• wjrii@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    24 days ago

    Any examples off the top of your head? I guess I am thinking more of chroniclers and “proto-historians” who would have thrived after Augustus solidified control of the entire state apparatus, but I am legitimately happy to have my horizons broadened.

    • PugJesus@lemmy.worldOPM
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      24 days ago

      I checked to make sure. I remembered Dio as more hostile than he was, though he certainly has some condemnation, he’s on the whole pro-Caesar, while I remembered him as more negative. Suetonius relates positive and negative stories about him, but regards his assassination as just. Plutarch is more in-line with what I was thinking.

      I would’ve sworn to passages in one of Tacitus’s works heavily critical on Caesar, but if they exist, Google is too fucked to give quick access, and I don’t have the energy to paw through all of Tacitus’s works to find a few paragraphs that probably aren’t even the focus of the chapter.

      Maybe I’m thinking of letters rather than histories?

      • wjrii@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        24 days ago

        No worries. I’ve probably got the autobiography more in my mind anyway, and current events have probably biased me on the side of presuming propaganda. 😂

        Still perfectly plausible either way, that ol’ Ivlivs handed the letter over as a pure flex or as CYA and a flex.