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Numa the Pythagorean

T. P. Wiseman
One of the more puzzling problems in Greco-Roman historiography is the very strong tradition that Numa Pompilius, creator of the Romans’ religious system, was a pupil of Pythagoras, who set up his school in south Italy about 530 bc. The idea was denounced by Cicero and Livy as an anachronistic fiction—but how could it have come to be so widely believed? This article draws attention to the very extensive Pythagorean material reproduced in Plutarch’s life of Numa, and Plutarch’s own reasonable doubts about the accuracy of the received chronology of the Roman kings. The tradition of Numa the Pythagorean evidently predated the creation of the chronology, so why should it be dismissed as unhistorical? An innovating religious legislator at Rome in the late sixth century bc is a hypothesis that deserves to be taken seriously.

Nomoi and Cannibalism in Herodotus' Histories

Ryan Masato Baldwin
This paper argues that Herodotus does not stigmatise cannibalism in his ethnographies. Rather than ‘Othering’ cannibalistic peoples like the Massagetae (1.216), Callatiae (3.38), Padaeans (3.99), and the Issedones (4.26), Herodotus’ depictions encourage his audience towards a stance of tolerance, while his depiction of the Androphagi (4.106) illustrates his reluctance to attach any particular custom as a marker of ‘Other’. In contrast, Herodotus denigrates cannibalism in his accounts of Cyaxares (1.73), Harpagus (1.119), and Cambyses’ Ethiopian campaign (3.25). I conclude with the suggestion that Herodotus’ depictions of distant peoples following their own custom even in this extreme case should be taken as further evidence of the historian’s cultural relativism.

Per una proposta di studio dei cataloghi in Tucidide

Riccardo Stigliano
This paper analyses Thucydides’ catalogues both as a narrative and analytical device within The Peloponnesian War. In particular, this study aims to show their authenticity or functional coherence and cohesion despite the fact that they have been understudied or not always fully understood to varying degrees. Through this close examination, I illustrate how Thucydides adapts the traditional catalogue structure and patterns (ethno-geographic or political-hierarchical) to serve his new kind of historiography. By slightly echoing Homeric and Herodotean models, the author innovates within the catalogic sub-genre, highlighting political alliances, military logistics, and imperial dynamics in the war he is recounting.

Larissa and Piasus in the Suda Lexicon

Annalisa Paradiso
A number of Suda entries (s.v. ἀθέμιστα (Α 714 Adler) and s.v. Πίασος (Π 1549 Adler), and possibly also s.v. ἔωσεν (Ε 1909 Adler) rather than s.v. ἕρμα (Ε 3022 Adler)) deal with the myth of Larissa and her father Piasus, who fell in love with her, raped her, and was murdered by her. The anonymous quotations these entries preserve have been attributed to either Nicolaus of Damascus or Aelian. A linguistic investigation confirms the authorship of the latter.

Philo, Writer of History: Constructing a Transcultural Literary Context in De vita Mosis

Maarten-Pieter S. Moolenburgh
Whereas most scholarship interprets Philo’s De vita Mosis as a biography or encomium written in the context of a polemic about Judaism, this article proposes instead that the work serves to establish Philo more broadly as an authoritative Graeco-Roman writer of history. To this end, I analyse Philo’s comments about his literary competitors in the proem, his use of historiographical genre conventions, and his engagement with contemporary literary criticism; further corroboration is provided by his comments about the Mosaic Pentateuch in the second book. This article thus provides a foundation to consider De vita Mosis in relation to Graeco-Roman historical writing in its full breadth.

Procopius' Recalcitrant Reader (Wars 1.1.6–17)

Charles F. Pazdernik
A programmatic passage in the preface of Procopius of Caesarea’s Wars (1.1.6–17) focuses on how the work will be received by its implied audience. Procopius’ narrator posits two contrasting figures: one, an open-minded reader disposed to reason from historical evidence and to recognise the extraordinary qualities of contemporary events; the other, a recalcitrant reader whose valorisation of the past and immersion in linguistic archaism render him incapable of appreciating the present. The polemic against the latter is not a mere caricature, but a pretext for airing and displacing scepticism about the Wars’ axiological aims—that is, about what is most worth narrating and why it matters—especially with regard to the classical tradition in which the work participates.

Acrior est Germanorum libertas? Tacitus' Germani as More (and Less) than Freedom-Fighters

Katie Low
This paper explores the portrayal of the Germani in Tacitus’ Germania and in his historical works. It highlights how in the Germania’s first half they are presented as a remote and free people, while in the second they appear as less distant and less homogeneous. These different strands can also be traced in Tacitus’ Germanic narrative in Annals 1–2, especially in his depiction of Arminius, whose complex relationship with freedom, and role in what seem to be characteristically Germanic cycles of civil strife, are linked back to the Germania and forward to other episodes in the Histories and Annals. In the end Germanic discord seems more compelling than Germanic libertas, and this may have implications for Tacitus’ own time.

Josephus among the Autobiographers / Grojnowski, Situating Josephus’ Life within Ancient Autobiography

William Den Hollander

Prognostication, History, and Rhetoric in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries / Hanaghan, Future Knowledge and Imperial Acceptance

Moysés Marcos

Rhetorical Exploitation, Social Memory, and the Attic Orators' Treatment of the Recent Past / Kapellos, The Orators and Their Treatment of the Recent Past

Bernd Steinbock

Continued Focus on the Historia Augusta / Zecchini, Historiae Augustae Colloquium Romanum 15

Martin P. Shedd

Falsity and Misinformation in Greek Literature / De Brasi, Papathomas, and Tsiampokalos, Fake News in Ancient Greece / Figueira and Munson, Misinformation, Disinformation, and Propaganda in Greek Historiography

Breno Battistin Sebastiani

Rethinking Zuozhuan and Early Chinese Historiography / Pines, Kern, and Luraghi, Zuozhuan and Early Chinese Historiography

Ruobing Xian

Imperial Cultures of Competition / Schropp, Pugna Litterarum

Panayiotis Christoforou

Herodotus in His Intellectual Setting / Kingsley, Herodotus and the Presocratics

Charles C. Chiasson

Il conflitto patrizio-plebeo nella costruzione narrativa liviana / Meunier, Tite-Live et la mise en scène de l’Histoire

Elisa Della Calce

A Forgotten Late Antique Historian / Garstad, Bouttios and Late Antique Antioch

Matthew Hoskin

Decision-Making in Xenophon / Zimmermann, Entscheidungsfindung und Machtausübung bei Xenophon

Sven Günther

Sources and Models Once Again / Devillers and Sebastiani, Sources et modèles des historiens anciens 3

Peter B. Martin

Reading Livy's Spaces / Fabrizi, Space, Narrative, and Historical Imagination in Livy's Ab Urbe Condita

Jane D. Chaplin

Rome's Founders in Dionysius of Halicarnassus / Poletti, Dionysius and the City of Rome

Daniel Hogg