Diodorus Siculus has not enjoyed a positive reputation among historians of antiquity. Since the nineteenth century hisBibliothēkēhas been dismissed as a derivative work produced by an incompetent compiler, useful often only in so far as one can mine his text for lost and, evidently, far superior works of history. Diodorus’ own input into theBibliothēkēhas been dismissed as the clumsy intervention of ‘a small man with pretensions’. In one of the sharpest expressions of the traditional view, Diodorus is not a historian (...) but ‘a mere epitomizer and an incompetent one at that’. In recent years voices of dissent have spoken up, determined to investigate Diodorus’ own contribution to ancient historiography. Their contributions have been notable for their desire to study and understand Diodorus on his own terms or to problematize his derivative use of his sources. Sacks, in particular, has argued that Diodorus’ voice can be heard in nearly every proem, a feature that occurs regularly in the text, and that Diodorus’ own views structure his analysis of historical events copied from other authors. (shrink)

At some point before the late fifth centurya.d.an unidentified writer compiled and affixed to each book of Dio'sRoman Historyan index, most notably comprising a table of contents and an excerpt of the consularfasti. Of dubious provenance these paratexts have played a peripheral role in the editorial history of the work. Bekker and Dindorf, with somewhat puritanical zeal, removed them from the main text of their editions of theRoman Historyin the belief that they were not by Dio's hand. Conversely, the stereotyped (...) edition of Dio's history produced under the auspices of Karl Tauchnitz at Leipzig in 1818 provided Latin translations of the indices, but omitted the Greek. Dio's more recent editors have restored them to their editions of theRoman History, despite questions over their origins. (shrink)