Problems in Ancient History

volume two

The Roman World

wyd. Donald Kagan

New York 1966

Stron 431, format: 16x23 cm

Książka podniszczona: widoczne uszkodzenia okładki, nalepki biblioteczne, drobne podkreślenia w tekście. Stan dostateczny

Wartościowy jest wybór tekstów badaczy /np. o Sulli/

This anthology is an attempt to meet several problems facing the college student beginning the study of ancient history. It is meant to be used in conjunction with a narrative history or some suitable substitute. Together with such a narrative account it provides the material for instructive and, hopefully, exciting discussions. Each section is a self-contained unit that presents a problem of continuing interest to historians. In almost every case there is a selection of the pertinent sources in translation, with a number of modern viewpoints also presented. In this way the beginning student may experience immediately the nature of the historian's craft: the excitement of weighing and evaluating sources, the problem of posing meaningful and enlightening questions, the need to change hypotheses in the light of new evidence or new insights, the necessity in some cases of sus­pending judgment. This method aims at reproducing in some small measure the actual conditions of historical investigation and making the results available to the neophyte.
The problems have been selected on the basis of several criteria: first, they attempt to span the chronological period usually covered by courses in American colleges in a reasonably representative way; second, they are all real problems that continue to excite interest among scholars, and in almost every case they have been the subject of relatively recent study; finally, they are meant to be sufficiently varied in topic and approach to expose the student to a variety of historical methods and techniques. Each problem, along with an accompanying narrative text, is sufficient for a week's work, but teachers will be able to assign the material to meet their own needs. It is hoped that the sampling of the ancient authors offered here will provide an irresistible stimulus for the student to read them in their entirety.