Introducing the Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind

by Edith Hall

The events were narrated by the Greek historian Diodorus of Sicily, in his Library of World History. Diodorus accepted the inevitable rise of the Roman regime but had reservations about Roman culture and behavior. The ambivalence of his Greek contemporaries was crystallized in his work. His Library is peppered with formulaic praise of Roman virtues, yet between the lines it reveals another story. Consider his account of the punishment of Perseus, the last king of Macedonia, in Italy after his defeat. While the victorious Roman general Aemilius Paullus celebrates a triumph, The adversities faced by Perseus were so grave that his tribulations seem like the inventions in a novel. But despite them all, he still did not want to die. Before the Senate had made a decision as to how to punish him, one of the city magistrates had imprisoned him and his children at Alba. This prison is deep underground, smaller than a dining room, dark and foul-smelling from the large numbers of men it accommodated. They were men condemned for capital offenses, for at this time Alba was the jail where most who fell into this category