ABSTRACT
Ancient historical writing followed a fairly fixed pattern from the days of the Roman Republic until the end of late antiquity and even beyond. Hellenistic universal history was adapted to the needs of the Roman Empire and Polybios is a good and early example of this process. During the Byzantinization of the Roman Empire, the formerly conquered peoples started from biblical translations to create their own written versions of Christian history, and this in their reformulated mother tongues. After the Muslim conquest, Christians felt it necessary to reformulate their history by re-establishing their traditions in the language of the new all-embracing Empire, Arabic. The report on the "Great Flood" in Edessa is preserved in a much later historical work, the Chronicle of Edessa, originating from about the second third of the sixth century, that is, from Justinian's reign. A very important achievement of Roman civilization was the incorporation of Greek historiography into the Roman and, later, imperial idea.
