Medieval Historiography

MEDIEVAL HISTORICAL WRITING did not arise in a vacuum. The classical Greek and Latin historians had already established a tradition with its own standards and norms, which were to continue to be influential well into the modern era. However, in the late classical period a process of selection took place that determined which ancient writers would be available to the medieval reader. Some of those whom we regarded as the greatest Greek and Latin historians (from the fifth century B.C. to the first of our era) were all but forgotten in the Middle Ages. Herodotus, Thucydides, Plutarch, and Tacitus were virtually unknown, and even Julius Caesar received remarkably little attention as a historian when one considers the great interest shown in him as an object of historical study. But others were read. The Greek works of Josephus (first century A.D.) were popular in Latin translation, and the monumental Ab urbe condita (From the foundation of Rome) of Livy (59 B.C.–A.D. 17) was enormously influential, though it was almost exclusively read in a summary version. Sallust, Lucan, and Suetonius (from the first century B.C. to the second century A.D.) were also familiar, as was Justinus's abridgement of Pompeius Trogus, a third-century version of a universal history written at the time of Augustus. These were important as sources of historical material, but also as roots of the historiographic tradition itself.