Conclusion

The works of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon suggest possibilities for the form of the war monograph (or for ‘‘particular’’ histories) greater than Polybius claimed possible - precisely because these historians challenge the very parameters of the genre. The war monograph did not develop: it was at most an idea towards which historians - and poets - could fruitfully gesture, a genre conceived precisely in order to highlight its own limitations: limitations that, in the mind of a Thucydides at least, were a spur to the creation of a work that is demeaned by being seen as the first and perfect example of its genre, springing out from the head of Herodotus like Athene from the head of Zeus.

FURTHER READING

The most influential account of the development of the monograph (and of historiography in general) has been Jacoby 1909; see also Fornara 1983. For criticisms of Jacoby’s approach, see Marincola 1999 and Humphreys 1997. A stimulating modern overview is provided by Hornblower 1994b. Strasburger 1982 remains the essential discussion of Homer’s significance for historiography; on the epic cycle, see Canfora 1999 and Burgess 2001a, b. For a wide-ranging approach to the shifting conceptions of temporality which paved the way for the development of historiography, see Csapo and Miller 1998. Marincola 2005 offers a good overview of the way historians delimited their subjects in their endings; on specific historians, see Boedeker 1988, Dewald 1997, and Peking 1997b on Herodotus; Rood 1998 on Thucydides; and Tuplin 1993 and Dillery 1995 on Xenophon. Polybius’ methodological remarks are an essential source for ancient views on monographs and other genres of ancient historiography: they are lucidly discussed by Walbank in his monograph on Polybius (1972) as well as in his collections of essays (1985, 2002) and in the detailed notes on specific passages in HCP. The development of the monograph by Sallust has been excellently discussed by Levene 1992.