ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 asks fundamental questions about Orosius’s Historiae, interrogating the purpose of the text, seeking to uncover the authorial intention behind it, and puzzling over how we can locate it. The Historiae is a work that defies categorization, and generic misplacement has generated variance, divergence, and opprobrium within its critical reception. The privileging of history as an exclusive genre with particular standards that the text does not meet has resulted in its relegation. Orosius deliberately positioned differing allegiances, methodologies, and objectives alongside one another, determining the Historiae as anything but one-dimensional. In turn, the work has been recognized as in need of constant revision. This chapter argues that the slippery nature of the Historiae precipitated its controversial and contested critical interpretations across its reception history.
