Experience and Teleology in Ancient Historiography : Futures Past from Herodotus to Augustine

This new approach to the temporal dynamic of historiography will appeal to classicists, ancient historians and scholars interested in the theory of history. Its application to major Greek and Roman historians yields a new and often surprising take on individual authors and the history of ancient historiography in general.

The past is narrated in retrospect. Historians can either capitalize on the benefit of hindsight and give their narratives a strongly teleological design or they may try to render the past as it was experienced by historical agents and contemporaries. This book explores the fundamental tension between experience and teleology in major works of Greek and Roman historiography, biography and autobiography. The combination of theoretical reflections with close readings yields a new, often surprising assessment of the history of ancient historiography as well as a deeper understanding of such authors as Thucydides, Tacitus and Augustine. While much recent work has focused on how ancient historians use emplotment to generate historical meaning, Experience and Teleology in Ancient Historiography offers a new approach to narrative form as a mode of coming to grips with time.