Ancient Historiography On War And Empire
by Timothy Howe /
2016 / English / PDF
3.3 MB Download
In the ancient Greek-speaking world, writing about the past meant
balancing the reporting of facts with shaping and guiding the
political interests and behaviours of the present. Ancient
Historiography on War and Empire shows the ways in which the
literary genre of writing history developed to guide empires
through their wars. Taking key events from the Achaemenid Persian,
Athenian, Macedonian and Roman ‘empires’, the 17 essays collected
here analyse the way events and the accounts of those events
interact. Subjects include: how Greek historians assign
nearly divine honours to the Persian King; the role of the tomb
cult of Cyrus the Founder in historical narratives of conquest and
empire from Herodotus to the Alexander historians; warfare and
financial innovation in the age of Philip II and his son, Alexander
the Great; the murders of Philip II, his last and seventh wife
Kleopatra, and her guardian, Attalos; Alexander the Great’s combat
use of eagle symbolism and divination; Plutarch’s juxtaposition of
character in the Alexander-Caesar pairing as a commentary on
political legitimacy and military prowess, and Roman Imperial
historians using historical examples of good and bad rule to make
meaningful challenges to current Roman authority. In some cases,
the balance shifts more towards the ‘literary’ and in others more
towards the ‘historical’, but what all of the essays have in common
is both a critical attention to the genre and context of
history-writing in the ancient world and its focus on war and
empire.
In the ancient Greek-speaking world, writing about the past meant
balancing the reporting of facts with shaping and guiding the
political interests and behaviours of the present. Ancient
Historiography on War and Empire shows the ways in which the
literary genre of writing history developed to guide empires
through their wars. Taking key events from the Achaemenid Persian,
Athenian, Macedonian and Roman ‘empires’, the 17 essays collected
here analyse the way events and the accounts of those events
interact. Subjects include: how Greek historians assign
nearly divine honours to the Persian King; the role of the tomb
cult of Cyrus the Founder in historical narratives of conquest and
empire from Herodotus to the Alexander historians; warfare and
financial innovation in the age of Philip II and his son, Alexander
the Great; the murders of Philip II, his last and seventh wife
Kleopatra, and her guardian, Attalos; Alexander the Great’s combat
use of eagle symbolism and divination; Plutarch’s juxtaposition of
character in the Alexander-Caesar pairing as a commentary on
political legitimacy and military prowess, and Roman Imperial
historians using historical examples of good and bad rule to make
meaningful challenges to current Roman authority. In some cases,
the balance shifts more towards the ‘literary’ and in others more
towards the ‘historical’, but what all of the essays have in common
is both a critical attention to the genre and context of
history-writing in the ancient world and its focus on war and
empire.