symbol in Rome was to have a Greek slave who could tutor one’s children in the Greek language and Greek learning. In 220 BCE a Roman senator, Quintus Fabius Pictor, wrote a history of Rome in Greek, which stands as the first major piece of prose to have survived from ancient Rome (like so many ancient sources, it has not survived). Soon, Romans were imitating the Greeks, writing in both Greek and Latin and creating poetry, drama, and literature.

That being noted, the interest in Greek culture was muted until the Roman wars in Greece that began with the defeat of Philip V of Macedon. Rome’s Greek wars created a kind of “feeding frenzy” of Greek art and Greek slaves. Huge amounts of Greek statuary and art was shipped back to Rome as part of the spoils of war, having an immediate impact on Roman taste. The appeal of Greek art was undeniable. Greek artists, even those who escaped slavery, soon started moving to Rome en masse because there was so much money to be made there if an artist could secure a wealthy patron. Greek artists, and soon Romans who learned from them, adapted the Hellenistic Greek style. In many cases, classical statues were recreated exactly by sculptors, somewhat like modern-day prints of famous paintings. In others, a new style of realistic portraiture in sculpture that originated in the Hellenistic kingdoms proved irresistible to the Romans; whereas the Greeks of the Classical Era usually idealized the subjects of art, the Romans came to prefer more realistic and “honest” portrayals. We know precisely what many Romans looked like because of the realistic busts made of their faces: wrinkles, warts and all.

Bust of a Roman aristocrat in advanced age wearing a toga.

Along with philosophy and architecture, the most important Greek import to arrive on Roman shores was rhetoric: the mastery of words and language in order to persuade people and win arguments. The Greeks held that the two ways a man could best his rivals and assert his virtue were battle and public discussion and argumentation. This tradition was felt very keenly by the Romans, because those were precisely the two major ways the Roman Republic operated – the superiority of its armies was well-known, while individual leaders had to be able to convince their peers and rivals of the correctness of their positions. The Romans thus very consciously tried to copy the Greeks, especially the Athenians, for their skill at oratory.

Maybe not surprisingly, the Romans both copied and resented the Greeks for the Greek mastery of words. The Romans came to pride themselves on a more direct, less subtle form of oratory than that (supposedly) practiced in Greece. Part of Roman oratorical skill was the use of passionate appeals to emotional responses in the audience, ones that were supposed to both harness and control the emotions of the speaker himself. The Romans also formalized instruction in rhetoric, a practice of studying the speeches of great speakers and politicians of the past and of debating instructors and fellow students in mock scenarios.

Early Greek, Roman, and Christian Historiography Compare & Contrast Essay

Introduction, oral tradition.

Roman history originated and unfolded from intensive contact with the Greek culture. This contact was necessitated by the expansion of the Roman Empire and extension of Roman diplomacy and army. The constant contact between the Romans and the Greek assimilated and completely induced them to Greek literature and art.

Several aspects of Greek culture originated from Rome and straight from the services of Greek speaking slaves. There existed private tutors in the household of the rich and wealthy class who were hired to teach culture.

Roman history copy a lot from the Greeks but they had their own models that could inspire their historiography. According to the Romans and the Greeks, narratives of history could not be subjected to scholarly inquiry and their understanding lied on ancient literature. The historiography context of the Romans is quite distinct from the Greek one (Anon, n.d.)

The Greek historiography began with oral tradition whereas that of the Romans was based on annals and pontifex maximus which were recorded. The annals maximi contained a lot of information like religious documents, names of consuls and death of priests and all the disasters which happened throughout history.

An example of annals maximi was the tabulae albatae which carried information about the origin of the republic. The founder of the roman historiography was Quintas Fabius Pictor (O’Brien, 2006). The historical inquiry of the Romans followed two main traditions: the annalistic tradition and the monographic tradition.

In the Roman Empire, two languages were employed: Latin and Greek. Several historical writers of both Greek and Roman emerged from the circles which were defined as senatorial or equestrian depending on their political or administrative functions. There was a formulaic basis in republican Rome which formed a basis of historical composition. The previous or past events were narrated in line with annual consulship which was the highest political office in Rome (Mehl, 2006).

Romans considered the chronological principle as fundamental and they could modify and refine depending on thematic considerations. Their narratives were characterized by the annalistic principle and it was measured in annus which was equivalent to a year in Latin.

Traditionally, historiography is closely linked with ethnography and did not only dwell on the Greek history but also history of other people. The Greeks were not united as a state and hence it was difficult to narrate the past of a political state so it was only the history of individual states that was narrated.

