All historians have biases and these biases shape the way the write history. Some authors write to promote an ideal while others write to educate the public and authors also differ in what aspects of history they write about. When reading any history text it is important to remember why the author wrote and what was important to them. An author like Jo-Ann Shelton writes history to educate people on the social history of Rome by using letters and inscriptions left from individual people, the authors of the fourth edition of A History of Rome write to educate college students on the political and economic history of Rome while occasionally discussing the culture in a traditional text-book format, and Suetonius wrote history to tell stories about the emperors and therefore discarded information unless it directly pertained to the single man he was focusing on. Jo-Ann Shelton places more emphasis on many different individuals as a way to accurately portray Roman history, the authors of A History of Rome place significantly less emphasis on many individuals but they still discuss different groups of people throughout the Roman Empire and various inscriptions, and Suetonius only discusses the emperors, and those who had an impact on their reign, in depth.
Jo-Ann Shelton states in the preface of her book, “It is the purpose of this book to allow the ancient Romans to step forward and talk to us about themselves,” (1998, p. xxiii). She clearly believes that each individual in history has an impact on its course. While she acknowledges the bias of preservation has destroyed many letters, documents, and inscriptions she uses what is available to show readers what life was like for different individuals. Some of these sources come...
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...o impacted history alone and groups of people who impacted history by working together. Finally, Suetonius seems to have viewed only great men as important and impactful individuals in history, focusing solely on the emperors and their immediate family and anyone who threatened them. Individually, each author or set of authors provides an incomplete picture of Roman culture because of their biases, but used together it is possible to begin to understand how individuals did impact history in either large or small ways.
Works Cited
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Shelton, J.-A. (1998). As the romans did: A sourcebook in roman social history (2nd ed.). New
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Suetonius. (1957). The twelve Caesars (R. Graves, Trans.). New York: Penguin.
Plutarch presented history through biographical stories of the people that were important and influential during the time period he wished to address. However, after having read some of his work, one realizes that Plutarch inserts his own personal opinion and views of the people at hand into the factual documentation of their lives. For example, in The Life of Crassus, Plutarch expresses a general dislike and negative view of the man, but in The Life of Caesar he portrays the life through a lens of praise. It also seems that he uses his opinions of the people that he writes about to subtly extend moral lessons to the reader. What follows is a further isolation of Plutarch's opinions and lessons from within The Lives of Crassus and Caesar.
T.J. Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000-264 BC), London and New York: Routledge, 1995
Livy’s The Rise of Rome serves as the ultimate catalogue of Roman history, elaborating on the accomplishments of each king and set of consuls through the ages of its vast empire. In the first five books, Livy lays the groundwork for the history of Rome and sets forth a model for all of Rome to follow. For him, the “special and salutary benefit of the study of history is to behold evidence of every sort of behaviour set forth as on a splendid memorial; from it you may select for yourself and for your country what to emulate, from it what to avoid, whether basely begun or basely concluded.” (Livy 4). Livy, however, denies the general populace the right to make the same sort of conclusions that he made in constructing his histories. His biased representation of Romulus and Tarquin Superbus, two icons of Roman history, give the readers a definite model of what a Roman should be, instead of allowing them to come to their own conclusion.
The Roman Empire had a social system that was based on autonomy, heredity, citizenship and property as well as distinguishing men and women by their social status. The women had the lowest position in society which were depended on the status of their husbands and fathers. They lacked independence and ...
Livy assumed that by making history enjoyable to read, he would be able to provide the correct type of “medicine” to a sick community (30). Writing the history of Rome, from beginning to his present time, Livy presented an evolution of Rome and her values. Livy’s presentation of history gave readers the opportunity to find the error in their ways, and revert to the old approach to tradition. Because “human nature remains the same” throughout the evolution of civilization, “it is reasonable to expect that history” repeats itself (Ogilvie 9). With the study of history, the reader is able to understand what has happened and what its effects are. Understanding the past allows oneself to better prepare for the
In The Houses of History, many different schools of historical thought are presented and light in shed on what exactly it means to be those different types of historians. Not all historians think the same way or approach history from the same perspective, but some similar groups of thought have converged together and have formed the various types of historians that will be presented, such as empiricists, psychohistorians, oral historians, and gender historians. All of these groups can approach the same event or concept and look at them in an entirely different way simply due to the way the historical approach they are accustomed to views things.
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