The Romam contribution to historical writing was considerable but not only as remarkable as the Greek’s. Rome had no glorious past, for it had little worthy of record in the humble story of its existence as a small group of villages. For long it struggle against the states of Litium until it gained recognition as a principal city. The registers of annual events prepared by the religious heads and the annals written for the glorification of the deeds of the chieftains represents the early historical writing of the Romans. Subsequently several writers wrote on historical themes like the rise of Rome and the Punic wars.
The most important among them were Livy and Tacitus. The later historians attempted compilation or some kind of propaganda.
Among them, Plurach wrote historical biographies. Ploybius, Ptolemy, Strabo, Herodian and Dio Cassius were promiment figures. The Periplus of Erythrian sea, compiled out of pilot diaries and traders journals during the first century CE furnished detained information about the geography of the Red Sea, East Africa and the Indies, Strado wrote geographical accounts of eth Mediterranean area.
Herodian and Dio Cassius were among the last Greek writers of the Roman epoch. Josephus, a Jew, wrote on the history of the Jews. The decline in the quality and quantity of historical writing began in the second century CE and assured momentum by the fourth century CE.
In many respects, Roman historiography possessed characteristic of the Greek historical writing. Thus, it was humanistic. It assigned no decisive role to supernatural power beings in the history of the world. Roman historiography, like Greeks gave importance to the natural current history. It was based on upon particularization.
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