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The Greek historian Polybius (2nd century B.C.E.) produced an authoritative history of Rome’s rise to dominance in the Mediterranean that was explicitly designed to convey valuable lessons to future generations. But throughout this history, Polybius repeatedly emphasizes the incomparable value of first-hand, practical experience. In Polybius: Experience and the Lessons of History, Daniel Walker Moore shows how Polybius integrates these two apparently competing concepts in a way that affects not just his educational philosophy but the construction of his historical narrative. The manner in which figures such as Hannibal, Scipio Africanus, or even the Romans as a whole learn and develop over the course of Polybius’ narrative becomes a critical factor in Rome’s ultimate success.
The Greek historian Polybius (2nd century B.C.E.) produced an authoritative history of Rome's rise to dominance in the Mediterranean that was explicitly designed to convey valuable lessons to future generations. But throughout this history, Polybius repeatedly emphasizes the incomparable value of first-hand, practical experience. In Polybius: Experience and the Lessons of History, Daniel Walker Moore shows how Polybius integrates these two apparently competing concepts in a way that affects not just his educational philosophy but the construction of his historical narrative. The manner in which figures such as Hannibal, Scipio Africanus, or even the Romans as a whole learn and develop over the course of Polybius' narrative becomes a critical factor in Rome's ultimate success.
The issue of leadership is crucial to Polybius’ desire to explain the rise of Rome over almost the entire known world and provide benefit and utility to readers who may have to assume positions of responsibility. This book focuses on descriptions of leadership behaviors in the Histories, aiming to identify regularly recurring patterns, motifs, and themes in the relevant passages, which could, precisely because of their persistence, heighten our sensitivity to the subtleties of Polybius’ treatment of the subject. Given that the interest in leadership permeates Polybius’ work and engages with his main thematic concerns, this study brings the reader face-to-face with questions of power and control, identity and nationality, the role of fortune, narrative strategies, thereby providing a basis for reading the Histories more generally. At the same time, a major concern throughout the book is with the ways Polybius’ representation of leadership seems to have been influenced by literary depictions of the conquests of Alexander the Great. Polybius’ interplay with his literary context and tradition deepens our understanding of what he is trying to accomplish in the narrative and how he is interacting with the expectations of his audiences.
This volume explores emotion and its importance in Polybius’ conception of history, his writing of historiography, and the benefits of this understanding to readers of history. How and why did ancient historians include emotions in their texts? This book argues that in the Histories of Polybius – the Greek historian who recorded Rome’s rise to dominion in the ancient Mediterranean – emotions play an effective role in history, used by the historian to explain the causes of actions, connect events, and make sense of human behavior. Through analysis of the emotions in the narrative and theory of Polybius’ Histories using critical terminology and frameworks from modern philosophy, psychology, and political science, this work calls into question assumptions that emotions were purely irrational and detrimental in ancient history, politics, and historiography. Emotions often positively shape Polybius’ historical narrative, provide criteria for the success and morality of agents, actions, and even historians, and aid the historian in guiding readers to become intelligent leaders and citizens of a new world centered on Rome. Emotion and Historiography in Polybius’ Histories is a fascinating read for students and scholars of ancient historiography and history, as well as those working on ancient political thought, emotions in the ancient Greek world, and emotion in history and literature more broadly.
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.
Usages of the Past in Roman Historiography contains 11 articles on how the Ancient Roman historians used, and manipulated, the past. Key themes include the impact of autocracy, the nature of intertextuality, and the frontiers between history and other genres.
Examines the complex reaction of the Greek historian Polybius to the expansion of Roman power, embracing admiration and support tempered by detachment of different kinds, personal, cultural, patriotic and intellectual.
This book explores the tension in ancient historiography between teleological design and narrating the past as it was experienced by historical characters.
What significance does the voice or projected persona in which a text is written have for our understanding of the meaning of that text? This volume explores the persona of the author in antiquity, from Homer to late antiquity, taking into account both Latin and Greek authors from a range of disciplines. The thirteen chapters are divided into two main sections, the first of which focuses on the diverse forms of writing adopted by various ancient authors, and the different ways these forms were used to present and project an authorial voice. The second part of the volume considers questions regarding authority and ascription in relation to the authorial voice. In particular, it looks at how later readers - and later authors - may understand the authority of a text's author or supposed author. The volume contains chapters on pseudo-epigraphy and fictional letters, as well as the use of texts as authoritative in philosophical schools, and the ancient ascription of authorship to works of art.