Vasta
Ashigaru
posted 05-15-14 04:53 PM
EDT (US)
4 / 5
Oh they're all biased and operating on a different level of truth than us. Thucydides and Polybius, perhaps, had some idea of "the truth" that approached ours, but even they operate in ways so foreign to our way of thinking that we must always be conscious of the difference between "history" and "historiography."
As for who is the best read? Sallust is my personal favorite, though, just as the ancients, I am quite biased. I just earned my doctorate thanks to him. Either way, the final battle of Catiline is a wonderful scene of pathos, and the snail hunt in the Jugurtha is rather charming. For all the claims that Sallust was the Roman Thudycides, he had a great knack for the Herodotean logos.
Livy has far greater nuance than I had ever expected, and I'm looking forward to reading him more closely in the future. Tacitus, of course, is a gem, but everyone knows that already.
As for Cato the Elder, Pitt, give him another try. The "Caedicius" fragment (fr. 83 in ORF=Aulus Gellius 3.7) is downright delightful. The whole idea of an anonymous history is incredibly fascinating, such a bizarre blip in the history of history.
ShieldWall
Ashigaru
posted 05-16-14 10:58 AM
EDT (US)
5 / 5
I'm a Thucydides man myself. A superb account of (most) of the Peleponnesian War, and not given to the obvious bias and self-aggrandising of ancient authors.