The Bibliotheke of Diodoros of Sicily is the most voluminous Greek historiographical text from the pre-Christian era, and contains the only preserved continuous account of Classical Greek history; for many aspects of this history, such as the events in Sicily, the rise of Macedon under Philip II or the history of the Successors, it is our main or only source. It is thus often used as a source by ancient historians, and a great deal of energy has been spent on identifying which sources Diodoros himself used. Interest in Diodoros as an author in his own right, however, is a comparatively recent phenomenon. The contributors to this volume, junior scholars as well as leading international experts, set out to confront the old and new approaches to Diodoros, studying his first century BC context, questions of genre and purpose, his relationship to his predecessors, composition and narrative technique, the role of the gods and myth in the work, the use of speeches, and Diodoros' interest in themes like war, writing, language and politics. In so doing they offer exciting new insights into the Bibliotheke and the development of Greek historiography, which in turn also shed important new light on the old question of Diodoros' value as a source. This book is of interest to students of Greek and Roman history, myth, and ancient historiography in general.

Diodoros of Sicily’s book XIX is the main source for the history of the Diadochoi, Alexander the Great’s Successors, from 317 to 311 BCE. With the first full-scale commentary on this text in any language Alexander Meeus offers a detailed and reliable guide to the complicated historical narrative and the fascinating ethnographic information transmitted by Diodoros, which includes the earliest accounts of Indian widow burning and Nabataean culture. Studying both history and historiography, this volume elucidates a crucial stage in the creation of the Hellenistic world in Greece and the Near East as well as the confusing source tradition. Diodoros, a long neglected author indispensable for much of our knowledge of Antiquity, is currently enjoying growing scholarly interest. An ample introduction discusses his historical methods and sheds light on his language and style and on the manuscript transmission of books XVII-XX. By negotiating between diametrically opposed scholarly opinions a new understanding of Diodoros’ place in the ancient historiographical tradition is offered. The volume is of interest to scholars of ancient historiography, Hellenistic history, Hellenistic prose and the textual transmission of the Bibliotheke.

Why did human beings first begin to write history? Lisa Irene Hau argues that a driving force among Greek historians was the desire to use the past to teach lessons about the present and for the future. She uncovers the moral messages of the ancient Greek writers of history and the techniques they used to bring them across. Hau also shows how moral didacticism was an integral part of the writing of history from its inception in the 5th century BC, how it developed over the next 500 years in parallel with the development of historiography as a genre and how the moral messages on display remained surprisingly stable across this period. For the ancient Greek historiographers, moral didacticism was a way of making sense of the past and making it relevant to the present; but this does not mean that they falsified events: truth and morality were compatible and synergistic ends.

The text provides a study of the longest continuous war in ancient history and the greatest naval conflict ever fought. It is intended for Roman history courses, academic and research libraries, and military history buffs.

The survival of ancient Greek historiography is largely due to its preservation by Byzantine copyists and scholars. This process entailed selection, adaptation, and commentary, which shaped the corpus of Greek historiography in its transmission. By investigating those choices, Kaldellis enables a better understanding of the reception and survival of Greek historical writing. Byzantine Readings of Ancient Historians includes translations of texts written by Byzantines on specific ancient historians. Each translated text is accompanied by an introduction and notes to highlight the specific context and purpose of its composition. In order to present a rounded picture of the reception of Greek historiography in Byzantium, a wide range of genres have been considered, such as poems and epigrams, essays, personalized scholia, and commentaries. Byzantine Readings of Ancient Historians is therefore an important resource for scholars and students of ancient history.

Building upon the explosion of recent work on mythography, contributions to this volume direct attention to less frequently explored questions of how ancient poets, historians, and philosophers themselves adopted and adapted the work of mythographers. Study of the way that mythographers and their contemporaries take on positions of, alternately, “host” or “parasite” in relation to the other exposes the richness mythographic practice and the roles that mythographers played in the evolving Greco-Roman discourse of myth. From, among others, the seeds of mythographic discourse in Pindar and Plato, to the mythography of the Peripatics, the in-between mythography of Diodorus Siculus, and the “mythographic topography” of Pausanias, this volume invites a reappraisal of the role that mythography played at every stage of Greek thought about myth. Through contributions that explore both mythographers’ distinctive style of studying myth to other contributions that focus primarily on the how and why of non-mythographers’ use of mythographic techniques, what emerges is a picture of mythography that broadens our conception of mythography while at the same time inviting scholars to seek out more such echoes of mythographic discourse in the work of poets, historians, philosophers at large.

A fresh translation of Diodoros' account of a crucial period of Greek history, with extensive notes and a substantial Introduction.