The Leading eBooks Store Online

for your Apple or Android device, Nook, Kobo, PC, Mac, Sony Reader...

New to eBooks.com?

Learn more

Roman Historians

Roman Historians
Add to cart
US$ 37.95 (+ tax)
The Romans' devotion to their past pervades almost every aspect of their culture: art, poetry, law and religion. But the clearest image of how the Romans wished to interpret their past, and thus define themselves as a people, can be found in their historical writings. It is in these works that we find momentous events in the history of the people: Romulus' foundation of Rome; the madness of Caligula; Nero's burning of Rome; and the Civil War of 69 AD.
The Romans did not record these events dispassionately, but their historical writings were passionate statements linking the past and the preseent. This book examines in detail the ideas and presentation of the major Roman historians - Sallust, Livy, Tacitus and Ammianus - as well as other genres of historical writing. The biographies written by Nepos, Tacitus, Suetonius, and those called the Augustan History and the autobiographies of Julius Caesar and the Emperor Augustus are also analysed to explore how these genres differ in the Roman mind from narrative history.
Ronald Mellor demonstrates that Roman historical writing was regarded by its authors as a literary, not a scholarly exercise, and how it must be evaluated in that context. He shows that history writing was political structures of ancient Rome reflected in the histories produced under different regimes.
Routledge; December 1998
223 pages; ISBN 9780203047262
Read online, or download in secure PDF format or MobiPocket
ISBNs
9781134816521
9781134816514
9780415117739
9780203047262
0203047265