historiography, Roman
historiography, RomanPresentation of the Roman past was firmly rooted in the Roman present. Historians proclaimed a desire to help and inspire contemporary readers in their public life (e.g. Sallust Bellum Iugurthinum 4; Livy, pref. 10; Tacitus Annales 4. 32–3), and the past was often moulded to provide antecedents for contemporary events or rephrased in contemporary terms, sometimes for tendentious reasons, sometimes just to make the story more excitingly familiar. Roman writers were also more often public men than their Greek counterparts (e.g. Cato the Elder, Sallust, Gaius Asinius Pollio, Tacitus), and their contemporary narrative told of events in which they had played a part: the result was an emphasis on this recent history, which usually comprised the bulk even of those works which covered Rome's history from its foundation (ab urbe condita).
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