Introduction

Abstract

Abstract It is a well-known fact that most of what the Greeks and Romans wrote has been lost to us. This is true for history as it is for other genres. Moreover, it is extremely difficult to assess the merits and defects of historians whose work survives only in fragments. Even the word ‘fragment’ is misleading, since the majority of such fragments are not papyrus scraps (as for the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia) nor even verbatim quotations, but paraphrases by later writers. One suspects, however, that none of the lost historians equalled the literary brilliance and historical acumen of Herodotus and Thucydides. But that is small consolation for the student of the late Classical and Hellenistic periods, for whom such writers as Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch hardly compensate for the great contemporary histories that have been lost.