The Greek and Roman Historians by Timothy E. Duff (review)

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 89 seemly characters "even ... playfully" (51) flatly contradicts Socrates' point at 3g6e; to say that the craftsman at 596b "looks 'toward' [pros] and not 'at''' the form is linguistically specious; to make Socrates' reference to earlier omissions at 603d-e have some bearing on Book 10'S own omission of the thumoeidetic part of the soul (108) is utterly muddled; to treat the audience of tragedy at 606a-b as "sadistic-like cowards ... watching ... an enemy suffer" (118) is grotesque (and Naddaffs argument on that passage is more generally vitiated by a failure to see that it applies to real audiences in the present. not to the inhabitants of Callipolis ): and to construe 607d as announcing the" actual" rather than hypothetical return of poetry from exile is to miss the delicate. wistful ambiguity of Socrates' final verdict on poetry. Such details. and the slipperiness of argument which they often accompany. mar substantial parts of this book. greatly reducing its reliability for students and placing obstacles in the way of serious attention from Platonic specialists. Finally. it is no mere pedantry to complain about the frequent errors in Naddaff's transliteration of Greek. since these go beyond typographical blips and betray rudimentary linguistic ignorance. For example . the term aletheia is repeatedly mistransliterated (with a false vowel quantity). and there are numerous mistakes involving the basic morphology of common words. Longer quotations on Ig and 54 are mauled. while on 17 appears the sheer gobbledegook" biosputhagotikos." alleged to mean a "way of life" for the Guardians but apparently a deformation of bios Puthagoreios ("Pythagorean way of life." a phrase with no relevance to the text under discussion at that point). Such things do nothing for one's confidence in the author's ability to do justice to the subtleties of Plato's texts. STEPHEN HALLIWELL UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS ST ANDREWS. SCOTLAND KY16 gAL TIMOTHY E. DUFF. The Greek and Roman Historians. London : Bristol Classical Press, 2003. Pp. 136. UK £9.99. ISBN 185399 -601 -7. This short volume surveys the major ancient historians of Greece and Rome from Herodotus to Cassius Dio. It is divided into eleven chapters: I. Introduction: 2. Herodotos: 3. Thucydides: 4. Fourth-century historians : 5. Hellenistic historians; 6. Roman Republican historians: 7· Livy: 8. Imperial Rome: g. Historians of imperial Rome: Tacitus: 10. Historians of imperial Rome: other voices: 11. Greek historians of the Roman im- go BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS perial period. The book opens with a List of illustrations, Abbreviations, and Preface~ it closes with an Epilogue, Suggestions for further study, Suggestions for further reading, and an Index. In his introductory chapter, Duff observes that Homer's Iliad, with its emphasis on war and politics, its preoccupation with moral issues, and its structure based on alternating narrative and speeches, provided a model for historians. The Odyssey (it may be added) features the same qualities, and both epics deal with pride and punishment, a tragic conception prominent in the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides. The chief moral lesson in the Histories of Herodotus (chapter 2) is that overconfidence leads to humiliation. Thus his interpretation of history reflects an outlook shared with Athenian tragedy. Herodotus was also firmly rooted in the rationalism of his age. He explained events in terms both divine and human. He distinguished between unverifiable stories about the mythical past and study of recent events, which can be known through oral tradition, eye-witness accounts and written documents as well as personal inspection of sites and monuments. He searched for causes. He described non-Greek cultures with sympathy. but in such a way as to suggest which qualities are special to the Greeks. On Herodotus' principal moral theme and his rationalism (it may be added), one might consult the outstanding essays on these subjects published in Brill's Companion to Herodotus, edited by E. Bakker et a1. (Leiden 2002). Like Herodotus, Thucydides (chapter 3) wrote about the recent past. He concentrated much more severely than his predecessor on politics and warfare, and cited human causes to the exclusion of divine. Nevertheless , the tragic theme of arrogance and punishment features prominently in his work. Thus the funeral speech of Pericles, which...