In Greek, historians used chronicles which was ascribed to mythical authors and later edited by men. They applied logographi which carried information beyond written record. The Christian historiography eroded the ideals of the past and it was spearheaded by Eusebius of Caesarea. Christianity superseded paganism. The Christian historians applied chronicles as their mode of historical inquiry (O’Brien, 2006).

Roman history can be understood based on the geographical and historical principles. The first form of writing by the Romans was in Latin.

The Greeks assigned Clio which is one of the Muses. According to them, Muses brought joy and were meant to teach and entertain. They valued pressure and instructions. Muse was an artful skill and it consisted of a language and world of sounds. It carried a lot of value and attachment easily attached to the literary works in antiquity.

It is historically noticed that in Roman history there are eight genres and the most conspicuous one was the one represented epic in prose. The drama with Roman history is that just like how one finds in historical narratives, the sequence and serious events have been composed in line with the climax called peripeteia which means the reversal of fortune and catastrophe (Mehl, 2011).

The writings of Greek historians are heavily latent with speeches; this implies that it cannot be delivered in the original form of how it was reported. In this context there existed no handouts aimed at describing the contents.

Also in references to speeches, the historians used their own languages and never used that of the speakers. Speeches played crucial part in the historical work and lack of handout meant that there was no accurate representation of what it was said but what was put down by the historians in form of recorded speeches was considered a fundamental part of historical inquiry.

The speeches were a reflection of the background and an explanation of the characters, motives and the objectives of the core participants. The speeches form a good historical picture and the origins of the speech lied in Homeric epic (Grant, 1995).

The Jews and Christian historiographers utilized providential narratives starting with history of creation. These narratives mattered because they hinted at something important in the future and demonstrated connectedness. Following the history of the French revolution and colonization in Africa and Asia, the Romans and the European historians published narratives which resituated the place of Europe in world history. The Greek cultures, religion and politics were presented and preserved in the form of narratives.

Historical inquiry of the Greek was characterized by several dynamics; intellectual revolution has opened up a new wave of energy into the field of historical inquiry. In the ancient Greece, historical writings were in the form of traditional poems. People wrote about the problems that afflict human existence in poem form before the art of recording was realized.

Poetry treated an epic theme and it was also used to recount the deeds of heroes. The use of poetry was criticized by Thucydides when he argued that poetry was not perfect medium that can be used to transmit reality since it was bound to exaggerate the history (Breisach, 2007).

Homeric epics were considered by the Greeks as fascinating and useful tool of history. It was particularly aimed at educating the youth. The artistic creations of the epic influenced historical inquiry in Greek. The artistic impressions of the gods, languages and heroes created an impression and appreciation of the past. In the context of speech and poems, they enhanced reverence to the listeners and it created memories and records of the past and acted as the connections to the past (Breisach, 2007).

The Greek, Roman and Christian historiography utilized several modes of historical inquiry which included narratives, chronicles, poems and speeches. Though they varied based on their originators and how history was preserved, they shared the above tools of historical inquiry.

Christian history was preceded by the period of intellectual revolution and it marked the beginning of better approaches to historiography. Poetry and speeches were considered instrumental, the bards recited about past tales through rhythmic speech which followed strict patterns.

Anon. (n.d.). Ancient Literature and Roman Historiography. Web.

Breisach, E. (2007). Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern (3rd Ed.). Chicago: University Of Chicago Press.

Grant, M. (1995). The Greek and roman historians . New York, NY: Routledge.

Mehl, A. (2011). Roman Historiography: An Introduction to its Basic Aspects and Development (1 st ed). New York, NY: Blackwell publishing limited.

O’Brien, P. (2006). Historiographical traditions and modern imperatives for the restoration of global history. Journal of Global History vol. 1, pp 3–39 . Web.

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IvyPanda. (2023, October 31). Early Greek, Roman, and Christian Historiography. https://ivypanda.com/essays/early-greek-roman-and-christian-historiography/

"Early Greek, Roman, and Christian Historiography." IvyPanda , 31 Oct. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/early-greek-roman-and-christian-historiography/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Early Greek, Roman, and Christian Historiography'. 31 October.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Early Greek, Roman, and Christian Historiography." October 31, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/early-greek-roman-and-christian-historiography/.

1. IvyPanda . "Early Greek, Roman, and Christian Historiography." October 31, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/early-greek-roman-and-christian-historiography/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Early Greek, Roman, and Christian Historiography." October 31, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/early-greek-roman-and-christian-historiography/.

