Literary Texts and the Roman Historian

by David Potter

Overview

Literary Texts and the Roman Historian looks at literary texts from the Roman Empire which depict actual events. It examines the ways in which these texts were created, disseminated and read.
Beside covering the major Roman historical authors such as Livy and Tacitus, he also considers the contributions of authors in other genres like:
* Cicero
* Lucian
* Aulus Gellius.
Literary Texts and the Roman Historian provides an accessible and concise introduction to the complexities of Roman historiography.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781134962327
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/22/2005
Series:	Approaching the Ancient World
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	232
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

David S. Potter is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Greek and Latin at the University of Michigan. he is the author of prophecy and History in the Crisis of the Roman Empire (1990) and Prophets and Emperors: Human and Divine Authority from Augustus to Theodosius (1993)

Table of Contents

Definitions: Historia as Enquiry, Historia as Story, Truth and History, Some Rules, Texts: Sorting Things Out, Participant Evidence, Publication and Literary Fashion, Illustrative Evidence, Narrative, Reconstructing Fragmentary Authors, Scholarship: Standards of Research, Historians and Records, Quellenforschung, Near Eastern Records of the Past and the Roman Imagination, Grammarians and Historians, The Physical Process, Conclusion, Presentation: The Problem, Leopold Ranke, Objectivism and relativism, Fact and Presentation: Lucien and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Fact and Presentation: Cicero, Other Forms of Presentation, Versimilitude, Conclusion, Epilogue: The Discourse of Dominance, Appendix: Classical Authors Discussed in the Text, Bibliography.

Editorial Reviews

'This is a very lucid and accessible guide to the complicated field of historiography, from which teachers and students alike will benefit.' - JACT Review

'An extremely learned, and very personal, excursion through the byways of ancient ... historiography ...This is a book that is more difficult, and more important, than it appears at first glance, but its rewards are certainly worth the effort.' - Pheonix

From the Publisher