When different authors relate the same events, especially in narrations of warfare, resemblances cannot fail to emerge: in arrangement, in episodes, and even in language. There is a limit to variations. That is not always recognized by zealous adepts of 'Quellenforschung'.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Saturday, February 25, 2023
Resemblances
Ronald Syme, "Biographers of the Caesars," in his Roman Papers, III (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 1251-1275 (at 1256):