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Greco-Roman Studies in a Digital Age

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Gregory Crane; Greco-Roman Studies in a Digital Age. Daedalus 2016; 145 (2): 127–133. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/DAED_a_00383

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What is the audience for the work that we professional researchers conduct on Greco-Roman culture? If the public outside academia does not have access to up-to-date data about the Greco-Roman world, whose problem is it? Frequently heard remarks, observed practices, and published survey results indicate most of us still assume that only specialists and revenue-generating students really matter. If we specialists do not believe that we have a primary responsibility to open up the field as is now possible in this digital age, then I am not sure why we should expect support from anyone other than specialists or the students who enroll in our classes. If we do believe that we have an obligation to open up the field, then that has fundamental implications for our daily activities, for our operational theory justifying the existence of our positions, and for the hermeneutics (following a term that is still popular in Germany) that we construct about who can know what.

Many traditional humanists have objected–quite correctly–that digital humanists focus too much of their attention on questions of how we should exploit new forms of technology in our teaching and research and not enough on questions of why. Of course, in many cases, such criticisms underestimate the immense challenges that humanists face as they attempt to implement universally desired capacities in a digital space that require far more expertise than amateur digital humanists can usually acquire. (The production of annotations that we can manage across different editions of a text and over many years is one such deceptively simple but essential task.) Of course, even if there is much that requires the attention of us digital humanists (in which we can justifiably focus upon the question of how ), the most important questions always return to our motivations for using technology in the first place.

The digital question now before all academics is the extent to which the shift from print to a digital space changes how our particular fields can contribute to society as a whole. From a Darwinian perspective, we need to reflect upon the degree to which new forms of technology may alter the social contract upon which our departments, our positions, our place in the curriculum, and our research funding (such as it is) depend. When we ask why we might use new methods (digital or otherwise), the first question is not how these methods can improve specialist-on-specialist discourse or even the experiences of our tuition paying students, but why our particular discipline should exist at all. We cannot insist upon theorizing the humanities in a digital age or demand a new hermeneutics for them unless we explicitly consider as well how our new theorizing and hermeneutics affect the reasons why professional academics should exist.

Figures published in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Humanities Indicators demonstrate the degree to which professional academics explicitly exclude from serious consideration the hard question of how our fields contribute to the intellectual life of society as a whole. That exclusion stands out when we observe the factors that faculty consider important for tenure: the most important single judgment to which faculty are subject. Even the initial hire to a tenure-track line is subordinate to the subsequent tenure decision, and most departments are careful only to hire those candidates who have shown that they will (or at least can) meet the requirements for tenure. 1

The Academy's data show predictable and remarkably complementary perspectives about the importance of teaching and research at both teaching- and research-oriented institutions: at primarily undergraduate institutions, roughly 90 percent of the respondents report that good teaching is essential for tenure, as opposed to 50 percent who cite strong research as essential; at research institutions, the figures are reversed, with roughly 90 percent citing strong research and 50 percent citing strong teaching as essential. But at both sorts of institution, faculty agree on one factor for tenure: only 1 percent of those surveyed consider “public humanities (making the humanities and/or humanities scholarship accessible to the general public)” essential for tenure. By contrast, in both cases, 70 percent of respondents asserted that making the humanities accessible to a general public was either unimportant or marginally important for tenure. About 30 percent stated that such work was important or very important, but the final figure shows (in my view) the true value of such work: 99 percent of those polled agreed that making the humanities and/or humanities scholarship accessible to the general public was not an essential part of a tenure dossier. And given the pressure on junior faculty to win tenure, they understandably can only afford to focus on those essential parts of their work.

For Greco-Roman studies (as well as English and History, the two biggest humanities majors), the figures were even more striking; the respondents were unanimous: 0 percent considered it essential that humanists demonstrate an ability to explain the humanities or humanities research to a wider audience. 2 Anyone who has spent time as a faculty member, especially a faculty member in the argumentative humanities, will recognize how hard it is to get any group of professors to agree on anything (other than, perhaps, the belief that they should be paid more, given more research support, enjoy more general respect, and teach less). When 100 percent of the faculty from three major humanities fields independently agree that a mission is not essential, we have an extraordinarily telling piece of data.

By contrast, the stem disciplines (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) maintain a steady marketing campaign to justify the support they receive on the basis of the economic, medical, and other tangible goods that they deliver to society as a whole. 3 Scientists are challenged to reflect on the general importance of what they do: reviewers for the National Science Foundation ( nsf ) are formally charged to evaluate every proposal on the basis of two criteria: “intellectual merit” and “broader impacts.” 4

Scholars of Greco-Roman antiquity are not producing new drugs; we are not pioneering ways of better harnessing solar energy, or creating new forms of mathematics that may, in the future, revolutionize some branch of scientific inquiry. Instead, we advance the intellectual life of society, and we can do that only if we make the public humanities a central focus of our work. If there are potential dangers in popularization, the humanities suffer even more damage from overspecialization and inbred scholasticism.

