On the Bookends of Democracy: Moralizing Classical Period Autocrats of Syracuse in Diodorus Siculus
Date
2022-05
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University of Delaware
Abstract
This research analyzes Diodorus Siculus's "Library of History," namely the
books which recount the lives and doings of the rulers of Syracuse before (485-465
BCE) and after (405-367 BCE) a sixty-year period of democracy. By using Diogenes,
a program for reading and searching the databases that contain the utilized ancient
texts in their original language, this thesis sets out to determine Diodorus's mission in
penning his forty-book collection, which is recording history on the surface, but also
explicitly and implicitly moralizing the leaders he discusses within to perpetuate
didactic rhetoric. He accomplishes his goal by deliberately labeling the autocrats and
comparing them to one another. The first chapter focuses on the differentiation of each
Deinomenid brother—Gelon, Hieron, and Thrasybulus—via Diodorus's terminology,
and the second on how Dionysius is compared to the former group considering a
decades' long gap between autocratic rulers. Broadly, this research delves into topics
of both ancient history and historiography.
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Keywords
Diodorus Siculus, Diogenes, Greek and Roman history, Historiography