There are only a few detailed histories of Persia from Ancient Greek historiography that have survived time. Diodorus of Sicily, a first century BC author, is the only one to have written a comprehensive history (the I I I I I I I [kappa]I I I I I I I I I (Bibliotheca Historica or Historical Library)) in which more than cursory attention is paid to Persia. The Bibliotheca Historica covers the entire period from Persia's prehistory until the arrival of the Parthians from the East and that of Roman power throughout Asia Minor and beyond from the West, some 750 odd years or more after Assyrian rule ended. Diodorus' contribution to our knowledge of Persian history is therefore of great value for the modern historian of the Ancient Near East and in this book Jan Stronk provides the first complete translation of Diodorus' account of the history of Persia. He also examines and evaluates both Diodorus' account and the sources he used to compose his work, taking into consideration the historical, political and archaeological factors that may have played a role in the transmission of the evidence he used to acquire the raw material underlying his Bibliotheca.

2007 — A Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Book Sicilian historian Diodorus Siculus (ca. 100-30 BCE) is our only surviving source for a continuous narrative of Greek history from Xerxes' invasion to the Wars of the Successors following the death of Alexander the Great. Yet this important historian has been consistently denigrated as a mere copyist who slavishly reproduced the works of earlier historians without understanding what he was writing. By contrast, in this iconoclastic work Peter Green builds a convincing case for Diodorus' merits as a historian. Through a fresh English translation of a key portion of his multi-volume history (the so-called Bibliotheke, or "Library") and a commentary and notes that refute earlier assessments of Diodorus, Green offers a fairer, better balanced estimate of this much-maligned historian. The portion of Diodorus' history translated here covers the period 480-431 BCE, from the Persian invasion of Greece to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. This half-century, known as the Pentekontaetia, was the Golden Age of Periclean Athens, a time of unprecedented achievement in drama, architecture, philosophy, historiography, and the visual arts. Green's accompanying notes and commentary revisit longstanding debates about historical inconsistencies in Diodorus' work and offer thought-provoking new interpretations and conclusions. In his masterful introductory essay, Green demolishes the traditional view of Diodorus and argues for a thorough critical reappraisal of this synthesizing historian, who attempted nothing less than a "universal history" that begins with the gods of mythology and continues down to the eve of Julius Caesar's Gallic campaigns.

A comprehensive and up-to-date account of the languages of ancient Sicily by an international team of experts.

The Bibliotheke of Diodoros of Sicily is the most voluminous Greek historiographical text from the pre-Christian era, and contains the only preserved continuous account of Classical Greek history; for many aspects of this history, such as the events in Sicily, the rise of Macedon under Philip II or the history of the Successors, it is our main or only source. It is thus often used as a source by ancient historians, and a great deal of energy has been spent on identifying which sources Diodoros himself used. Interest in Diodoros as an author in his own right, however, is a comparatively recent phenomenon. The contributors to this volume, junior scholars as well as leading international experts, set out to confront the old and new approaches to Diodoros, studying his first century BC context, questions of genre and purpose, his relationship to his predecessors, composition and narrative technique, the role of the gods and myth in the work, the use of speeches, and Diodoros' interest in themes like war, writing, language and politics. In so doing they offer exciting new insights into the Bibliotheke and the development of Greek historiography, which in turn also shed important new light on the old question of Diodoros' value as a source. This book is of interest to students of Greek and Roman history, myth, and ancient historiography in general.