Fields like Greco-Roman studies recognize only three sources of input: specialists in the same university (the need for service), specialists in the same field (the need for research), and students (the group that ultimately pays for most humanities-faculty salaries). The need to attract students is the one saving force that subjects those of us who teach Greco-Roman culture to the judgments of nonprofessionals and challenges us to view the field itself and its purposes from at least one different–and arguably broader–perspective. In this, we enjoy in the United States an odd advantage over colleagues in a country like Germany. In Germany, ancient historians and Greek and Latin philologists teach a steady stream of prospective primary and secondary school teachers who must have a background in ancient history to teach European history, or to join the ranks of the nine thousand Latin teachers needed to teach the seven hundred thousand–plus students of Latin in Germany. That American professors of Greco-Roman studies cannot rely upon a comparably steady stream of majors makes their life anxious, but also challenges them.

Although the number of students enrolled in foreign language courses increased from 1 million in 1968 to 1.6 million in 2009 and the relative percentage of Greek and Latin students declined in this period, the number of students in Greek and Latin had, at least in absolute terms, remained essentially the same (there was a disturbing 20 percent dip from 2009 to the figures released for 2013, but this may reflect a short-term anxiety about more transparently practical measures after the financial crisis). 5 Also, although precise figures are not available, the big classics Ph.D. programs seem to be basically as large as they were in 1985–perhaps up or down by one faculty position, but essentially the same. In Germany, by contrast, we can point to fifty-one chairs of Greek, Latin, ancient history, and Greco-Roman archaeology listed as gestrichen (cut) in the same time period. 6 It may well be that the lack of a guaranteed clientele has benefited the field in the United States by pushing us to address the needs of a wider and mobile prospective student base rather than serving a captive audience.

But the focus on serving these revenue-generating students has left not only Greco-Roman studies but the humanities as a whole exposed. The National Endowment for the Humanities ( neh ), for example, provides almost three times as much support to its federal/state partnerships for public humanities ($42.5 million out of a total budget of $146 million in 2015) as it does to its traditional research programs ($14.5 million, or about 10 percent of the overall budget). 7 Even if we include investments in preservation and access ($15.4 million) and in digital humanities ($4.4 million), the overall funding for research remains relatively modest and accounts for less than one-quarter (23.5 percent) of the 2015 neh budget. And even that modest support attracts sometimes virulent criticism from members of Congress and from political candidates. Unfortunately, insofar as professional humanists care only about other specialists and revenue-generating students, they undermine their claim to support from public funding. If we are subject to attack, we have, for the most part, brought it on ourselves. On the other hand, if we can manage to shift our focus and assert, seriously and tangibly, a commitment to advancing the contributions of the humanities and of humanities research to society as a whole, we have a chance of reestablishing, over time, the social contract by which various aspects of the humanities justify their existence.

So, what does this mean in practical terms for Greco-Roman studies? We can take several steps now, and for some of these, digital technology has a crucial role to play. First, if we are to advance the intellectual life of society as a whole as effectively as possible, we need to shift not only to open access (resources available to the public free of restriction or charge) but to open data (source data available to the public for their own use and manipulation). An analysis of 780 websites for German and U.S. faculty in Greco-Roman studies revealed that perhaps fifteen of these researchers were actively contributing to the fundamental task of creating open resources and building the sort of open infrastructure needed for study of Greco-Roman culture in a digital age. A handful of faculty, for example, have made an effort to make their work available under an open-access license, and a handful of publications (such as the now venerable Bryn Mawr Classical Review ) do make their content freely available. But making the thousands of publications cited on these websites available under an open-access license would be a necessary, though by no means sufficient, condition for reaching beyond this closed academic network.

Second, we need a new theoretical foundation for Greco-Roman studies in a digital age, one that takes into consideration our new ability to advance the intellectual life of society as a whole. When we speak of advancing human understanding, we may imagine an idealized expert who has internalized all the primary and secondary literature and who has gained a new perspective (notice that I carefully avoid positivistic references to knowledge). Such an idealized expert provides, however, only one perspective. If there is no plausible pathway from the impact of that professional to anyone beyond other specialists, then I am not sure how strongly we can argue for the value of that new perspective. We need a theoretical foundation that accounts for what happens in the brains of many different people, starting with students but extending to nonspecialists as well, including not only members of the general public but also professors in other disciplines. Such a theoretical foundation will help us prioritize the unbounded range of research topics that we can pursue. If we assume that the most important case is the idealized, all-knowing expert, we will prioritize in one way; if, by contrast, we primarily wish to advance understanding beyond specialist circles and see idealized expert knowledge as a means to this larger end, then we will have very different priorities.

