Iulius Africanus (3rd cent.) is a fascinating writer in a period of transition. Widely travelled, he belongs to the intellectual elite of the second sophistic. His two main works present a similar encyclopedic approach, but very different contents. He can be considered the "father of Christian chronography", since he authored the first Christian world chronicle (Chronographiae). However, he also wrote a comprehensive and multifaceted manual of many fields of knowledge, where the religious character is open to debate. The preserved fragments of the Cesti treat military, technical, medical and many other topics. These texts are presented in an entirely new critical edition. The transmission of the texts as well as questions of authenticity are highly complex. Compared to the previous edition (Vieillefond 1970), considerable progress has been reached in terms of both, quantity and quality of the material. Hitherto unknown texts have been included, and in the case of dubious authorship all necessary information is provided for a realistic picture of the transmission. In the introduction, all relevant channels of transmission are discussed. The edition is accompanied by notes and a new English translation.

For the modern reader, the use of direct speech, which is normally fictional, is one of the most remarkable features of ancient historiography. On the basis of a study of the rhetorical form and of the motifs employed in speeches by Herodotus and Thucydides, the author is able to expound systematically for the first time the similarities and differences in the employment of this characteristic tool in the works of the two historians, and to undertake a comparison with the options available to modern historical works.