author
Siculus Diodorus
Best known for a sweeping history of the ancient world, this Sicilian Greek writer tried to gather myths, wars, and political change into one enormous work. Even in incomplete form, his history remains a key source for many lost periods of antiquity.
1 Audiobook
Arguments of Celsus, Porphyry, and the Emperor Julian, Against the Christians Also Extracts from Diodorus Siculus, Josephus, and Tacitus, Relating to the Jews, Together with an Appendix
by active 180 Celsus (Platonic philosopher), Siculus Diodorus, Flavius Josephus, Emperor of Rome Julian, Porphyry, Cornelius Tacitus
About the author
Diodorus Siculus was an ancient Greek historian from Agyrium in Sicily who flourished in the 1st century BC. He is remembered for the Bibliotheca historica (Library of History), a universal history in 40 books that set out to cover the story of the world from mythic times down to his own era.
Ancient and modern sources alike note the scale of the project. Only part of the work survives complete, but those surviving books are still important because they preserve information from earlier writers whose works have been lost. His history ranges across Egypt, the Near East, Greece, and Rome, making him one of the major compilers of the ancient Mediterranean past.
He appears to have traveled, including a stay in Egypt, and he wrote during the age of Julius Caesar and Augustus. That mix of wide reading, travel, and ambition helped shape a work that was meant for general readers as well as students of history, and it is still widely consulted today.