Third, we need to ponder what information we wish to represent, given the very different capabilities of born-digital publications. For me, the classic case is the digital edition: I think we should as a matter of course encode morpho-syntactic interpretations, geospatial and social networking data, our interpretations of where one text references another, and explicit alignments–on the word and phrase level–between our source texts and translations into multiple languages. What we choose to encode, of course, depends upon both our research objectives and the audiences we wish to reach. But one fundamental change is clear. In print culture, there was pressure to distinguish scholarly editions, with elaborate textual notes aimed at professional scholars, from bilingual editions, with (for the most part) much briefer textual notes, but with facing translations into English, French, German, Italian, or some other modern language. In a digital space, we can personalize the data that we present to different audiences, and include many more kinds of data, including much more expressively encoded textual notes and translations into multiple languages.

Fourth, there is the challenge of “big data,” which in this case is largely textual data. This challenge appears not only as we begin to grapple with the billions of words of Greek and Latin already available in the millions of digitized documents now available, but also as we begin to work with proliferating categories of automatically generated annotations (including, as mentioned above, linguistic annotations, geospatial and social networking data, text reuse detection, general optical character recognition [ ocr ], and topic modeling). We have to understand how to work with error rates. We need to integrate distant and close reading and we need to understand how to sample our data and to consider how certain we can be of our conclusions. We need to think algorithmically and we need to understand the implications of text mining and visualization for the ways in which we conceptualize our sources; these new media rewire our brains and we need to study that as best we can.

Fifth, we need to open up the field and to engage citizen scholars (or citizen scientists as they are called in Germany, where Greco-Roman studies and physics are both Wissenschaft ). This is necessary in part because we just have too much data for a handful of advanced researchers and professional scholars to process. But we also need to do this because opening up the field transforms the contributions that Greco-Roman studies can make to society: insofar as our fellow citizens can join us, not just as anonymous members of a crowd, but as individuals who can develop increasingly sophisticated skills as they contribute over time, we thus advance the intellectual life of society beyond academia and attack the intellectual scholasticism that is documented in our commercial publications and in the data collected by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Sixth, we cannot in a globalized world continue to use the term classics as synonymous with ancient Greek and Latin language and literature or classical civilization as coextensive with Greco-Roman culture. I still find it hard to believe that my professional association in the United States recently changed its name from the American Philological Association to the “Society for Classical Studies,” formally asserting in the early twenty-first century that professors of Greco-Roman culture represented classical languages and literatures as a whole. The department from which I received both of my academic degrees still defines itself as the “Department of the Classics” (italics mine), with the definite article driving home the point that other classical languages including classical Sanskrit, classical Chinese, classical Arabic, and classical Persian are free to find space elsewhere in the university, but they are not the classics. I do not know anyone, however conservative, in our profession who would actually advance such a position. But somehow we have simply accepted past usage (just as we continue to publish articles and monographs in the same basic formats, through the same commercial channels, and for the same specialist audience). The equation of classics with Greek and Latin comes from a very problematic tradition of European hegemonic thought, and emerges from shared assumptions of European privilege that are neither acceptable nor realistic in a world where nations such as China and India are global powers.

And so, the final step we can take is to evolve from a regional discipline, conducted almost entirely in a handful of European languages and focused on Greco-Roman culture, to one that participates in a global network of historical languages and cultures, many of which are now considered classical (as of 2014, India had six official classical languages: Tamil, Sanskrit, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, and Odia, 8 with some arguing that Pali should be included as a distinct language in this group). 9 To do this, we need to redesign our departments, forming strategic partnerships with colleagues in our universities (such as with professors of Sanskrit or classical Arabic, if we are lucky enough to have them), and making creative use of new communications technologies to work with colleagues not only in other universities but in universities beyond Europe and North America. We need students in Tehran and Texas reading classical Greek and classical Persian together, establishing in the process dialogues across boundaries of space, languages, and culture. Bilingual editions that face Greek and Latin texts with translations into English (Loebs), French (Budés), German (the Tusculum editions), or Latin (older series like the Patrologia Graeca in France or the Bipontine Editions in what is now Germany) are not enough. We need editions that can support readers of non-Western languages like Mandarin and Arabic, while also offering much better support for Spanish and Portuguese readers. We need serious research into the limits of what ideas we can represent in formats that can be quickly translated across languages and customized for different cultural perspectives. Here, the growing coverage of non-English versions of Wikipedia provides a better model than any of the rigid workflows from conventional Western academia. 10

