{"product_id":"diodorus-siculus-books-11-12-37-2","title":"Diodorus Siculus, Books 11-12.37.1","description":"\u003cp\u003eSicilian historian Diodorus Siculus (ca. 100-30 BCE) is our only surviving source for a continuous narrative of Greek history from Xerxes' invasion to the Wars of the Successors following the death of Alexander the Great. Yet this important historian has been consistently denigrated as a mere copyist who slavishly reproduced the works of earlier historians without understanding what he was writing. By contrast, in this iconoclastic work Peter Green builds a convincing case for Diodorus' merits as a historian. Through a fresh English translation of a key portion of his multi-volume history (the so-called Bibliotheke, or \"Library\") and a commentary and notes that refute earlier assessments of Diodorus, Green offers a fairer, better balanced estimate of this much-maligned historian.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe portion of Diodorus' history translated here covers the period 480-431 BCE, from the Persian invasion of Greece to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. This half-century, known as the Pentekontaetia, was the Golden Age of Periclean Athens, a time of unprecedented achievement in drama, architecture, philosophy, historiography, and the visual arts. Green's accompanying notes and commentary revisit longstanding debates about historical inconsistencies in Diodorus' work and offer thought-provoking new interpretations and conclusions. In his masterful introductory essay, Green demolishes the traditional view of Diodorus and argues for a thorough critical reappraisal of this synthesizing historian, who attempted nothing less than a \"universal history\" that begins with the gods of mythology and continues down to the eve of Julius Caesar's Gallic campaigns.\u003c\/p\u003e\n","brand":"Peter Green","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43572767490230,"sku":"9780292779075","price":23.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0251\/4980\/0541\/files\/missing-cover_fb0b0d76-ad1b-4210-999b-ddb94579ccbd.jpg?v=1746711902","url":"https:\/\/combined-academic.myshopify.com\/products\/diodorus-siculus-books-11-12-37-2","provider":"Combined Academic Publishers - Mare Nostrum Group","version":"1.0","type":"link"}