Description
Book SynopsisShortly before his death in September 1989, Sir Ronald Syme approved the selection and publication of these fifty-nine papers.Volume VI, composed of previously published articles and reviews, offers a splendid cross-section of Syme''s interests: the Roman revolution; the Augustan aristocracy; Tacitus and Sallust; historical geography; the Roman army; a variety of classical authors (Horace, Ovid, Strabo, Seneca, Justin, the Historia Augusta); the Emperor Hadrian; colonial elites; historiography, ancient and modern; and Roman political thought and society.Volume VII consists of twelve unpublished papers (originally intended to form part of a separate book, `Pliny and Italia Transpadana''), in which the two Plinies and their age are put under searching scrutiny. It is rounded off by a Latin text purporting to derive from a lost book of Tacitus'' Histories (duly equipped with commentary); and by an Index to both volumes.
Trade Review'These volumes represent the final as well as the most recent publications of a greatly renowned scholar ... his acute judgment and learning will abide.' Ramsay MacMullen, Arion
'The final two volumes exhibit the breadth, erudition, wit and point that readers have come to expect and enjoy. It may be predicted with confidence that this jeu d'ésprit will be the fulcrum of many a future study of twentieth-century historiography in general and of Syme and his work in particular.' David Braund, University of Exeter, The Classical Review, Vol. XLIII, No. 1, 1993
'two years after the death of the great Oxford scholar, two further volumes were published, again under the careful supervision of A. R. Birley. To him we also owe the extensive index of manes (VII, 663-710) which makes the wealth of the material handled by Syme accessible. Not everybody would have put in this amount of effort and care... Syme's main interest was in themes of a prosopographical nature, particularly concerned with senatorial and masterly essay style... done with his characteristic mastery and restraint.' Werner Eck, Cologne
