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.

Within the field of ancient bilingualism, Sicily represents a unique terrain for analysis as a result of its incredibly rich linguistic history, in which 'colonial' languages belonging to branches as diverse as Italic (Oscan and Latin), Greek and Semitic (Phoenician) interacted with the languages of the natives (the elusive Sicel, Sicanian and Elymian). The result of this ancient melting-pot was a culture characterised by 'postcolonial' features such as ethnic hybridity, multilingualism and artistic and literary experimentation. While Greek soon emerged as the leading language, dominating official communication and literature, epigraphic sources and indirect evidence show that the minority languages held their ground down to the fifth century BCE, and in some cases beyond. The first two parts of the volume discuss these languages and their interaction with Greek, while the third part focuses on the sociolinguistic revolution brought about by the arrival of the Romans.

Diodoros of Sicily’s book XIX is the main source for the history of the Diadochoi, Alexander the Great’s Successors, from 317 to 311 BCE. With the first full-scale commentary on this text in any language Alexander Meeus offers a detailed and reliable guide to the complicated historical narrative and the fascinating ethnographic information transmitted by Diodoros, which includes the earliest accounts of Indian widow burning and Nabataean culture. Studying both history and historiography, this volume elucidates a crucial stage in the creation of the Hellenistic world in Greece and the Near East as well as the confusing source tradition. Diodoros, a long neglected author indispensable for much of our knowledge of Antiquity, is currently enjoying growing scholarly interest. An ample introduction discusses his historical methods and sheds light on his language and style and on the manuscript transmission of books XVII-XX. By negotiating between diametrically opposed scholarly opinions a new understanding of Diodoros’ place in the ancient historiographical tradition is offered. The volume is of interest to scholars of ancient historiography, Hellenistic history, Hellenistic prose and the textual transmission of the Bibliotheke.