Wiseman is a master of constructive fiction, and everything he writes is exhilarating. In fact, it would be hard to think of an ancient historian whose work is beter designed both to inspire advanced students with a sense of what impressive edifices can be constructed with bricks so short on straw—and also to hone their skills at testing, if necessary to destruction, the weak links in chains of overextended argumentation.

Times Literary Supplement

In this sequel to Historiography And Imagination (UEP 1994), Professor Wiseman explores the question of how the Romans understood their own past and the role of early drama in generating and transmitting legends. The first six of the book's twelve essays are concerned with stories and scenarios in the surviving literature which are best explained as having been first created for the stage. The other essays discuss the family traditions of Roman aristocrats, the rites of spring enjoyed by the Roman plebs, the use of Roman history in the radical politics of the nineteenth century, and how a great modern Roman historian exploited the novelist's art. The book is designed to be accessible to anyone with an interest in the ancient world, and all Latin and Greek is translated.
Les mer
The other essays discuss the family traditions of Roman aristocrats, the rites of spring enjoyed by the Roman plebs, the use of Roman history in the radical politics of the nineteenth century, and how a great modern Roman historian exploited the novelist's art.
Les mer
  • The history of a hypothesis
  • Tales unworthy of the Gods
  • Ovid on Servius Tullius
  • Two plays for the Liberalia
  • The tragedy of Gaius Gracchus
  • Crossing the Rubicon
  • The poet, the "plebs", and the chorus girls
  • Valerius Antias and the Palimpsest of history
  • The Minucii and their monument
  • Rome and the resplendent Aemilii
  • E.S. Beesly and the Roman revolution
  • Late Syme - a study in historiography
  • Appendices: Hermann Reich, "on the sources of early Roman history and Roman national tragedy"
  • The ludi saeculares
Les mer
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/9780859895606?cc=us

Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780859895606
Publisert
1998-04-01
Utgiver
Liverpool University Press
Høyde
230 mm
Bredde
148 mm
Aldersnivå
UU, UP, P, G, 05, 06, 01
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
200

Forfatter

Biografisk notat

Peter Wiseman is Emeritus Professor of Roman History at Exeter University and a Fellow of the British Academy. He came to Exeter in 1977, and was Head of Department from 1977 to 1990. Although he retired in 2001, he is still involved in graduate teaching at both MA and PhD levels. ‘I've been obsessed with the history and literature of Rome for nearly half a century’, he says. Among the results of that obsession have been books on Catullus (Catullan Questions 1969, Catullus and his World 1985), on Roman political history (New Men in the Roman Senate 1971, Flavius Josephus: Death of an Emperor 1991), on Roman historiography (Clio's Cosmetics: Three Studies in Greco-Roman Literature 1979, Historiography and Imagination: Eight Essays on Roman Culture 1994), and on Roman myth and legend (Remus: a Roman Myth 1995, Roman Drama and Roman History 1998). Reviews of T.P. Wiseman books include the following comments: 'quite simply brilliant' (Times Literary Supplement), 'enthralling' (London Review of Books), 'stylistic elegance and wit, dazzling erudition and imaginative flair' (Classical Review), 'exceptional analytical skill and creative imagination' (Bryn Mawr Classical Review).