pothos.org

agesilaos wrote:I did not think his book brought anything new to the table, but then I 'm a jaded old sod and like many, I think that straight biography has run its course and that the future is in more detailed essays (though one must immediately add that just being an essay does not mean that it is superior to the analysis one might find in a good biography! ).

Yes, perhaps there's not much left to add in that regard. But as civilization inevitably moves on, languages will change and new crops of historical thinkers will emerge demanding more. Take for instance, the French versions of Arrian from the 17th and 18th centuries. Much of these have thankfully been preserved on pdf and can be found online. I was able to download some pdf books on Alexander, Aristotle, and other ancient Greek source material going back as far as the 1720s.

Yes, although those early writers did not always exercise the sort of historical method of which we would approve these days A really good reference online is PHI, Packham Historical Inscriptions (or something like that) which has real source material, all those lovely inscriptions, only in Greek but free, I dread to think what a volume of IG2 goes for nowadays As Guenter Grass says 'A bad book is still a book and therefore sacred,' he clearly had not read Doherty's travesty but aside from books that peddle lies to the unwary, I would not wish to denigrate anyone for reading any history. And you can always post here and get some smart-arse to tell you where the academic has got it wrong!!!