Luke Pitcher - Writing Ancient History, Historia(2)(1)
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writing ancient history
LUKE PITCHER
is Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at the University
of Durham. He has studied and written extensively on the subject of
historiography in antiquity.
‘This is a very good book indeed; general readers, students, and specialists alike
will read it with profit and delight. Luke Pitcher ranges over ancient historical
writers, both Greek and Roman, from Herodotus to Ammianus, with an
impressive grasp of his material,and he has a gift for finding the telling example
and making subtle and insightful points with lucidity and punch. He also has a
wonderful eye for the modern parallel, and one is as likely to find here
illuminationdrawnfromaPatrickO’BriannoveloranepisodeofDoctorWhoas
from an extract from Xenophon or Velleius. We meet along the way the
diplomat’s wife who wrote a universal history while perched in a tree in an
embassygarden;andthemadCornishvicarwhodeceivedThomasMacaulaywith
a historical ballad and excommunicated his cat for mousing on a Sunday.No-one
after reading this book should venture generalisations about“the modern way”or
“the ancient way” of writing history: Pitcher brings out how great are the
variations within both,and yet how apparently distant habits of writing may turn
out to have parallels within modern culture that make them instantly more
intelligible.Pitcher is unusually sensitive to the narrative strategies of the ancient
historical writers, and also of all the health-warnings that the modern student
needs to bear in mind when reading their works: he makes his readers alert to
what he calls the “action of the swan”, that is all the work that goes into the
shaping of a story but remains beneath the surface of the narrative. Few writers
about ancient historiography are so learned, and even fewer carry their learning
so lightly:this is a book that anyone interested in ancient history just has to read
– and they will thoroughly enjoy it.’
Christopher Pelling,Regius Professor of Greek,University of Oxford
‘Luke Pitcher has written an engaging, witty, and accessible study of the
complicated relationship between theory and practice in the ancient historians,
bringing to the task an impressive expertise in texts that range from archaic
Greece to late antiquity. He resists simple contrasts between ancient and
modern, presenting the reader instead with finely drawn, convincingly argued
analyses of the spectrum of practices employed by ancient historiographers in
their treatment of sources, self-presentation, and narrative modes of
(re)presenting their pasts.Bearing in mind always that the modern student of the
Greco-Roman world is also, in some way, “writing ancient history”, Pitcher
brings us much closer to the methodologies and reception of these texts through
which so much of our understanding of the ancient world derives.’
Christina S.Kraus,Professor of Classics,Yale University
writing ancient
history
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itcher
Published in 2009 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
www.ibtauris.com
Distributed in the United States and Canada exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
Copyright © 2009 Luke Pitcher
The right of Luke Pitcher to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted
by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. This book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in
or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
Library of Classical Studies, Vol 1
For full series list see: www.ibtauris.com/LCS
ISBN: 978 1 84511 957 7 (HB)
ISBN: 978 1 84511 958 4 (PB)
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available
Designed and Typeset by 4word Ltd, Bristol, UK
Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham
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