Essays In Ancient And Modern Historiography

Arnaldo Momigliano was one of the foremost classical historiographers of the twentieth century. This collection of twenty-one carefully selected essays is remarkable both in the depth of its scholarship and the breadth of its subjects. Moving with ease across the centuries, Momigliano supplements powerful readings of writers in the Greek, Jewish, and Roman traditions, such as Tacitus and Polybius, with writings that focus on later historians, such as Vico and Croce. Charmingly written and concise, these pieces range from review essays reprinted from the New York Review of Books to treatises on the nature of historical scholarship. Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography is a brilliant reminder of Momigliano’s profound knowledge of classical civilization and his gift for deftly handling prose. With a new Foreword by Anthony Grafton, this volume is essential reading for any student of classics or historiography.

"Originally published 1977 by Basil Blackwell Oxford in Great Britain and by Wesleyan University Press in the United States."

Here, at last, are the long-awaited Sather Classical Lectures of the great historian Arnaldo Momigliano, In a masterly survey of the origins of ancient historiography, Momigliano captures those features of an ancient historian's work that not only gave it importance in its own day but also encouraged imitation and exploitation in later centuries. He reveals the extent to which Greek, Persian, and Jewish historians influenced the Western historiographic tradition, and then goes on to examine the first Roman historians and the emergence of national history. In the course of his exposition, he traces the development of antiquarian studies as distinctive branch of historical research from antiquity to the modern period, discusses the place of Tacitus in historical thought, and explores the way in which ecclesiastical historiography has developed a tradition of its own. All these lectures illustrate Momigliano's unrivaled ability to combine the study of classical texts and the history of classical scholarship. First delivered in 1962, the lectures were revised during the next fifteen years and then held for annotation that was never completed. They are now published from the author's manuscripts, collated and checked by Momigliano's literary executor, Anne Marie Meyer, of the Warburg Institute, with a foreword by Riccardo Di Donato, of the University of Pisa. The text is printed as the author left it. Sather Classical Lectures, 54

Arnaldo Momigliano was convinced that all disciplines need to be aware of their own history. His famous lecture Ancient History and the Antiquarian, delivered in 1949 at the Warburg Institute, and published in 1950 in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, has become a landmark. In it he showed how historiography had been changed by the recognition that what historians had left out of the record could be put back by the antiquarians. He argued that a comprehensive interest in the vestiges of ancient civilization, beginning in the Renaissance and refined and enlarged during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, made a rigid distinction between historical and antiquarian studies unjustifiable; furthermore, the standards set by the antiquarians in the understanding and interpretation of the past still have relevance.

A study of the relationship between the New Testament writings and other literature of late antiquity. This comprehensive introduction identifies and describes the major literary genres and forms found in the New Testament and Early Christian non-canonical literature. Comparing them with those prevalent in Judaism and Hellenism, it sheds light on the conventions that the New Testament writers chose to follow.

The Human and the Divine in History investigates the possibility that the author of Daniel knew and drew upon the Histories of Herodotus. Daniel uses and develops Herodotean concepts such as the succession of world empires, dynastic dreams, and the focus on both human and divine cauration in explaining historical events. A comparative reading of these two texts illuminates Daniel's theology of history, showing it to be neither as exclusively eschatological nor as sectarian as is often supposed. Rather, it is specifically the end of exile-understood as foreign domination-that Daniel envisions for the entire Jewish people.

In Momigliano and Antiquarianism, Peter N. Miller brings together an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars to provide the first serious study of Momigliano's history of historical scholarship.

Momigliano acknowledged that his Judaism was the most fundamental inspiration for his scholarship, and the writings in this collection demonstrate how the ethical experience of the Hebraic tradition informed his other works.