Tacitus was Rome's greatest historian, and the Annals his greatest work. This book collects A.J. Woodman's writings on Tacitus over the past twenty-five years, focusing almost exclusively on the Annals. Woodman offers new or different interpretations of some of the most famous passages in the work, and argues that, through familiarity, generations of scholars have misread significant passages, thereby gaining and perpetuating a distorted view of what Tacitus had to say, especially about Tiberius. His iconoclastic insights will have major implications for those who wish to use the Annals as a source for what happened in the first century AD.

Tacitus Reviewed

Literature & Fiction

Woodman, A.J.

History & Criticism

Clarendon Press

In recent decades there has been a complete revolution in the way we read the historians of Greece and Rome. Their works have been shown to be quite different in nature from those of today's historians; instead, their techniques and assumptions have much in common with those of Homer or Virgil. Using these narratives as sources for ancient history has become more problematic than ever before, as we come to understand better how their style (the medium) and content (the message) shape each other. This book briefly introduces this revolution as it affects our reading of Latin historical writing, and then provides authoritative and informative discussions of the three major Latin historians of the classical period: Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus. The focus is on narrative technique and structure, intertextuality, and close reading, and the discussions are as accessible to beginning students as they are useful to experienced teachers.

Latin Historians (New Surveys in the Classics, Series Number 27)

Kraus, C. S.

Oxford University Press

From Poetry to History offers twenty-five selected papers by the leading Latin scholar A. J Woodman, and focuses on the close relationship between two popular genres from the late first century BC to the early second century AD, namely Latin poetry and historical writing or ancient historiography. Most of the papers represent close readings of individual poems or passages of text, the majority of which concern the works of Tacitus, Catullus, and Horace, but which also feature Cicero, Virgil, Livy, Augustus' Res Gestae, Velleius, and the younger Pliny.The volume includes four papers published for the very first time; as well as an epilogue which discusses the various themes treated.

From Poetry to History: Selected Papers

Rhetoric in Classical Historiography: Four Studies

This radical study argues against the view that the historian's craft has remained largely unchanged since classical times. Includes detailed discussion of the work of Thucydides, Cicero, Sallust, Livy and Tacitus.

Rhetoric in Classical Historiography

Routledge

This radical study argues against the view that the historian's craft has remained largely unchanged since classical times. Includes detailed discussion of the work of Thucydides, Cicero, Sallust, Livy and Tacitus.

Rhetoric in classical historiography: Four studies

Ancient & Medieval Literature

Areopagitica Press

The Cambridge Companion to Tacitus

Cambridge University Press

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Books by Woodman, A.J.