Dionysius and The History of Archaic Rome

In The History of Archaic Rome, Dionysius purposely viewed Roman history as an embodiment of all that was best in Greek culture. Gabba places Dionysius's remarkable thesis in its cultural context, comparing this author with other ancient historians and evaluating Dionysius's treatment of his sources.

In truth, the last decades B.C. made the historian's task an enormous challenge. On the one hand, the ancient writers knew Rome to be the greatest empire the world had seen, seemingly impregnabl...