Description
For long stretches of Greek history in the classical period, Diodorus Siculus provides the only surviving continuous narrative of events. For this narrative he summarized, however incompetently, the work of earlier and greater historians whose original texts are lost to us. This makes Diodorus an invaluable quarry for the historian and the historiographer alike, but one that can be used only with discretion. We need to get as clear an idea as we can of the way his mind worked, where his account is most likely to be useful, and what sort of distortions to expect when he goes astray.
