The Roman Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus is often dismissed as a mere slavish panegyric of Rome, written with no other purpose but to persuade her Greek subjects to acquiesce in her domination. Thus Schwartz, in his Pauly-Wissowa article (v, 934 f.), after describing the work as ‘ein trauriges Dokument dafür, wie tief die geistige Potenz noch mehr als die Bildung der Griechen gesunken war’, accuses Dionysius not only of incompetence as a historian, but also of a lack of the feeling proper to a Greek. Comparing him with Polybius and Posidonius, he writes ‘die tragischen Schmerzen, die jenen echten Hellenen das Begreifen des römischen Primats gekostet hatte, sind dieser kleinen Seele fremd’. He further suggests that Dionysius chose his subject because it was remote from contemporary events and he was not likely to meet much competition.

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