Reading by Example: Valerius Maximus and the Historiography of Exempla

Reviews / Votes

"Interpreting Valerius Maximus' Facta et dicta memorabilia as 'a piece of literature in its own right' (p. 1) was one of the aims of the 2017 conference in Cape Town, from which many papers in this volume emerged. Most of this thematically arranged volume goes beyond that and proves that there are well thought-out reasons for everything Valerius writes, for how he arranges his material as well as for every detail he avoids recording. Almost 30 years after M. Bloomer's influential monograph Valerius Maximus and the Rhetoric of the New Nobility (1992), Reading by Example stands as a clear milestone in the scholarship, definitely demonstrating that Valerius has a project (or projects) and deserves to be investigated for his system of thought and defined authorial choices -and not primarily as ancillary to other authors." - Viola Periti, in: The Classical Review (2022), 1-4

"This strong collection of essays on Valerius Maximus contributes much to his rehabilitation as an author worth studying in his own right. (...) Hopefully this collection of fine essays can contribute much to dispelling the need in future to be defensive in studying this author and his work." - Alex A. Antoniou, in: BMCR 2022.11.38

"[D]rawing attention to hitherto neglected aspects of Valerius' work, all chapters in this volume are successful not only in highlighting the enormous sophistication and nuance of the Facta et dicta memorabilia, but also in locating the work within the cultural, literary, and intellectual discourse of the early Principate. In demonstrating how, through the deliberate selection, organisation, and adaptation of his material, Valerius pursued his own literary agenda, the volume reviewed here is very much in the tradition of W. Martin Bloomer and will, undoubtedly, offer many important impulses for future research." - Heiko Westphal, in: Histos 17 (2023), cix-cxiii