I feel like this has been a concept for a long time within imperialist studies, but I can’t find it. Surely it’s a thing. What would you call it?

EDIT: thanks for all the brilliant responses

  • Vncredleader@hexbear.netEnglish
    3·
    6 months ago

    Thucydides is so fascinating and frustrating. His writing is great, he provides some incredible perspective, but he also invents or embellishes in ways we cannot discern fully. Particularly with Pericles. Don’t we have like a half dozen actual documents from Pericles himself, several of which are just his name, much like Shakespeare? Thucydides did know the man though.

    • Wertheimer [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      2·
      6 months ago

      Pericles had a great reputation as an orator but he died just before the Athenians started publishing speeches (or paying other dudes to write them). We have some sayings of his in Plutarch’s biography, but they’re just one-liners (“Aegina is the eyesore of the Piraeus”), so all we have are invented (not to say wholly fictional) representations in Thucydides and Xenophon’s Memorabilia.