Greek Historical Narratives

Voices from the Cave: An Enslaved Woman as a Source in Plutarch’s Life of Crassus

In this talk, I will suggest that the contemporaneous appearance of history painting and historiography in ancient Greece is indicative of a deeper affinity between the visual arts and writing history: both find their true meaning in the fact that what they represent is absent except as image or history.

This paper argues that Josephus’ laudatory portrait of Julius Caesar offers an aetiology for the special relationship Josephus hoped to (re-)establish between the imperial Caesars and the Jews following the Flavian victory in 70 CE. In both the Bellum Judaicum and the Antiquitates Judaicae, Caesar’s interactions with the Jews are amplified (or exaggerated). Josephus suggests that Caesar only escaped the siege of Alexandria thanks to the support of Antipater, Hyrcanus II and the Jews (BJ 1.187-192; AJ 14.127-136).

In a pseudo-documentary epistolary exchange in the Alexander Romance (3.18) (cf. Arthur-Montagne), Queen Kandake of Meroë responds to Alexander with a statement about the nature of her body and soul: μὴ καταγνῷς δὲ τοῦ χρώματος ἡμῶν· ἐσμὲν γὰρ λευκότεροι καὶ λαμπρότεροι ταῖς ψυχαῖς τῶν παρὰ σοῦ λευκοτάτων (“Do not despise our color, for we are whiter and more brilliant in our souls than the whitest among your people”).

In Bella Civilia 4.12-51, Appian narrates approximately eighty proscription tales, focusing on the most notable tales out of the numerous stories he encountered in his research. He includes tales of the proscribed who were executed due to betrayal by a family member and those who were saved due to the risks their family members took to protect them. Women are key actors in the proscription tales found in Appian given that the domestic sphere became a political battleground during this period (Milnor 2005).