The Antiquities of Asia. A Translation With Notes of Book II of the Library of History of Diodorus Siculus by Edwin Murphy.

From the library of Prof. Wolfgang Haase, long-time editor of ANRW and the International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT). - Dust jacket somewhat rubbed and bleached, otherwise very good. / Schutzumschlag etwas berieben/verblichen, sonst sehr gut. - Diodorus Siculus lived in the first century B.C., but even then the world was old. Civilizations had come and gone, and those of Asia stretched back to eras so remote that they were far more ancient to Diodorus than he is to us. The Antiquities of Asia is the translator�s title for Book II of Diodorus� Library of History. Written for the literate Greeks of his day, it covers the period from the rise of the Assyrian empire in Mesopotamia until the collapse of Median hegemony about 550 B.C. It also includes what was then known of the histories of Arabia, India, and Scythia, as well as legends concerning the Amazons, the Hyperboreans, and the mysterious Islands of the Sun in the remote Indian Ocean. In the Library of History, Diodorus intended to collect all the historical knowledge of the world in one forty-volume encyclopedia. This second volume represents the culmination of attempts by Greeks to reconstruct the ancient history of Asia before the Trojan War. Diodorus drew extensively on earlier Greek historians such as Ctesias, Megasthenes, Herodotus, and the writers who accompanied Alexander the Great in his conquest of the East. Although many of their works are lost, we know that these authors had access to the last remnants of non-Greek historical traditions in Assyria, Babylon, and Persia, and that they traveled widely in exotic lands such as India and Scythia. Diodorus� synthesis of their efforts preserves an invaluable insight into all that educated Greeks of his day could hope to learn about the bygone civilizations of Asia. The Antiquities of Asia fills a void in the accessibility of ancient historical texts to the general reading public. This new translation is accurate and easy to read, and the notes and appendices amplify and elucidate the text for the nonspecialist, setting the narrative in historical and geographical context. Plates, illustrations, and a detailed map add graphic support. - Edwin Murphy is an independent scholar specializing in ancient and medieval history. He is employed in the Treasury Department, Washington, D.C. ISBN 9780887382727