How to Write Anti-Roman History

Abstract

In this chapter, Tim Whitmarsh reconstructs an example of a type of history writing—accounts with a pronounced anti-Roman bias—that has left only exiguous traces in the extant collection of ancient textual sources. Whitmarsh traces this oppositional history by scrutinizing the several categories of professed opponents whom Dionysius of Halicarnassus ventriloquizes. Whitmarsh tentatively identifies Metrodorus of Scepsis as a likely target of Dionysius’ critiques and then reverse engineers Metrodorus’ arguments, drawing also on criticisms that Plutarch appears to have directed at Metrodorus. Whitmarsh finds, in the arguments he excavates from Metrodorus’ opponents, an anti-providential idea of random historical “swerves” that served to undercut Roman claims to greatness. He concludes by lamenting the loss of Metrodorus’ work, arguing that it would have provided not just a counterweight to the heavily pro-Roman emphasis in extant Greek historiography, but also an example of an entirely different philosophical underpinning.