Quintus Fabius Pictor?

[Brucecarson]

I see Quintus Pictor referenced here and there, a early roman historian. I haven't found any English translated versions, so maybe someone who knows Latin could suggest where to find an untranslated version. My Latin isn't very good but I'd be curious to at least make a quick read through. Also it would help out A LOT with my final report for AP Ancient History.

 

If anyone has a PDF (or any other file format), I could PM you with my email and you could send me a copy? (I have a sinking feeling that this will otherwise only be available in some $$ academic journals which my HS library doesn't have access too).

[Primus Pilus]

I see Quintus Pictor referenced here and there, a early roman historian. I haven't found any English translated versions, so maybe someone who knows Latin could suggest where to find an untranslated version. My Latin isn't very good but I'd be curious to at least make a quick read through. Also it would help out A LOT with my final report for AP Ancient History.

 

If anyone has a PDF (or any other file format), I could PM you with my email and you could send me a copy? (I have a sinking feeling that this will otherwise only be available in some $$ academic journals which my HS library doesn't have access too).

 

As I understand it there is very little if any surviving text. It exists as reference material for later writer Polybius, Livy, Plutarch, etc. Modern historians still debate his style of writing and functional historical role. Such an argument can only take place as conjecture and in the absence of direct evidence. If his work survived the debate takes a different form (ie the impact of his work, the historicity, etc.)

[Brucecarson]

I see Quintus Pictor referenced here and there, a early roman historian. I haven't found any English translated versions, so maybe someone who knows Latin could suggest where to find an untranslated version. My Latin isn't very good but I'd be curious to at least make a quick read through. Also it would help out A LOT with my final report for AP Ancient History.

 

If anyone has a PDF (or any other file format), I could PM you with my email and you could send me a copy? (I have a sinking feeling that this will otherwise only be available in some $$ academic journals which my HS library doesn't have access too).

 

As I understand it there is very little if any surviving text. It exists as reference material for later writer Polybius, Livy, Plutarch, etc. Modern historians still debate his style of writing and functional historical role. Such an argument can only take place as conjecture and in the absence of direct evidence. If his work survived the debate takes a different form (ie the impact of his work, the historicity, etc.)

 

Damn. Strange that Quintus was writing just around 180 years before Caesar yet very little(?) of his work survives but we have all of Caesar's conquest of Gaul. You can even buy it on Amazon.

 

If anyone has info on where to get what portions are available I'd still very much like to know. It's got to be somewhere... in some old book somewhere in Europe.

[Primus Pilus]

I see Quintus Pictor referenced here and there, a early roman historian. I haven't found any English translated versions, so maybe someone who knows Latin could suggest where to find an untranslated version. My Latin isn't very good but I'd be curious to at least make a quick read through. Also it would help out A LOT with my final report for AP Ancient History.

 

If anyone has a PDF (or any other file format), I could PM you with my email and you could send me a copy? (I have a sinking feeling that this will otherwise only be available in some $$ academic journals which my HS library doesn't have access too).

 

As I understand it there is very little if any surviving text. It exists as reference material for later writer Polybius, Livy, Plutarch, etc. Modern historians still debate his style of writing and functional historical role. Such an argument can only take place as conjecture and in the absence of direct evidence. If his work survived the debate takes a different form (ie the impact of his work, the historicity, etc.)

 

Damn. Strange that Quintus was writing just around 180 years before Caesar yet very little(?) of his work survives but we have all of Caesar's conquest of Gaul. You can even buy it on Amazon.

 

If anyone has info on where to get what portions are available I'd still very much like to know. It's got to be somewhere... in some old book somewhere in Europe.

 

Caesar's work survived (in part) because of who he was... the passage of time didn't diminish his popularity or his work's availability. Thankfully, despite the church's monopoly on publishing and common literacy in the post Roman era, the medieval monks at least were wise enough to preserve the texts of other important historians and pass them on through time.

[Bryaxis Hecatee]

I think your best bet to find a compilation of Fabius Pictor's fragments would be to get your hands on a copy of the PHI cd rom (cf. http://www.libraries.iub.edu/index.php?pag...ourceId=1904361 ) or a book collecting fragments of ancient roman historians. I don't have my old courses book in my new flat yet so I can't provide you with better directions.

Edited May 11, 2010 by Bryaxis Hecatee

[Ingsoc]

I think your best bet to find a compilation of Fabius Pictor's fragments would be to get your hands on a copy of the PHI cd rom (cf. http://www.libraries.iub.edu/index.php?pag...ourceId=1904361 ) or a book collecting fragments of ancient roman historians. I don't have my old courses book in my new flat yet so I can't provide you with better directions.

 

As I understand it's a collection of Roman authors who wrote in Latin, however Pictor wrote history in Greek.

[Maty]

There's not enough fragments to make even a synopsis possible. I think about 30 sentences survive from the entire work, and most of them are from book I which seems to have been somewhat independent of the rest and dealt with the Roman foundation legend.

 

 

Your best source for this is Frier's 'Libri annales pontificum maximorum: the origins of the annalistic tradition'. If your library does not have it, you can either fork out about a hundred dollars to get it from Amazon, or do a search for it online - I had a quick look and the relevant chapter 'Fabii Pictores' seems to be in Google books. However, you might need the real thing to find the appendix which lists the works wherein all the fragments are found.

 

(As a comment on a later posting - it is an interesting question as to which historians today are important because the monks -for whatever reason- preserved them, and which historians the monks preserved because they were important. Those monks were pretty arbitrary.

 

For example we have the Hellenica of Xenophon, but would probably prefer the Oxyrynchus historian who covered the same period. We only know this historian existed because some scraps of papyrus were found with bits of his work on it. We don't even know his name, but the scraps give us hints of some of the huge body of works from antiquity we have lost - Pictor's included.)