Wednesday, May 24, 2023
Fields for Research
Ronald Syme, "From Octavian to Augustus," in his Roman Papers, VI (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 1-4 (at 2):
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The political history of these years is not a subject easy to treat with complete success. The very fullness of the ancient and modern accounts is something of a deterrent—scholars can be pardoned for turning rather to fields where the evidence is a thin and weedy growth, and to paths where few have trodden, although, as Carcopino somewhere reminds us, it is the beaten tracks that have the most ruts.Thanks to Eric Thomson for locating the passage from Jérôme Carcopino, Autour des Gracques: Études critiques (Paris: ‘Les Belles Lettres’, 1928), p.2: “[…]; c'est dans les sentiers battus qu'il se creuse le plus d'ornières; […]”
