Trends in Classics - Key Perspectives on Classical Research

The study of Roman Historiography, and with it of individual historians, has undergone a sea change in the last half century, with emphasis increasingly placed on the structures of the text and the method of delivery rather than exclusively on the historical content of the work. Despite this change, and despite the steady accumulation of work on Livy and on the AUC, his 142 volume account of the growth of the Roman state, no new general monograph on Livy has appeared in the last fifty years. A new stock taking is therefore in order, the better to introduce Livy to a new generation of readers; not as the fusty moralizing historian, but as an exciting text with its own aesthetic and ethical contribution. Focusing on the intersection of politics and form, this book focuses on rhetorical mannerisms with which Livy clothes the historical skeleton: the structures of composition, the speeches he gives his characters, the mechanisms through which he interacts with the literary and historical world outside his own text, and the literary-critical methods, especially intertextuality and exemplarity, suitable for the historiographical text. This book will of use for those seeking a critical reppraisal of recent trends in work on Livy.