Those of us who have the privilege to earn a living as students of the Greco-Roman world have a decision before us about the field we wish to build. We can continue producing publications to which only other specialists have intellectual or (because we hide them behind paywalls) practical access, doing what we need to attract and hold revenue-generating students, and ignoring (if not disdaining) members of society as a whole. We can continue writing and teaching in much the same way we always have, exploiting new digital methods as ancillary tools by which we compose more traditional articles and books, rather than asking ourselves what the purpose of our research and teaching should be and then exploring new forms of intellectual activity and production. We can even continue to conflate the idea of classical with Greco-Roman and, in so doing, define ourselves as, at best, a parochial community. Deviating from any of these paths will be difficult: it entails redefining our field and thus inevitably challenges established structures of authority and institutional power. But the potential benefits are immense, and there will be opportunities for anyone in the field, at whatever level of seniority, to contribute to and flourish within the world we collectively fashion.

Author's Note: Some of the ideas expressed in this essay were first disseminated in 2015 as blog posts; see Gregory Crane, “Essays on Digital Classics and Digital Humanities,” Perseus Digital Library Updates, http://sites.tufts.edu/perseusupdates/2015/07/28/essays-on-digital-classics-and-digital-humanities/ . I would like to express my thanks for the comments I received at that time, as well as for the editorial suggestions I received in submitting this piece to Dædalus.

Humanities Indicators, 2012–13 Humanities Departmental Survey (HDS-2) (Cambridge, Mass.: American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 2014), http://www.humanitiesindicators.org/content/indicatordoc.aspx?i=457 ; and Susan White, Raymond Chu, and Roman Czujko, The 2012–13 Survey of Humanities Departments at Four-Year Institutions (College Park, Md.: Statistical Research Center, American Institute of Physics, 2014; study conducted for the American Academy of Arts & Sciences’ Humanities Indicators Project), “Table 7: Considerations in Tenure Decision Made by Humanities Departments (All Disciplines Combined), by Institutional Type, Fall 2012,” 14, www.humanitiesindicators.org/binaries/pdf/HDS2_final.pdf .

Humanities Indicators, 2012–13 Humanities Departmental Survey , 65 (English), 97 (history), and 185 (classical studies).

See, for example, Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, and National Academy of Engineering, Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future (Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press, 2007); and American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Restoring the Foundation: The Vital Role of Research in Preserving the American Dream (Cambridge, Mass.: American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 2014).

National Science Foundation, “Merit Review Facts,” http://www.nsf.gov/bfa/dias/policy/merit_review/facts.jsp#1 .

David Goldberg, Dennis Looney, and Natalia Lusin, Enrollments in Languages Other Than English in United States Institutions of Higher Education, Fall 2013 (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2015), 19 for the overall rates, 23 for Latin, 24 for Greek, https://www.mla.org/content/download/31180/1452509/2013_enrollment_survey.pdf .

See the Arbeitsstelle Kleine Fächer (Johannes Gutenberg–Universität Mainz), www.kleinefaecher.de .

National Endowment for the Humanities, Appropriations Request for Fiscal Year 2016 (Washington, D.C.: National Endowment for the Humanities, 2015), 9, http://www.neh.gov/files/neh_request_fy2016.pdf . In fiscal year 2015, out of a total budget of $146,021,000, $14,784,000 went to research programs, but $42,528,000 went to the federal/state partnership, “the liaison between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the nonprofit network of 56 state and jurisdictional humanities councils.”

“Languages of India–Classical Languages,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_India#Classical (accessed January 22, 2016); for the press release on Odia, the most recent language declared classical, see the Press Information Bureau of the Government of India, “Classical Status to Odiya Language,” August 14, 2013, http://pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid=98244 .

Binay Singh, “Removal of Pali as upsc Subject Draws Criticism,” The Times of India , May 5, 2013, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/varanasi/Removal-of-Pali-as-UPSC-subject-draws-criticism/articleshow/19890980.cms .

My colleagues at Tufts led the way for me. Steve Hirsch has taught ancient China and the Greco-Roman world for years. Anne Mahoney has relentlessly maintained a curriculum in Sanskrit–an array of courses that will finally appear as formal offerings in our course catalog. We were able to bring Maxim Romanov, an expert in classical Arabic, and, thanks to Vickie Sullivan, Riccardo Strobino, an expert on the intimate relationship between Greco-Roman and Islamic Cultures and the debt that the West still owes to its Islamic brethren, into our department of classics. If we could do more, we would. At Tufts, I am a professor of classics and work in a department of classics, and I say so now with assurance and invitation: my colleagues have been true leaders in developing a field that we can truly call classics or classical studies.

