Reconstructs Ephorus' lost Histories – the first “universal history”, according to Polybius – through a new reading of the fragments.
Through a careful study of the surviving fragmentary evidence, Giovanni Parmeggiani throws new light on the lost Histories of the fourth-century BC Greek historian Ephorus of Cyme, the first, according to Polybius, to have written a universal history.
Reconstructs Ephorus' lost Histories – the first “universal history”, according to Polybius – through a new reading of the fragments.
Through a careful study of the surviving fragmentary evidence, Giovanni Parmeggiani throws new light on the lost Histories of the fourth-century BC Greek historian Ephorus of Cyme, the first, according to Polybius, to have written a universal history.
Ephorus of Cyme, who lived in the fourth century BC, is one of the most important historians of antiquity whose work has not survived and, according to Polybius, was the first to have written a universal history. His lost Histories are known from numerous 'fragments', that is, quotations by later authors such as Polybius, Diodorus, Strabo and Plutarch, among others. Through a study of these 'fragments' within their broader context, Giovanni Parmeggiani throws new light on the methodology of Ephorus and both the contents and the purpose of his work. By changing our perspective on a major Greek historian between Thucydides and Polybius, this book fills a significant gap in the field, and sets the basis for a new conception of the history of ancient Greek historiography and the Greek intellectual development in general.
'A careful study of the fragments and their contexts … Parmeggiani has worked mightily to rehabilitate his author …' Craige Champion, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
GIOVANNI PARMEGGIANI is Associate Professor of Ancient Greek History at the University of Trieste. He is the author of Eforo di Cuma. Studi di storiografia greca (2011) and the editor of Between Thucydides and Polybius: The Golden Age of Greek Historiography (2014).
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