Winner, A Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Book, 2007 Sicilian historian Diodorus Siculus (ca. 100-30 BCE) is our only surviving source for a continuous narrative of Greek history from Xerxes' invasion to the Wars of the Successors following the death of Alexander the Great. Yet this important historian has been consistently denigrated as a mere copyist who slavishly reproduced the works of earlier historians without understanding what he was writing. By contrast, in this iconoclastic work Peter Green builds a convincing case for Diodorus' merits as a historian. Through a fresh English translation of a key portion of his multi-volume history (the so-called Bibliotheke, or Library ) and a commentary and notes that refute earlier assessments of Diodorus, Green offers a fairer, better balanced estimate of this much-maligned historian. The portion of Diodorus' history translated here covers the period 480-431 BCE, from the Persian invasion of Greece to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. This half-century, known as the Pentekontaetia, was the Golden Age of Periclean Athens, a time of unprecedented achievement in drama, architecture, philosophy, historiography, and the visual arts. Green's accompanying notes and commentary revisit longstanding debates about historical inconsistencies in Diodorus' work and offer thought-provoking new interpretations and conclusions. In his masterful introductory essay, Green demolishes the traditional view of Diodorus and argues for a thorough critical reappraisal of this synthesizing historian, who attempted nothing less than a universal history that begins with the gods of mythology and continues down to the eve of Julius Caesar's Gallic campaigns.
Product Identifiers
Publisher
University of Texas Press
ISBN-13
9780292712775
eBay Product ID (ePID)
94775390
Product Key Features
Author
Not Available
Publication Name
Diodorus Siculus, Books 11-12.37.1: Greek History, 480-431 BC-The Alternative Version
Format
Paperback
Language
English
Subject
History
Publication Year
2006
Type
Textbook
Number of Pages
336 Pages
Dimensions
Item Height
229mm
Item Width
152mm
Item Weight
572g
Additional Product Features
Country/Region of Manufacture
United States
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