Bret Devereaux

That can be a problem, especially when a given event or issue goes through the game of classics-to-public telephone. See, scholar 1 might write an article on >EVENT< in the text. The sum total of that event might be only a couple of paragraphs in a few authors. 4/

Very limited information! But the scholar builds out an argument, making inferences from other evidence, or similar events in the past (or maybe just irresponsible guesswork, but usually not). Suddenly a couple of paragraphs in the sources has become a 15 page article. 5/

Now a trained ancient historian is going to check the footnotes and know full well which is which. But often specialists in other fields (esp. non-history, non-classics fields) are not able - or don't care - to do this. They take the entire 15-page narrative for truth... 6/

...And then build arguments on top of that. And so you end up with a book aimed at the public with an argument balanced on a 15 page article, balanced on just three paragraphs in the sources with minimal details. Clearly not a stable argument! Many claims, little evidence! 7/

But it is unstable in ways that are not going to be obvious to someone who isn't familiar with the nature and content of the sources! To them, there is a statement in a book, it has a footnote to a specialist article, everything looks good. 8/

They then end up either wildly over their skiis when trying to use that information themselves, or are shocked that the book they like is poorly regarded by specialists (often with some variation of "where it's right, it's not new; where it's new its wrong"). 9/

So let's talk about the nature of the ancient sources, because that gives a good impression of the difference of what it is possible to *know* versus what must be *guessed* about the ancient world (particularly, but not exclusively, Greece, Rome, and the Near East), 10/