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Dindorf, Ludwig August
(Author)
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Sicilian historian Diodorus Siculus was the author of a world history in 40 papyrus "books." The work focused on the non-Greek world, including Egypt, Mesopotamia, and India, and on the Greeks and Romans from the earliest times to Caesar's conquest of Gaul. The value of this work, of which about one-third survives, lies far less in itself than in its reflection of the lost historians that it summarizes. In a few cases, such as the reign of Philip II of Macedon, it is the major source for an important period of history. Diodorus's work is the chief surviving example of a genre of potted history that became increasingly necessary and popular in later antiquity among newly risen provincials who needed to acquaint themselves in a hurry with the past of the civilization they had joined.
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