Moralising and Immersive Big Man History

« previous chapter | next chapter »

Iscriviti alla newsletter

DC Field	Value
dc.identifier	ECF_chapter_16583
dc.contributor.author	Hau Lisa Irene
dc.title	Moralising and Immersive Big Man History. Diodorus’ Representation of Gelon, Dionysius I, and Agathocles
dc.type	Chapter
dc.language.iso	en
dc.description.abstract	This article analyses Diodorus’ accounts of the Sicilian tyrants Gelon, Dionysius I, and Agathocles, on a stylistic and thematic basis. It argues that the significant differences between the three narratives are due partly to Sicilian social memory, partly to the differences between the sources used by Diodorus, and it offers some thoughts on the lost works of Timaeus of Tauromenium and Duris of Samos. However, in their present form, all three narratives are Diodoran: he chose to take them over from his sources in differing levels of detail, he kept the themes he wanted to keep and probably left out others, and he may well have added his own evaluative phrases and historiographical or moral-didactic comments. His Sicilian narrative is dominated by ‘big men’ in a way that his narrative of mainland Greece is not (apart from the Alexander narrative in book 17), and all three narratives are designed to show the importance and interest of Sicily, for the double purpose of pleasurable reading and moral improvement.
dc.relation.ispartof	Antiquity Studies
dc.relation.ispartof	Filologia e letteratura
dc.publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Venice University Press, Fondazione Università Ca’ Foscari
dc.issued	2023-12-19
dc.dateAccepted	2023-04-11
dc.dateSubmitted	2023-02-13
dc.identifier.uri	http://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/libri/978-88-6969-743-2/moralising-and-immersive-big-man-history/
dc.identifier.doi	10.30687/978-88-6969-742-5/003
dc.identifier.issn	2610-8828
dc.identifier.eissn	2610-9344
dc.identifier.isbn	978-88-6969-743-2
dc.identifier.eisbn	978-88-6969-742-5
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
item.fulltext	with fulltext
item.grantfulltext	open
dc.peer-review	yes
dc.subject	Agathocles
dc.subject	Diodorus
dc.subject	Dionysius I
dc.subject	Duris of Samos
dc.subject	Gelon
dc.subject	Immersion
dc.subject	Narrative
dc.subject	Narratology
dc.subject	Timaeus of Tauromenium

Chapter
open access peer reviewed

Moralising and Immersive Big Man History

Diodorus’ Representation of Gelon, Dionysius I, and Agathocles

Lisa Irene Hau The University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK

VIEW PDF DOWNLOAD PDF

abstract

This article analyses Diodorus’ accounts of the Sicilian tyrants Gelon, Dionysius I, and Agathocles, on a stylistic and thematic basis. It argues that the significant differences between the three narratives are due partly to Sicilian social memory, partly to the differences between the sources used by Diodorus, and it offers some thoughts on the lost works of Timaeus of Tauromenium and Duris of Samos. However, in their present form, all three narratives are Diodoran: he chose to take them over from his sources in differing levels of detail, he kept the themes he wanted to keep and probably left out others, and he may well have added his own evaluative phrases and historiographical or moral-didactic comments. His Sicilian narrative is dominated by ‘big men’ in a way that his narrative of mainland Greece is not (apart from the Alexander narrative in book 17), and all three narratives are designed to show the importance and interest of Sicily, for the double purpose of pleasurable reading and moral improvement.

Published

Dec. 19, 2023

Accepted

April 11, 2023

Submitted

Feb. 13, 2023

Language

ISBN (PRINT)

978-88-6969-743-2

ISBN (EBOOK)

978-88-6969-742-5

Keywords: Gelon • Immersion • Agathocles • Diodorus • Narratology • Dionysius I • Narrative • Duris of Samos • Timaeus of Tauromenium

permalink: http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-742-5/003

Copyright: © 2023 Lisa Irene Hau. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

References to this chapter

How to cite