Knowing future time in and through Greek historiography / edited by Alexandra Lianeri.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Lianeri, Alexandra, editor.

Series:

Trends in classics. Supplementary volumes ; v. 32.

Trends in classics--supplementary volumes, 1868-4875 ; volume 32

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Historiography--Greece--History.

Historiography.

Historiography--Philosophy.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (452 p.)

Place of Publication:

Boston : De Gruyter, [2016]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

From the early modern period, Greek historiography has been studied in the context of Cicero's notion historia magistra vitae and considered to exclude conceptions of the future as different from the present and past. Comparisons with the Roman, Judeo-Christian and modern historiography have sought to justify this perspective by drawing on a category of the future as a temporal mode that breaks with the present. In this volume, distinguished classicists and historians challenge this contention by raising the question of what the future was and meant in antiquity by offering fresh considerations of prognostic and anticipatory voices in Greek historiography from Herodotus to Appian and by tracing the roots of established views on historical time in the opposition between antiquity and modernity. They look both at contemporary scholarly argument and the writings of Greek historians in order to explore the relation of time, especially the future, to an idea of the historical that is formulated in the plural and is always in motion. By reflecting on the prognostic of historical time the volume will be of interest not only to classical scholars, but to all who are interested in the history and theory of historical time.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction: The Futures of Greek Historiography

Ancient Historiography and ‘Future Past’

Futures Real and Unreal in Greek Historiography

Between Thucydides and the Future: Narrative Prolepsis and Xenophon’s Concept of Historiography

Knowing Future Time in Xenophon’s Anabasis

Knowledge and Foresight in Polybius

Preparing for Posterity: Dionysius and Polybius

The Future and the Logic of Closure in Greek Historiography

No Future? Possibilities and Permanence in Herodotus’ Histories

Fading into the Future: Visibility and Legibility in Thucydides’ History

Shifting Endings, Ambiguity and Deferred Closure in Polybius’ Histories

Plutarch on the Future of an Ancient World

Future’s Bright? Looking Forward in Appian

Writing for Posterity in Ancient Historiography: Lucian’s Perspective

On the Shoulders of Greeks? Future Time in Livy’s Ab urbe condita

Constituting the Modern World as the Future of Greek Antiquity

Horoscopes of Empires: Future Ruins from Thucydides to Macaulay

Historiographic Ancients and Moderns: The Difference between Thucydides and Ranke

The Western Futures of Ancient History

Bibliography

Notes on Contributors

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9783110430783

3110430789

9783110430820

3110430827

OCLC:

945038209