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6 The Greco-Roman tradition

Published: March 2022
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The Greco-Roman grammatical tradition crystallized much of the linguistic metalanguage used today, either as the Greek forms or as Latin calques. Grammar came to account for any instance of language, spoken or written, and evolved from being a practical to a scientific discipline (Gk. τέχνη tékhnē , Lat. ars ), with its own set of rules. Crucial observations and analytical tools in the organization of sounds—allophony, natural classes, accentuation, syllable structure and weight, phonological processes, morphophonological alternation, and abstract underlying bases—can be counted among the contributions of the ancient Western grammarians, and phonological change was noted through citing older forms or censuring newer ones. The tradition subsequently formed the basis of medieval and later linguistics in Europe and further east, and many of its themes have persisted throughout linguistic history.

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IMAGES

What is and How to Write a Historiographical Essay
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Greco-Roman Historiography
"Greco-Roman Historiography" published on by null. ... Hornblower 1994 offers a collection of essays on Greek historiography while Mehl 2011 covers the topic for the Romans. Momigliano 1977 and Walbank 1985 provide collections of articles from two of the leading scholars of ancient historiography in the 20th century.
Roman Historiography
This essay will focus on Roman historiography in terms of national histories and religion, as both held importance in Roman history. National Histories Polybius, a Greek and Roman Historian who wrote about how Rome came to great power. The Romans are well-known for their military expeditions whcih would expand their empire's borders, wealth ...
A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography
This two-volume Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography reflects the new directions and interpretations that have arisen in the field of ancient historiography in the past few decades. Comprises a series of cutting edge articles written by recognised scholars Presents broad, chronological treatments of important issues in the writing of history and antiquity These are complemented by ...
(PDF) In What respect does Greco-Roman Historiography inspire Modern
The Greco-Roman historiography had inspire the modern history to greater extent in the sense that many techniques which including referencing sources ,research ,interviews , multi disciplinary use of sources ,local history to universal history and to be able to transfer war from epic into history. ... Therefore this essay will trace the nexus ...
The Limits of Historiography: Genre and Narrative in Ancient Historical
John Marincola's massive contribution, 'Genre, Convention, and Innovation in Greco-Roman Historiography', is an extremely important essay that should be consulted by all who study Classical historiography. Marincola's study is first a probing criticism of Jacoby's organizing principles for his FGrHist.
Historiography
Historiography - Roman, Sources, Writing: The Romans inherited Greek historiography as they inherited other elements of Greek culture, aware of its prestige and emulating it in some ways but inevitably giving it the imprint of their quite different temperament. Fittingly, it was a Greek writing in Greek, Polybius (c. 200-c. 118 bce), who first offered key insights into the development of the ...
Roman historiography
Still, historiography was not simply a masked version of the memoir. It aspired to tell the story of the Roman state, not just of an individual's experiences. At first this usually involved an outline of Rome's history from its beginnings, with special emphasis on the inspiring foundation stories. The result was an hourglass structure, with ...
Greek and Roman Historiography. Oxford Readings in Classical Studies
Oxford Readings in Classical Studies - Bryn Mawr Classical Review. BMCR 2012.03.24. Greek and Roman Historiography. Oxford Readings in Classical Studies. John Marincola , Greek and Roman Historiography. Oxford Readings in Classical Studies . Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. x, 498. ISBN 9780199233502 . $65.00 (pb).
A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography (2 vols.). Blackwell
Table of Contents. A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography is the latest entry in Blackwell's Companions to the Ancient World series. According to the publisher, the series "provides sophisticated and authoritative overviews of periods of ancient history, genres of classical literature, and the most important themes in ancient culture," with essays "designed for an international ...
Transitions to Empire: Essays in Greco-Roman History 360-146 B.C. in
Transitions to Empire: Essays in Greco-Roman History 360-146 B.C. in honor of E. Badian. Norman Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996. Norman Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996. Powered by Pure , Scopus & Elsevier Fingerprint Engine™
Roman historiography
Roman historiography stretches back to at least the 3rd century BC and was indebted to earlier Greek historiography.The Romans relied on previous models in the Greek tradition such as the works of Herodotus (c. 484 - 425 BC) and Thucydides (c. 460 - c. 395 BC). Roman historiographical forms are usually different from their Greek counterparts, however, and often emphasize Roman concerns.
PDF On the Development of Greek Historiography and The Plan for A New
Roman Historical Writers (01*5). 6. Felix Jacoby, On the Development of Greek Historiography and the Plan for a New Collection of the Fragments of the Greek Historians. Translated by Mortimer Chambers and Stefan Schorn (01*5).
