David S. Potter is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Greek and Latin at the University of Michigan. he is the author of prophecy and History in the Crisis of the Roman Empire (1990) and Prophets and Emperors: Human and Divine Authority from Augustus to Theodosius (1993)

'This is a very lucid and accessible guide to the complicated field of historiography, from which teachers and students alike will benefit.' - JACT Review'An extremely learned, and very personal, excursion through the byways of ancient ... historiography ...This is a book that is more difficult, and more important, than it appears at first glance, but its rewards are certainly worth the effort.' - Pheonix

• Definitions: Historia as Enquiry, Historia as Story, Truth and History, Some Rules, Texts: Sorting Things Out, Participant Evidence, Publication and Literary Fashion, Illustrative Evidence, Narrative, Reconstructing Fragmentary Authors, Scholarship: Standards of Research, Historians and Records, Quellenforschung, Near Eastern Records of the Past and the Roman Imagination, Grammarians and Historians, The Physical Process, Conclusion, Presentation: The Problem, Leopold Ranke, Objectivism and relativism, Fact and Presentation: Lucien and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Fact and Presentation: Cicero, Other Forms of Presentation, Versimilitude, Conclusion, Epilogue: The Discourse of Dominance, Appendix: Classical Authors Discussed in the Text, Bibliography.