A Historical Commentary On Diodorus Siculus Book 15

For long stretches of Greek history in the classical period, Diodorus Siculus provides the only surviving continuous narrative of events. This study, the fullest ever undertaken of Diodorus, examines his aims, sources, and methods in detail. The findings of this investigation are then applied in commenting on Book 15, which deals with the crucial years between the King's Peace, concluded in 387/6 BC, and the aftermath of the battle of Mantinea fought in 362 BC.

Preliminary material /ANNE BURTON -- THE SOURCES FOR BOOK I /ANNE BURTON -- COMMENTARY /ANNE BURTON -- INDEX /ANNE BURTON.

2007 — A Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Book 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.

Beyond the Battlefields explores the relationship between warfare and society in the Graeco-Roman world through the various lenses of history, art, literature and archaeology. The study of ancient warfare often evokes images of crusty old scholars pouring over battle tactics and strategy. This book, a collection of thirteen essays by young scholars, examines the political, social, economic and artistic affects of war in ancient society in Greece and Rome, from Homeric times to the sixth century AD. Essays focus on a wide range of topics from espionage and ancient spin doctors to fantasies of peace in the Iliad and triumphal plants. Each article in this book presents the next scholarly generation’s new and dynamic approach to ancient warfare and seeks to demonstrate how much there is still to learn and understand about ancient society and warfare if we venture beyond the battlefields. “This volume represents a new wave of interest in warfare as a far more than merely military phenomenon.” Professors Brian Campbell and Hans Van Wees, excerpt from the Introduction.

The Encyclopedia of Ancient Natural Scientists is the first comprehensive English language work to provide a survey of all ancient natural science, from its beginnings through the end of Late Antiquity. A team of over 100 of the world’s experts in the field have compiled this Encyclopedia, including entries which are not mentioned in any other reference work – resulting in a unique and hugely ambitious resource which will prove indispensable for anyone seeking the details of the history of ancient science. Additional features include a Glossary, Gazetteer, and Time-Line. The Glossary explains many Greek (or Latin) terms difficult to translate, whilst the Gazetteer describes the many locales from which scientists came. The Time-Line shows the rapid rise in the practice of science in the 5th century BCE and rapid decline after Hadrian, due to the centralization of Roman power, with consequent loss of a context within which science could flourish.