Experience and Teleology in Ancient Historiography
Futures Past from Herodotus to Augustine

This book explores the tension in ancient historiography between teleological design and narrating the past as it was experienced by historical characters.

Jonas Grethlein (Author)

9781107040281, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 October 2013

436 pages
23.1 x 16.3 x 2.8 cm, 0.82 kg

'… this new book by Grethlein is an investigation into literary memory in Antiquity … Its strength lies in Grethlein's ability to combine theoretical reflections with close readings and to see the complex intertwining of narrative form, purpose and historical circumstance.' Maria Osmers, The Classical Review

The past is narrated in retrospect. Historians can either capitalize on the benefit of hindsight and give their narratives a strongly teleological design or they may try to render the past as it was experienced by historical agents and contemporaries. This book explores the fundamental tension between experience and teleology in major works of Greek and Roman historiography, biography and autobiography. The combination of theoretical reflections with close readings yields a new, often surprising assessment of the history of ancient historiography as well as a deeper understanding of such authors as Thucydides, Tacitus and Augustine. While much recent work has focused on how ancient historians use emplotment to generate historical meaning, Experience and Teleology in Ancient Historiography offers a new approach to narrative form as a mode of coming to grips with time.

Introduction: futures past: historiography between experience and teleology
Part I. Experience: Making the Past Present: 1. Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War
2. Xenophon, Anabasis
3. Plutarch, Alexander
4. Tacitus, Annals
Part II. Teleology: The Power of Retrospect: 5. Herodotus, Histories
6. Polybius, Histories
7. Sallust, Bellum Catilinae
Part III. Beyond Experience and Teleology: 8. Augustine, Confessions
Epilogue: experience in modern historiography.

Subject Areas: Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA], Historiography [HBAH], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]