The Local Historians of Attica

by: Pearson, L.

Price: 29,00 EURO

1 copy in stock

Like Greek philosophy after Socrates, Greek historiography in the fourth century B.C. developed along more lines than one. The rhetorical style of history writing was cultivated especially by the pupils of Isocrates and its characteristics are revealed fairly clearly in later authors who tried to follow in their footsteps. Very different from this rhetorical history with its elaborate moralizing were the dry chronicles of local Athenian history written by Clei-demus and Androtion and others, who called their works Atthides and apparently took for their model the first writer to compose a specifically Athenian history, Hellanicus of Lesbos. With a strong emphasis on religious history, mythological interpretation, and, where possible, accurate chronology, they established a distinct literary tradition which endured into the following century when Philochorus wrote an Atthis that came to be more widely read than any other. No specimen of an Atthis has survived. But the development and continuity of the Atthid tradition is often taken for granted as an established fact of literary history and the qualities which its adherents shared are more generally known than the fragments of individual Atthidographers. When a conventionalized critical opinion has been generally accepted and the reasons for it have been largely forgotten, the time seems ripe for a new presentation and a new study of the evidence. This monograph, therefore, is a study of the characteristics of the local historians in the fourth and third centuries B.C.?the Atthidographers?as revealed in their fragments. It is concerned with their individual peculiarities as well as with the qualities which they had in common and with their loyalty to a literary tradition, the beginnings of which must be sought in early Ionian historiography. From the content: The Atthis of Hellanicus; The Place of Thucydides in the Tradition; The Successors of Thucydides; The Earlier Atthidographers: Cleidemus, Phanodemus, Androtion, Some Lesser Figures; Ephorus, Theopompus, and Aristotle; Philochorus and Ister; The Atthis Tradition.

The Local Historians of Attica

by: Pearson, L.

• ISBN-13: 9780891305408 / 978-0-89130-540-8
• ISBN-03: 0891305408 / 0-89130-540-8
• Scholars Press, Atlanta, Georgia, 1981

Price: 29,00 EURO

1 copy in stock