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  • Chapter 6 - What’s Past Is Prologue: History and Biography

  • Laurel Fulkerson, Florida State University, Jeffrey Tatum, Victoria University of Wellington
  • Book:
    A History of Latin Literature From its Beginnings to the Age of Augustus
    Published online:
    14 November 2024
    Print publication:
    21 November 2024, pp 198-243

  • Summary

    The sixth chapter covers the origins of Roman historiography. As usual, they are in Greece, and as usual the Romans do something rather different with their model. From its origins in Cato down to what many considered its perfect form in Livy, the Romans were deeply interested in their own pasts. But history-writing was not as it is in the modern world: the ancient historian did little of what we would consider research. Here again, therefore, literary elements were to the fore: choosing the right kind of story to tell and telling it in the right way were the important things. Discussions of Ennius, Cato, Caesar, Sallust, Asinius Pollio, and Livy.