Historiography of Rome and Its Empire

The Jewish War describes the history of the First Jewish Revolt against Rome (66-70 CE). This study deals with one of this work's most intriguing features: why and how Flavius Josephus, its author, describes his own actions in the context of this conflict in such detail. Glas traces the thematic and rhetorical aspects of autobiographical discourse in War and uses contextual evidence to situate Josephus’ self-characterisation in a Flavian Roman setting. In doing so, he sheds new light on this Jewish writer’s historiographical methods and his deep knowledge and creative use of Graeco-Roman culture.

Cassius Dio described his own age as one of “iron and rust.” This study, which is the first of its kind in English, examines the decline and decay that Cassius Dio diagnosed in this period (180-229 CE) through an analysis of the author’s historiographic method and narrative construction. It shows that the final books were a crucial part of Dio’s work, and it explains how Dio approached a period that he considered unworthy of history in view of his larger historiographic project.

The histories of early Rome written in antiquity by the likes of Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus include many sensational stories, from the she-wolf suckling the twins to the miraculous conception of Servius Tullius and the epiphany of the Dioscuri at Lake Regillus. Even the more sober parts of the narrative are of dubious historicity, and certainly include a good deal of rhetorical invention, aetiologies and folktales. The essays composing this volume attempt to analyse these stories to explore the porous boundaries and the hybrid borrowings between myth, history and historiography, and the limits of historical knowledge.

Ammianus Marcellinus composed a history of the Roman empire from 96 AD to 378 AD, focusing on the mid-fourth century during which he served in the army. His experience as a soldier during this period provides crucial realia of warfare, while his knowledge of literature, especially the genre of historiography, enabled him to imbue his narrative with literary flair. This book explores the tension between Ammianus’ roles as soldier and author, examining how his military experience affected his history, and conversely how his knowledge of literature affected his descriptions of the Roman army.

In the process of recording the history of the Roman Empire, from the death of Marcus Aurelius to the accession of Gordian III, Herodian makes his characters respond to the same situations in similar or different ways. This book shows that each reign in Herodian’s History is creatively mapped onto ever-recurring narrative patterns. It argues that patterning is not simply decorative in Herodian’s work but constitutes a crucial conceptual and methodological tool for writing interpretative history. Herodian deserves credit as an original and independent author. A careful consideration of the formulaic nature of his historiography indicates that there is more artistry in his composition than had previously been discerned.

Cassius Dio (c. 160–c. 230) is a familiar name to Roman historians, but still an enigmatic one. His text has shaped our understanding of his own period and earlier eras, but basic questions remain about his Greek and Roman cultural identities and his literary and intellectual influences. Contributors to this volume read Dio against different backgrounds including the politics of the Severan court, the cultural milieu of the Second Sophistic and Roman traditions of historiography and political theory. Dio emerges as not just a recounter of events, but a representative of his times in all their complexity.

This book offers a new interpretation of the Roman historian Sallust, which places him at the centre of the rich intellectual world of late Republican Rome. Drawing on the evidence of Sallust’s digressions in particular, and in contrast to previous views of his work as purely moralistic or unsophisticated, it argues that Sallust uses his historiography to advance a coherent set of ideas about the political chaos he saw around him, and to participate in the broader debates which characterised his period. It also offers a new perspective on the argumentative qualities of classical historiography more widely.

The History of the Empire from the Death of Marcus of Herodian in eight books, written in Greek, is a key source for the period from the reign of Commodus (AD 180) to that of Gordian III (238). Herodian is an eyewitness and the only contemporary historian whose work has come down to us in full. His point of view is all the more valuable because he is an outsider with respect to both court historiography, whose flattery he stigmatized, and to senatorial historians, represented mainly by Cassius Dio and by the biographies in the Historia Augusta. Nonetheless, Herodian has often been harshly criticized as a historian. This volume aims to shed light on the different areas and themes in which his historical work moves - literary technique, political lexicon, religious conception, geographical space, economic, political, cultural and military themes - to better understand the relevance of his historiographical approach and his historical thought.

Long regarded as a sycophantic producer of overblown moral platitudes, Valerius Maximus emerges from a series of studies as an independent thinker capable of challenging his readers through the material he has collected: he makes them think about real moral dilemmas and grants to non-Roman societies a remarkable equivalence to Rome. Through his silences as much as his sermons he decodes the value- and political-system of his day. Valerius is talented as a reader of others and himself was read appreciatively in the Later Empire and even more so by Christians in Medieval Europe.

This volume focuses on Cassius Dio as a historian – the only historian who allows us to follow the developments of Rome’s political institutions during a more than thousand year period, from the foundation of the city to Cassius Dio’s retirement from public life in 229 CE. The volume explores the Roman historian’s methodology and agendas, all of which influenced his approaches to Rome’s history. It offers a reassessment that rests on a deeper study of his relationship with historiographical traditions as well as his narrative and structural approach to Roman history. It examines Cassius Dio as both a writer in the historiographic tradition with his own agenda for writing The Roman History and a historian with his own ambition to tell the history of Rome.

The surviving books of Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita (written ca. 30 – 15 BCE), narrate the origins of Rome, the gradual growth of the city, and its rise to Mediterranean hegemony. This monograph reads Livy’s work as, among other things, a narrative about space – the space of the city and the space of the world which Rome strives to conquer and control. Using a narratological approach, it analyses how the text constructs the settings of historical events through an interplay of historical information, literary or conventional elements, and spatial semantics. In this way, it sheds light on Livy’s interpretation of politics, empire, conquest, and Roman identity.

Cassius Dio: The Impact of Violence, War, and Civil War is part of a renewed interest in the Roman historian Cassius Dio. This volume focuses on Dio’s approaches to foreign war and stasis as well as civil war. The impact of war on Rome as well as on the history of Rome has long be recognised by scholars, and adding to that, recent years have seen an increasing interest in the impact of civil war on Roman society. Dio’s views on violence, war, and civil war are an inter-related part of his overall project, which sought to understand Roman history on its own historical and historiographical terms and within a long-range view of the Roman past that investigated the realities of power.

This edited volume brings a variety of approaches to the problem of how the Romans conceived of their history, what were the mechanisms for their preservation of the past, and how did the Romans come to write about their past.

Building on important recent work in historiography, and the recent memory turn, the authors consider the practicalities of transmission, literary and generic influences, and the role of the city of Rome in preserving and transmitting memories of the past.

The result is a major contribution to our understanding of the role history played in Roman life, and the kinds of evidence which could be deployed in constructing Roman history.

Winner of the 2017 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award

Cassius Dio: Greek Intellectual and Roman Politician, a collection of essays on this historian, is the first to appear in the new Brill series Historiography of Rome and Its Empire. The volume brings together case studies that highlight various aspects of Dio’s Roman History, focusing on previously ignored or misunderstood aspects of his narrative. The main purpose of the volume is to pursue a combined historiographic, literary and rhetorical analysis of Dio’s work and of its political and intellectual agendas. Dio's work is often used as a handy resource, with scholars looking at isolated sections of his annalistic structure. Contrary to this approach, the volume puts emphasis on Cassius Dio and his Roman History in its historiographical setting, thus allowing us to link and understand the different parts of his work.