This study has explored moral didacticism in the best-preserved works of history from the beginnings of the genre in the fifth century BC to the time when it began to merge with the Roman tradition in the first century BC. It has shown, I hope, that moral didacticism was an integral and indispensable part of the historiography of these four formative centuries. In the works of Polybius and Diodorus moralising is ubiquitous, and the reader is repeatedly and explicitly told to take it to heart in his own life. We misread these authors if we do not take that seriously. This seems also to have been the case in most of the Hellenistic works of history which now exist only in very fragmented states. In Herodotus and Thucydides, the moralising is a lot more subtle, and the moral lessons are more intellectual and thought-directing, but both the lessons and the didactic intention are certainly there. The historiographers of the fourth century, the Oxyrhynchus Historian, Xenophon, Ephorus and Theopompus, seem to constitute a bridge between the subtle Classical moralising and the explicit Hellenistic moralising, with Theopompus being the innovator who made explicit moralising a frequent and striking feature of his work.

I shall not here reiterate all the conclusions drawn in individual chapters, but simply wish to dwell for a moment on what strikes me as the most surprising finding of this study: these differences between early Classical, late Classical and Hellenistic historiographical moralising exist on the formal plane; they are differences in technique and intensity of moralising, as we have explored in detail in the preceding chapters. In terms of moral lessons, by contrast, the picture is remarkably constant. The message that human success is unstable and that we should remain moderate in times of good fortune runs like a red thread from Herodotus through Thucydides and Xenophon to Polybius and Diodorus via the now fragmentary works of history. It has variations between authors – for some the fall of the arrogant is linked with divine punishment, for others it is a purely human mechanism – but the central action-directing message of the importance of moderation, especially in times of good fortune, remains unchanged.