Knowing Future Time In and Through Greek Historiography (Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes, 32)

From the early modern period, Greek historiography has been studied in the context of Cicero's notion __historia magistra vitae__ and considered to exclude conceptions of the future as different from the present and past. Comparisons with the Roman, Judeo-Christian and modern historiography have sought to justify this perspective by drawing on a category of the future as a temporal mode that breaks with the present. In this volume, distinguished classicists and historians challenge this contention by raising the question of what the future was and meant in antiquity by offering fresh considerations of prognostic and anticipatory voices in Greek historiography from Herodotus to Appian and by tracing the roots of established views on historical time in the opposition between antiquity and modernity. They look both at contemporary scholarly argument and the writings of Greek historians in order to explore the relation of time, especially the future, to an idea of the historical that is formulated in the plural and is always in motion. By reflecting on the prognostic of historical time the volume will be of interest not only to classical scholars, but to all who are interested in the history and theory of historical time. Alexandra Lianeri: Introduction: The Futures of Greek Historiography Future Times and the Poetics of Greek Historiography Jonas Grethlein: Ancient Historiography and ‘Future Past’ Emily Greenwood: Futures Real and Unreal in Greek Historiography Antonis Tsakmakis: Between Thucydides and the Future: Narrative Prolepsis and Xenophon’s Concept of Historiography Emily Baragwanath: Knowing Future Time in Xenophon’s Anabasis Nikos Miltsios: Knowledge and Foresight in Polybius Christopher Pelling: Preparing for Posterity: Dionysius and Polybius Temporalities of the Future and the Times of Historical Action Catherine Darbo-Peschanski: The Future and the Logic of Closure in Greek Historiography Katharina Wesselmann: No Future? Possibilities and Permanence in Herodotus’ Histories Karen Bassi: Fading into the Future: Visibility and Legibility in Thucydides’ History Nicolas Wiater: Shifting Endings, Ambiguity and Deferred Closure in Polybius’ Histories Paolo Desideri: Plutarch on the Future of an Ancient World Luke Pitcher: Future’s Bright? Looking Forward in Appian Melina Tamiolaki: Writing for Posterity in Ancient Historiography: Lucian’s Perspective Toward the Modern Futures of Greek Times Dennis Pausch: On the Shoulders of Greeks? Future Time in Livy’s Ab urbe condita Antonis Liakos: Constituting the Modern World as the Future of Greek Antiquity Tim Rood: Horoscopes of Empires: Future Ruins from Thucydides to Macaulay Aviezer Tucker: Historiographic Ancients and Moderns: The Difference between Thucydides and Ranke Oswyn Murray: The Western Futures of Ancient History Greek historiography engaged with past and present time - but how exactly did this engagement incorporate claims to knowing the future? Considering prognosis as rooted in historiographical temporalities, this volume reads historians from Herodotus to Appian with a view to exploring configurations of future time in the context of ancient and modern reflections on the historical as well as the ethical and political role of historiographical practice