Overview

Nine new studies here explore, and reconstruct, determinant episodes of Greek, Hellenistic and Roman history. The authors argue that hindsight – especially in modern works – has falsified the past, by playing down or eliminating the record of ancient unfulfilled forecasts, and of trends in events which in the long term did not obviously prove predominant. The authors also highlight the efforts of the best-placed writers in Antiquity not to be misled by hindsight, but rather to give due weight to the working of hopes and fears, and of trends in events, which with remote retrospect would tend to be belittled or forgotten. The techniques demonstrated in this book open new fields of research across Ancient History: they illuminate almost every ancient episode for which there is evidence of what historical agents planned or anticipated. The authors show convincingly that, by giving due respect to trends observable, and to political predictions made, in Antiquity, historians of today are better placed to evaluate outcomes: to see how easily events might have developed differently, or even to show that concrete outcomes were different from those conventionally portrayed from hindsight.

Full Product Details

Author:   Anton Powell
Publisher:   Classical Press of Wales
Imprint:   Classical Press of Wales
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.579kg
ISBN:  

9781905125586

ISBN 10:   1905125585
Pages:   228
Publication Date:   30 November 2013
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Introduction Anton Powell 1 Historical explanation and what didn't happen: the virtues of virtual history Christopher Pelling 2 Herodotos and the avoidance of hindsight Emily Baragwanath 3 Athens' Sicilian expedition: contemporary scenarios of its outcome Roger Brock 4 The shadow of what might have been: sideshadowing in Thucydides and Xenophon Lisa Irene Hau 5 Spartan supremacy: a 'possession for ever'? Early-fourth-century expectations of enduring ascendancy Helen Roche 6 Confusing aim and result? Hindsight and the disintegration of Alexander the Great's empire Alexander Meeus 7 How to avoid being a backward-looking prophet - counterfactuals in Polybius Felix K. Maier 8 Anticipating Octavian's failure: from Tauromenium to the death of Cleopatra Anton Powell 9 Memoriae eximere: AD 41 and the survival of republicanism under the Principate Katherine Low

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Author Information

Anton Powell has published extensively on the history of Sparta, Athens – and the literature of the Roman Revolution. He was the author of an introduction to source-criticism in Greek history, Athens and Sparta (3rd edition 2016), the editor of Companion to Sparta (2 volumes, 2018), and co-editor (with Nicolas Richer) of Xenophon and Sparta (2020). His monograph Virgil the Partisan (2008) was awarded the prize of the American Vergilian Society for ‘the book that makes the greatest contribution toward our understanding and appreciation of Vergil’. He has twice been Invited Professor at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, in 2006 for Greek history and in 2008 for Latin literature.

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