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In this volume an international group of scholars revisits the themes of John Marincola's ground-breaking Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography. The nineteen chapters offer a series of case studies that explore how ancient historians' approaches to their projects were informed both by the pull of tradition and by the ambition to innovate. The key themes explored are the relation of historiography to myth and poetry; the narrative authority exemplified by Herodotus, the 'father' of history; the use of 'fictional' literary devices in historiography; narratorial self-presentation; and self-conscious attempts to shape the historiographical tradition in new and bold ways. The volume as a whole presents a holistic vision of the development of Greco-Roman historiography and the historian's dynamic position within this practice.
The aim of this chapter is to analyse the role played by ethnography in perceptions of the opposition between Herodotus and Thucydides and of the development of Greek historiography. From a vast range of possible evidence, I have selected a number of writers, some influential in their own right, some simply representative of their age. I will focus in turn on the place of ethnography in narratives of the development of historiography, in views of Herodotus’s own work and in comparisons between Herodotus and Thucydides. This reception history will show how views of the ancient development of the genre of historiography were influenced by new conceptions of history in the modern world, in particular by the new forms of historicism that develop over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Besides its inherent intellectual interest, the story unfolded here is important for its continued influence on modern scholarship. In the context of this volume, it provides a firm basis for understanding the instances of Herodotean reception which are explored in subsequent chapters. From the chapter as a whole it will emerge not only that histories of historiography, as much as any other form of historical writing, are moulded by the concerns of the historian’s present but also, and perhaps more unexpectedly, that ethnography, a practice often criticized as a vehicle of demarcation and exclusion, has itself become a target of exclusionary rhetoric in modern accounts of historiography.
This is the first comprehensive commentary on a section of Xenophon's Anabasis in English for almost a century. It provides up-to-date guidance on literary, historical and cultural aspects of the Anabasis and will help undergraduate students to read Greek better. It also incorporates recent advances in Xenophontic scholarship and Greek linguistics, showcasing in particular Xenophon's linguistic innovations and varied style. Advanced students and professional scholars will also profit from the sustained attention which this commentary devotes to Xenophon's varied narrative strategies and to the reception of episodes from Anabasis III in antiquity. The introduction and commentary show that Xenophon is just as important (if not more so) to the development of Greek historiography, and of Greek prose in general, as Herodotus and Thucydides.