20
The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought - May 2000. ... un' intellettuale greco nell' impero romano (Messina). Desideri, P ... and Barnes, J. edd. (1989) Philosophia Togata: Essays on Philosophy and Roman Society (Oxford). Grziwotz, H. (1986) Der modeme Verfassungsbegriff und die römische Verfassung in der deutschen ...
The Rediscovery of Classical Antiquity
The remains of Greco-Roman antiquity—coins, gems, sculpture, buildings, and the classics of Greek and Latin literature—fascinated the thinking men and women of the Italian Renaissance. The arts and the humanities, they reasoned, had declined during the "middle ages" that stretched between the end of antiquity and their own time, but by emulating the exemplary works of the ancients ...
Transitions to empire : essays in Greco-Roman history, 360-146 B.C. in
During the period 360-146 B.C., the Greco-Roman world underwent the transition from independent city states and small regional powers to the large and potent empires of the Hellenistic age. The essays in this volume consider various aspects of this central political transformation.
Classics in Progress: Essays on Ancient Greece and Rome
The study of Greco-Roman civilisation is as exciting and innovative today as it has ever been. This intriguing collection by contemporary classicists ... Classics in Progress: Essays on Ancient Greece and Rome (London, 2006; online edn, British Academy Scholarship Online, ... Expand 12 Roman history and the ideological vacuum. View chapter ...
Transitions to empire : essays in Greco-Roman history, 360-146 B.C. in
Transitions to empire : essays in Greco-Roman history, 360-146 B.C. in honor of E. Badian. Responsibility edited by Robert W. Wallace and Edward M. Harris. Imprint ... Rome > History > Republic, 510-30 B.C. Bibliographic information. Publication date 1996 ISBN 0806128631 (alk. paper) 9780806128634 (alk. paper)
9.8: Greco-Roman Culture
Figure 9.8.1 9.8. 1: The "Patrician Torlonia," a bust of an unknown Roman politician from sometime in the first century BCE. Along with philosophy and architecture, the most important Greek import to arrive on Roman shores was rhetoric: the mastery of words and language in order to persuade people and win arguments.
Early Greek, Roman, and Christian Historiography
Conclusion. The Greek, Roman and Christian historiography utilized several modes of historical inquiry which included narratives, chronicles, poems and speeches. Though they varied based on their originators and how history was preserved, they shared the above tools of historical inquiry.
Greco-Roman Studies in a Digital Age
An analysis of 780 websites for German and U.S. faculty in Greco-Roman studies revealed that perhaps fifteen of these researchers were actively contributing to the fundamental task of creating open resources and building the sort of open infrastructure needed for study of Greco-Roman culture in a digital age. A handful of faculty, for example ...
Historiography
Historiography - Greek, Ancient, Herodotus: Greek historiography originated in the activities of a group of writers whom the Greeks called logographoi ("logographers"). Logography was the prose compilation of oral traditions relating to the origins of towns, peoples, and places. It combined geographical with cultural information and might be seen as an early form of cultural anthropology.
The Greco-Roman tradition
The most important legacy of the Greco-Roman tradition is the appreciation of language science as an independent discipline requiring its own terminology, principles, and techniques, even if those undertaking it might be 'philosophers, logicians, rhetoricians, poets, historians, philologists, and literary critics, as well as bona fide grammarians' (Taylor 1995a: 84).
Religions
Typically, scholars view/read the enigmatic apostle Paul monolithically—that is, through either a Greco-Roman or Jewish socio-cultural lens. The traditional Lutheran (Greco-Roman/Western) lens was criticized in the mid-/late-twentieth century by scholars highlighting Paul's Jewishness—resulting in the so-called "New Perspective on Paul" and "Paul within Judaism" movements. This ...

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Greco-Roman Historiography by Eric M. Orlin LAST REVIEWED: 26 January 2023 LAST MODIFIED: 11 January 2018 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195393361-0254

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Terracotta statuette of Nike, the personification of victory

Marble statue of a woman

Marble funerary statues of a maiden and a little girl

Terracotta bowl

Ten marble fragments of the Great Eleusinian Relief

Marble relief with a dancing maenad

Marble statue of Eirene (the personification of peace)

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Marble statue of a togatus (man wearing a toga)

Rosso antico torso of a centaur

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Marble statue of Herakles seated on a rock

Intaglio with Saint Theodore Teron Slaying a Many-Headed Dragon

Iphicles Saved from a Serpent by his Brother Hercules

The Birth of the Virgin

Bacchanal with a Wine Vat

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

Adam and Eve

The Apollo Belvedere from the Vatican his left hand resting on the tree trunk around which coils a python

Ornament Panel

Composite of Corinthian and Ionic, from "Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae"

The Farnese Hercules, from "Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae"

The Colosseum, from "Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae"

Villa Almerico (Villa Rotunda), from I quattro libri dell'architettura di Andrea Palladio (Book 2, page 19)

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