Hellenistic and Roman Historiography

This chapter discusses how in the four centuries from 200 BCE to 192 CE, a number of authors from localities across the Mediterranean attempted to write histories in Greek and Latin that explicitly articulate universal ambitions. Universal history was not a subgenre of historiography but encompassed a wide variety of forms, themes, and structures. This chapter discusses the broader literary and historical context of universal history writing, including lesser-known authors, and maps out recurring tropes in historical texts, such as the succession of empires and the use of synecdoche. Universal history writing in the Roman Empire was focused on concerns relating to imperialism, power, and greed. This focus is evident in histories focused solely on Rome, as well as those focused on other polities or with a hybrid structure. The focus on imperial power and greed can be connected to the political context in which the historians operated, as many were Greek-speaking men critical of predatory imperial behaviour, and even Latin-speaking historians could have different vantage points as provincials.